interlude

Hello, friends. After much thought, I’ve decided to end this little photo journal called o notes that has been a project of discovery, an ode to paying attention, and a map of what has resided within the orbit of my heart these past almost 13 years. I have absolutely loved chronicling the adventures of my little family, my thoughts, my wishes and intentions, my reverence for the natural world, and sharing things via watch/read/listen posts, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining me here. My boy, who was only 5 in the very first post, is now on the verge of flying the nest, my husband and I are thinking about how and where we want to spend our golden years, and it just feels like an era is ending. While I don’t know where things will lead us all, I do know that life has changed/will keep changing, and I feel that I am on something of a personally evolving path as well that I can’t quite see the end of. So, this space will remain open for the time being, but I won’t be posting here anymore.

There are some things I will continue to hold onto for as long as possible, but I’m ready to let other things go and find my way through what feels like an interlude.

Again, thank you for walking with me through the woods all these years. Maybe we’ll meet again soon.*

Much love,

Lori

* It is quite possible I will begin anew with a similar project in the not-too distant future, and if and when I do I will send a note to subscribers with the new address in case you’d like to come along. xx

low

Recently I've had the lowest lows I've felt in years. Feelings of loss, change, and that nothing matters have hung over me. I can only descibe this is a flat nothingness, and it has taken me down these past few weeks. I know there are a zillion things more important than my feelings, and I'm not completely comfortable sharing, but something about admitting it here helps. It's the truth of where I've been lately. 

In recent days I’ve begun to feel far better, and for that I am so grateful. I decided to check back in here today after taking a hike and a few pictures at Silver Falls and feeling a spark again. The leaves hadn’t turned as much as usual by this time of year, a couple of the waterfalls were completely dry, and it was so warm it felt wrong, but there’s nothing that affects the spirit like a walk in the wild, and I came away heart-soothed, remembering that there is so much beauty in this world and much to be thankful for. My walking practice fell off some over these last low weeks, but this week I’m getting back to this daily ritual with the enthusiasm I had before. What better medicine is there, after all, than getting outside and accepting all the gifts that nature and movement offer body, mind, and soul?

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slow notes:

It hasn’t felt very autumnal with our 85-degree weather, but I’m in nest mode anyway, and one aspect of that is making stews. I keep going back to The First Mess:

• Creamy French Lentils with Mushrooms & Kale

• Creamy Vegan Orzo with Butternut Squash & Brussels Sprouts

Read recently:

• Black Water: Family, Legacy, and Blood Memory by David Alexander Robertson

• Conversations With Trees by Stephanie Kaza

• Sisters by Daisy Johnson

• Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

• Yesterday by Juan Emar

• Poetry: The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón; Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking by C.T. Salazar; One Hundred Crows by The Peregrine Writers; need nezu (Good Medicine) by Tenille K. Campbell.

I find I’m reading more and more poetry. I don’t know much about what makes an academically good poem, but I do know how certain poems feel - like they’ve given that twisting tornado in my chest words.

Currently on my table are some Native Nations anthologies (and books of native art, which is really poetry, too), and I am in love with Tom Hirons' new poem, A Party For the Broken. It begins with...

“Tonight we will have a party

Only for the broken pieces

Only the crooked and the blunt ones

Are welcome tonight...”

I think I’d feel at home there.

with her

My beloved mother died last month. I have so many feelings I seem unable to express right now. Perhaps with time I will, but for now I will keep them, and her, close to my (broken) heart.

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Early last year I committed to getting outside to walk first thing in the morning. There were a few days last summer I didn’t make it due to unforeseen health issues, but I did more often than not until it became a sacred practice, even through winter (which I find more enjoyable than summer). Mom wasn’t really able to walk the last few years of her life, and she often said how she wished she could get out and go on long walks like she used to. I’ve been feeling her with me in the mornings these last few weeks, and I know now that when I need to feel close to her all I have to do is get out and walk. Every walk I take now is with her.

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slow notes:

A few books, recently:

• When I Sing, Mountains Dance, by Irene Sola.

• A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time, by Stephanie Kaza and Joanna Macy.

• Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays, by Barry Lopez.

• A Thousand Ways to Pay Attention, by Rebecca Schiller.

• Phosphorescence, by Julia Baird.

• Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women, by Annabel Abbs.

The beastly temperatures of last week have given way to much more tolerable ones this week, albeit still quite warm. My little garden loved the heat while it lasted; there are a couple of ripe sungold tomatoes to pick, the mystery squash plant is positively majestic in size, and the lettuce is bolting before we can eat it all. My flower pots and baskets that thrived and cascaded last year have not done well this year, but that’s okay. It’s been a very strange spring and summer so far and I think we have all done well with what we’ve been given, yes? Onward.

Sending out much love. Until next time ~

stormclouds

 

Blue jacket, blue sweater, blue sleeping bag, blue eyes with thunder heads rolling over them. I saw him folded on the sidewalk ahead as I crossed the street. He said nothing, but those eyes silently pleaded as person after person walked past. I got out a few dollars and then guiltily covered my expensive bag with my arms as I approached him.

I’ll often stop (I don’t care what the money is spent on, it’s the moment of kindness and acknowledgment that matters), but I rarely exchange more than a couple of words.

After I walked away, I heard him call out. I went back and knelt down beside him this time. Up close, I saw the child in his face. I thought of his mother. Does she know where he is? Is she a safe haven for him? He asked me why no one stops. “Everyone just keeps walking, like I’m not even here.” Then, on the verge of tears, he asked, “Why is everyone so mean? Why is everyone just so angry?” A dozen reasons flashed through my mind, none of which I could bring myself to say.

I touched his arm and said, “You’re right, people are angry. I’m sorry. But I’m not angry.” A slight untruth, that last part. I tried to smile.

His voice was somehow both ragged and childlike, his back curved in defeat. I didn’t have the right words (I never do) or any soothing answers. He was gone when I passed back that way, but his questions and those stormcloud eyes have been with me for weeks.

I know there are reasons to be angry. There are things that deserve outrage. The world can be a very unkind, unjust place. And no matter what we look like or how we manage to pass ourselves off, we all carry some kind of storm inside. What if, instead of outrage toward our fellow human beings, especially those we don’t like the looks of or don’t understand, we offer a little tenderness and see what that world looks like?

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slow notes:

This, on compassion.

po|em|path

Poems. I don’t mean the written word, but the seen, the heard, the felt. I find them most often in the forest, for that is where Douglas fir, mahonia, licorice fern, and trillium live. It’s where wild ginger, chanterelles, singing birds, the scent of humus, and a thousand glorious shades of green live. It’s where life and death and love and all manner of magical unseen things live. But I also find poems in my own back yard, crawling under piles of rotting leaves, inching their way up tree trunks, or dripping from the rain-filled gutter. I feel them settling into my bones like a valley fog when I walk with the moon. I can sometimes taste them, salty and wild like a coastal gale, and my heart becomes an ocean.

✴︎

slow notes:

• Shift, from Sim Warren.

• Ten Love Letters to the Earth, by Thich Nhat Hanh.

• One Long River of Song, by Brian Doyle. Favorite book of the year so far. This collection of essays is sweet and sad and funny and absolutely beautiful.

✴︎

Have you found these kinds of poems? Maybe in the touch of the dog’s nose on your cheek? In the rhythmic ticking of an analog clock? In the caw of the crows outside your window? In the scent of the garlic you grew last year browning in a cast iron pan for tonight’s dinner?

I know that some may feel that there is no poetry in the world right now, and my heart is with you.

Maybe today you are the poem.

stirrings

January was slow and quiet. Its calm and nothingness felt so soothing after the busyness and social activities of the holidays. The chance to decompress and go inward was deeply appreciated. I inhaled soft silvery fog on long morning walks and spent many dark evenings with a book in my chair by the wood stove. We took four trips to the coast, where winter’s king tides luxuriated on our favorite stretch of sand. High winds came to visit our town more than once, scattering gifts of soft mossy branches with each gust. Clear blue skies and sunshine were often present, too, giving us a lovely balance of the natural forces. We baked bread and made stews, deep cleaned and decluttered. We had movie nights and music nights. We bird-watched and book-browsed.

As we now approach mid February, daffodil greens have pushed up through the sodden ground and the towhees are back in the camellias. Turkey tail is taking my breath away on trails by the river. Buds swell on the end of branches in joyful rebirth. Baby cleavers, so delicate and bright green, tell me that the wheel is turning. I can hear spring gently journeying up through roots and rocks, whispering sweet promises of fragrance and color and things brand new.

I can feel the lists of flowers I want to plant / vegetables I want to grow / projects I want to start all beginning to germinate in the back of my mind. I dream of tomatoes, hollyhocks, suppers outside under the twinkling lights, bats swooping through the trees, and bare feet in touch with the earth once again. But, for all of these stirrings, I’m not ready to part with beloved winter just yet. That soft silvery fog is calling again today and I’ll happily fade to gray once more for the chance to be wrapped in her magical spell.

∘∘∘∘∘

slow notes:

• This, from Sylvain Gautier. I adore this. It reminds me of something that would have been hand-made ages ago. Also, this.

• The work of Celia Pym. Read more here.

• These absolutely stunning photos of Iceland, from Sidetracked.

• This, on trees, from The Marginalian.

passages

 

Here we are about to welcome a new year (even though the calendar says that starts tonight, Solstice has come to feel more like the start of a new year, as it marks the start of the slow passage through darkness into light) and I think we’re all ready for it. It’s been a rough year for many, perhaps for most, and I’m hoping 2022 holds better things for everyone.

Last night was a night of very little sleep. I laid in bed for hours, ears pricked to every sound, eyes wide open watching the wind in the tree branches just outside the bedroom window. When I finally drifted off, I had strange dreams. One was full of moths, toads, and an orange tabby kitten. In another, I found a mountain of tiny bird eggs in varying intensities of blue resting in a large nook of a tree near the barn at my childhood home. (Those blues again, like the snakes I dreamt of in May.) An opening in the nook was a passage to the heart of the tree.

I’ve been thinking about daily practices and what I give my time and attention to. Nature journaling is a lovely, lovely way to walk through the days, observing the seasonal changes. As they say, the more attention we give to something, the more sacred it becomes to us and the more we will do to ensure its care.

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slow notes:

• I shed some tears for more than one reason when reading this, at Terrain.org. Orca rituals and celebrations - so beautiful. “Have we reached it yet? The point where we circle up and take turns, holding and pushing a collective grief? The day we leave our denial behind and come up for air? On this dimming horizon, with everything on the line, can a matriline rise? Embracing a maternal instinct to protect lives beyond our individual fingerprints, willing to die in the process like the Chinook guarding their eggs? Can we gather like the J-Pod and hold what is precious—centered in moonlight—even as the moon moves?” - Christina Rivera Cogswell

• Speaking of moths, this, from the Aeon+Psyche newsletter.

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Wishing you peace, love, wonder, joy, and good health in the year to come.

high moon

Last Sunday morning when I woke up, I had a message from my sister telling me that Anne Rice had died. There was a time I loved not just her books, but her. I haven’t kept up with her more recent books, but I first read Interview With the Vampire in the mid 1980s when I was a teenager and was immediately smitten with the dark, conflicted, fringe-dwelling characters and the gorgeous detailed scenes she painted in my mind. Before the film version, and long before that other vampire series, as a young girl her stories transported me through dark worlds and across time. Many years ago I actually emailed her, something of a fan letter I suppose, but also asking some personal questions about her life, and she sent me back the loveliest note. I was so surprised to get a response at all, but one came the very next day, and it was such an open, kind one at that. As her son said last Saturday, I hope she is now finding answers to some of her cosmic questions.

Last weekend we drove up to Detroit to look for snow. There wasn’t a lot, but we found a good dusting starting just before Detroit Lake and then past the town and on toward Idanha. It’s still startling to drive through acres of burnt trees, or barren stretches where they have been logged off, but there will always be magic to be found along that blue-green ribbon of river we love so much.

The holiday blues I used to get have crept back in a bit lately. There have been some personal and family challenges and changes this year, but overall it has been a very good year and I have absolutely nothing to complain about. My heart goes out to those who struggle with their (or someone else’s) mental health, to those who struggle to make ends meet or give their family the Christmas they’d like (or any Christmas at all), to those who feel alone, forgotten, unworthy, invisible. If that’s you, know that you are not alone. I am sending you all the love. ♥︎

slow notes:

• When I need a pick-me-up, sometimes I let myself fall down a YouTube rabbit hole of old Hollywood dance mashup videos, like this one.

• From The Velveteen Rabbit: He said, “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

• From Sting: Moon Over Bourbon Street, inspired by Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire.

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I sent a few packages off at the post office Monday, picked up a few more stocking stuffers midweek, and have just a couple of things left to wrap for my local people this weekend. It’s time to relax and just enjoy the season. Today that means an extra long walk and getting started on a new book from a friend. It’s the last full moon of the year tonight, the Cold Moon or Long Night Moon (highest and longest in the sky of the year), and I’m hoping to spend some time beneath her glow. Next week is solstice and we’ll begin the slow journey back to light. Until then ~