Even on the most blustery day, the mountains are steady
Learn the lessons of the wind and earth
Walk between the two
Let your breath ramble across the sky
Let your body feel the slow pulse of the land, the cool solidity of stone
Learn to be weightless and grounded
To be pulled and anchored
Learn to live between the two
to be achingly alive and free
Summer’s vibrancy is here, infusing into me, or maybe it is me infusing into the landscape of greens and blues.
Most of my writing these days is over in the farm blog, and instagram vignettes. You’re invited to join me in both of those places for the summer, as I share in words and photos the curiosities and creativity that is flowing through me.
Be well, dive deep, get dirty.
Happy summer~
The forest floor is littered with maple flowers.
Look down anywhere and you’ll see the pink with purple specks brightening up the leaf litter. Waylon and I spent ten minutes in one spot just last week, picking up flowers and placing them on our open palms, counting. It was only a promise of more maple flowers up ahead that loosened his wonderment enough to move along the trail.
Yesterday I set out with the dogs alone, no toddler slowing my pace to that of constant discovery. I needed to get into the woods, up the steep old logging road, over the brook and small pool that releases into a fall, across the elevated traverse among ash and maple and beech before I slowed. I needed to let my legs move so that my mind might begin to move, too—it was my morning for writing, and no words were coming out.
Instead, all I could I hear was Paul Simon in my head, singing The Only Living Boy in New York.
Over and over one line repeated: I get the news I need from the weather report. I can gather all the news I need from the weather report.
It occurred to me that part of the weather report is in watching the sky, in walking in the woods, in learning how to smell the change of air pressure. It occurred to me that the weather has been bombarding us with news forever. Long before satellites and the weather channel, the wind carried information, clouds grew into mountains, maple blooms fell to the ground.
Right now, wind is carrying information, clouds are growing into mountains, maple blooms are falling to the ground.
Right now, a coopers hawk hunts over our field.
Right now, it’s raining and seeds are softening their shells to sprout and the air is moving slow.
It’s all I need to know.
“Keep reinventing the way you love yourself.”
Summer grows roots from my feet into the soil of this land. The sun bleaches streaks of blonde in my strawberry hair, and freckles emerge like seeds on my skin.
The earth and light do their part to keep me here, though the wind blows in some afternoons and I feel the old pull of travel tug at my chest.
On morning walks with the dogs, Waylon on my back, I follow worn paths through the forest and imagine the roots of my feet rolling up and down the land like waves, loosening my body with each step so I may follow the breath of air.
Some mornings before I finish my tea, the light travels for me, and I step outside to move with the rising mist and sun rays filtering down toward the soil, whispering a single word: soften.
I remember the tug I often feel while traveling, to stop in one place and dig in, to find the veins of the land and match my rhythm to their pulse.
The morning turns to day imperceptibly, suddenly, and tasks take their place in my mind as the sun rises high into a clear sky. It’s time to tend to the fields now.
All day the light travels, bringing evening about, and we hang our tools and prepare dinner and sit outside to eat as the earth tilts away from the sun and the sky dances itself into sunset.
The air is still and my chest is quiet and my soles root into grass.
The light deepens into night, and though I’ve not left this land all day, I’ve witnessed movement, been part of the full round stretch of day and the long exhale of twilight.
To be seen. To be free. To be alive and full and whole–the yearnings of soul.
Evening comes and the sun lights upon the horizon, it’s rays like open petals before dusk: an invitation, an opening, an ease of light to quell the ache of longing.
There are times when the roads of my inner landscape are covered with rocks, and my ankles feel weak, and I’m not sure which way to go, until a note of beauty strikes my ears and I gulp in the sounds directing me aright. There are times when life is so full that the smallest ounce of beauty brings me to tears.
Beauty doesn’t hide in the realm of joy. That’s it’s power–it’s ability to catch us as we stumble, it’s ability to wake us from blindness, to hold us in sadness, to guide us through pain.
There is so much beauty in this world. Why can’t we bathe in it, share it, spread it?
That’s what I’m after now, to share beauty with you all. So I share with you this song, A Clearing in the Wild, by Red Tail Ring, which struck a chord in my heart and re-awakened a longing that pulls me to the wilderness:
It’s high summer, when computer time dwindles and the fields keep me outside. I turn my posts now to frames of beauty, to moments of stillness and moments of wonder and moments that rush through my heart, beating me alive.
A certain quality of light infuses my days, and I can’t help but fall into it.
These mountains we live across from pour the evenings over us, wash us in mists and sunsets, reflect the first light of each new day’s dawn.
This is summer, this letting go of extraneous matters and responsibilities, this filling up of light, this wordless pull to the outside that quiets the core of my being.
You can plant beauty
You can create beauty
Your life is a unique expression of energy
Your expressions are powerful
How do you choose to move?
I began writing a bi-weekly column called “Millennial Farmer” for the Burlington Free Press in January. Here’s last Sunday’s article, about perennials and the roots of community:
For years I dreamed of perennials: raspberries and blueberries, an orchard of pears, plums and apples, slightly wild and sprawling flower gardens with curved pathways and benches to stop and sit and breathe it all in. It seems surreal now, as I witness spring unfurling for a third year on our land, that the rosebush is greening at the base of the stems, that the dicentra are flowering into their bleeding hearts, that the peonies are actually stretching up out of the soil.
Read the rest at Burlington Free Press online
