Around Here

May 29, 2013 by

 We made it!

As always, it seems to take so much longer than expected to get everything set up and humming once more.  Uprooting is tiring.  We’ve been having interwebular struggles and just last night found what may be our best and only option for an internet connection out here in our lovely little mountain nook.  We are SO glad to be back.  I didn’t realize how much I missed this place, my gorgeously alive forest, my little cabin, the owls at twilight, the frog song rising up from the marsh, my hammers pinging in the glorious Airstream…

All is beautiful.  Soggy too.  It’s been raining heaps.  I think I’m growing moss.  I missed you so!  Tra la la!  More soon.

X

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Homesome

March 23, 2013 by

For being a committed landlubber, I surely do thrive on the moments I spend at the sea.  The interior west and the northwest coast are vastly different places, but I see similarities in the smaller building blocks that make the whole of these places.  I find myself mentally and visually connecting the textures, forms and feels of both regions and am astounded, time and time again, by the harmony between here and there.  There’s cohesion in the way the earth grows and wears away, thins and thickens with the help of the sun, wind and water.  There’s unity in the textures and forms of the jungles and forests.  The sea is like the desert and the desert is like the sea.  This earth is so weirdly wild.  I love it.  I really love it.  I find myself telling it so, when I am out in the glorious grip of the wild places.  I look up at the sky and the sun and the trees and I hear the mountain water rolling and I say, “Creation, I love you.  I love you more and more, every day.”  And then the wind wraps its arms around me and carries me away like a seed.

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I am just home from the isles of the Puget Sound where it snowed, sleeted, sun-shined, blustered, gusted and was generally springtimey lion and lamb weather.  As I drove over Agate Passage, on my way to a ferry ride towards home, I couldn’t help but cry.  I deeply cherished the time I had with friends on this trip.  I held their babies close, read books to my favorite pseudo-nephew, loved on their pets and noticed the progress of their houseplants, laughed a lot, slept too little, and drank so much excellent coffee!  It is the Seattle area, after all, and I tend to overindulge in caffeinated beverages while visiting.  It was a lonesome and gnarly trip home across Washington, Oregon and Idaho with highway smash ups and wintry weather causing delays in some of the mountain passes.  It was made even lonesome-er knowing that I was returning home to a cold bed, a fridge festering with expired foods, and the full weight of household duties since my main squeeze is away on an early-season work detail in Arkansas.

Regardless, as captain of this little ship, I’m running things as tightly as I can and have more than enough work to keep me busy!

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Happy springtime to you!  I risk repeating myself, but it’s incredible how quickly this winter galloped past.  In a month and a half, we’ll be making our move to the summer home, cramming all we can into the Airstream and heading northwest on the glorious highways and byways for a new season of life.  I don’t feel ready for the transition, but there’s still a little time left to prepare my home and my heart.  I’ll be busy as a honey bee in a field of canola until we go!  The month of April holds an Artwalk appearance for me here in our quaint little town (preparing for it will be an act of wild desperation — and yet, I’m excited), a trip to the Chicago area (my favorite big American city), two shed hunting trips to the Idaho side of the Tetons and seeing as much of our beloved friends here as possible, before we all part ways for the fire season.

Buckle up, buttercups.  We’re all set to zoom.

I hope you are well wherever you are.  Thanks for being here today, and always.

X

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Larking About The Puget Sound

October 18, 2012 by

[Looks like the cat is doing his job!  Around The Table Farm, Poulsbo, WA (small scale organic farming)]

[My beautiful Burns, nine months pregnant, in her incredible little garden.]

[Me and the barnacles.  Bainbridge Island, WA]

Last week, I spent five days in the Puget Sound, my last trip to the coast for the season.  It was delightful.  I popped into the city to meet up with a couple of friends and their lovely spouses, enjoyed fine food, plant shopping, and various other city things before catching the ferry over to the quiet, clean of Bainbridge Island to stay with my tribe there for a few days.  I have to tell you, there is really nothing more easy, more filling for the soul, then to simply be with people who know you full well, inside and out.  I’ve been going to Bainbridge Island for eleven years now!  I’m practically local!  And I love my people there, so dearly and tenderly.  I love to arrive at their homes and be swept up into the beauty of their lives.

When I arrived in Seattle, I was fostering a feeling of lostness, deep in my soul.  I felt wavering, directionless, floundering on the edge of transition in so many avenues of life.  By the time I left Bainbridge Island, the last of a subtle and surly weight had lifted from my shoulders, swept away by the careful and courageous hands of justice, truth and epiphany.  I am ready to go home now, home to Idaho, home to my winter life.  When we arrived in the Methow Valley for the start of the fire season, I was bone tired and soul exhausted after two very strenuous years of  studio work and the regular wear and tear that stems from brushing up against the darker sides of human nature.  I knew the Methow Valley would be a healing room for me, it had to be, or I wouldn’t be able to go on.  All those days I spent lakeside with a book in the dapple of tree shade, all those days I woke early and took long walks in the hills, all those days I spent entire afternoons simply stringing colored glass beads on thin thread,  I was on an important threshold of restoration.  I am so very glad to tell you I am ready to go home, move forward into the next segment, delve into a season of experimentation and discovery with my creative work, photography and writing…and who knows what else!  I am refreshed.  I am prepared, so fully, so suddenly, to pour myself out once more (the filling took such a long while, I was so dreadfully empty) and it feels so good and strong to have officially turned the last corner on a path that leads to rejuvenation.

I have one week of work left in my tidy little Airstream studio.  I have ten more days to adore my little cabin in the woods.  Then we’ll shoot like a silver star, blazing joyfully, home to our people in Pocatello and our little farm house on the edge of the mountains.  The timing is perfect.  I don’t want to go.  But I’m ready to leave.  I’m ready now.

Thanks for being with me in this season, in the seasons past, in the seasons to come.  I hope you are turning the same kind of corners, on a continual basis, unshackling yourself from dead weight, lassoing  humility and grace, feeling a lift of spirit, a decompression of soul, the hope that comes with renewal and the blessing of rightness.  Good things are coming.  I can feel it on the breeze.

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