beautiful brew

Last weekend we went hiking both Saturday and Sunday and it couldn’t have been more beautiful. Thick fog and mist hung in the trees, bits of gold flashed and fluttered in the wind. The forest was dark and soft and (human) silent. We only saw a few other people out on the trail, another reason to love being out in the woods in the colder temperatures.

The weather at home has been all over the place. Clear blue skies and bright sunshine one minute, charcoal skies and sideways rain the next. Leaves are still hanging on to some trees, but the colors have largely fallen to the rain-slicked streets and sodden yards. It’s that messy, soppy point in fall. A beautiful brew of not quite here / not quite there.

It starts getting dark around 4:30 now, and the long dark evenings are just wonderful. Most evenings after dinner I sit in my chair by the wood stove with a book (currently The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard or The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May), dimmed lights or candlelight, a cup of tea or a wee dram, and one very happy Pip next to me, but some evenings the moon calls and I set off down the hill, wrapped in a cloak of darkness, enchanted by the golden light glowing from windows and the mystery of each house.

〰️

slow notes:

• Starling - A Poem by Rob Cowen.

• I read recently that someone suggested an outdoor school for adults, for Oregon transplants who didn’t get to experience it in 6th grade. I went to outdoor school near Lebanon, Oregon in 6th grade, and it is a shining memory. I’d go, again, in a heartbeat. This, from OPB.

• This, from Virginia Woolf:

I need solitude.

I need space.

I need air.

I need the empty fields round me;

and my legs pounding along roads;

and sleep;

and animal existence.

(I think I need to read more of her, soon.)

the quiet after

 

It’s Monday. A new month. Welcome, November. The sky is gray, a bit dark, and rain is falling. I’ve been doing laundry and trying to finish my book, Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl. I think I’ll take a walk in the rain later, after the boy comes home from school - maybe I can convince him to come with me. The day feels slow and soft after the whirlwind of yesterday’s Halloween / Samhain activities.

It was such a perfect day, starting with the three of us having coffee downtown, reminiscing over Halloweens past, pulling up photos of little T in his costumes. Four Halloweens have gone by when he hasn’t wanted to dress up or trick or treat, but this year he did. My favorite day of the year and I went out with him like the old days, carrying my lantern through the streets of this neighborhood I love, and my heart just about burst.

Early evening, we had a lovely candlelight dinner in the dining hall. I made this pumpkin/apple/acorn squash curry. We set a place for loved ones no longer with us, and candles burned on the ancestor altar nearby, which held photographs, items belonging to and made by ancestors, and the flowered box that holds my beloved Klaus’s ashes. Later, after trick or treating, my husband built a fire and we talked while waiting for the last of the kids to come to our door. I went to bed with a very happy heart.

With all the rain we’ve been getting, the grass is lush and green again, the earth soaked and soft, and the ferns look like they hold a little more magic than usual. (Speaking of ferns, I’ve found my dream mittens. Really wishing I’d gotten past the dishcloth stage of knitting now.) We’re still seeing hummingbirds in the back yard, often, usually around the old apple tree. Skinny (the squirrel that seems to live at our house) is always about, either on our front porch or leaping from branch to branch out back. The scrub jays and the crows have frequent squabbles, the jays in the maple, the crows in the willow, each with very impressive vocalizations (but the crows forever have my heart).

☽

slow notes:

I’ve long wanted to learn to quilt, but lately I’ve been more drawn than ever to this slow craft. My dad’s mother was a quilter who made quilts for all of her eleven children, and then for their children, and so on. I love having that connection to her and her time (personal time, as well as her era), knowing that her hands created it. I think quilting is going on my to-learn list for 2022. Online inspiration: Grace Rother Quilts, Public Library Quilts, Farm & Folk, Salt + Still.

When I drove T to school this morning, Norwegian Soloists’ Choir was singing Jesus Din Sote Forening A Smake on All Classical Portland and it was so beautiful, it melted into me. When I got home I looked them up and listened to the other songs on the album, and they are all amazing. I absolutely love this kind of choral music.

☽

I’m feeling quiet, and grateful for this season, the magic of the natural world, and my family. I hope you are feeling some gifts of the season, too. Until next time ~

wavelength

As I write this, rain is pouring, wind is blowing, and I can hear Yaz’s Only You coming up through the vents from the garage downstairs where my husband is working. The weather has been stormy with rain and high winds, both here and in Walla Walla where we were visiting family over the weekend. My 89-year-old dad has been in the hospital for two weeks after breaking his hip, and it was so nice to put my arms around him and look into his eyes. It’s hard to see him diminished; he’s always been active and mobile, his life lived working outdoors as a farmer, a maintenance man, a construction worker. He’s been a lifelong gardener, took up running and became a marathon runner in his 50s, and he has always been the man who would give the shirt off his back to help someone in need. He is healing well, though, and he is going home today.

I hear people complaining about this weather, but I couldn’t love it more. Daily walks are truly magical in these conditions. I can’t bear to keep the windows of the house shut just yet. I know the day will come when it will just be too cold, but for now I’m willing to put on more layers during the day and pile more blankets on at night so that I can feel the wind on my face and hear the rustling leaves and the creatures of the night more clearly.

Our suppers in the dining hall are a favorite time of day. My husband and I seem to be taking turns making supper - he’s a much better cook than I am, but he indulges my desire to make warming, garlicky, vegetable-heavy meals. I made this last week, substituting coconut milk for the heavy cream but otherwise as written.

When my parents sold their house, I was given a box of photographs they’d collected over the decades. I’ve been going through some of them today to pick out and frame, and while I’m at it I think I’ll set a few out in the dining hall for our Samhain supper.

Over the weekend I finished my two favorite books I’ve read so far this year, both on my wavelength: David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous, and Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit. I loved both of these and how they talked about our relationships with the non-human world. So much of what Haupt says already lives in my heart and speaks to my personal feelings, experiences, and wishes.

☽

slow notes:

Michael Sheen performing the Welsh poetry of Dylan Thomas, here.

Did you know it’s BAT WEEK? Over the summer we were talking about putting up a bat house - we’d often see them flying around the trees of our back yard when we lingered out there late. I love them so.

Just back from a walk and came home with a handful of unripe but very beautiful persimmons from a sidewalk stand that said “please take, for your health.”

dream journal

May 5, 2021

All my life I’ve had dreams that leave me feeling unsettled the next day. Those I can’t quite remember but still manage to stick with me all day are perhaps the most disturbing, like fingers pulling on my consciousness to drag me back into the dimly lit, abandoned, and vaguely apocalyptic environment of my usual dreams. But over the weekend I had two dreams that, if not sweet dreams, were beautiful, thought-provoking, and filled with vivid color and light.

In the first, I was walking on a narrow trail up an open, dry, golden grassy hill, the evening sun casting shadows and deepening colors. I stopped for a moment and saw snakes at my sandaled feet - the most beautiful snakes I’ve ever seen - lapis blue, with a lighter sky blue stripe right down the center of their heads and backs. There were tiny ones and large ones. I somehow knew they were harmless and was unafraid. As I looked up the hill in front of me there were hundreds of them flinging themselves up toward the sky in what felt like an act of unrestrained joy. Awestruck, I couldn’t move.

In the second dream, I saw an old woman sitting on the far side of a large dark room. I very slowly moved toward her. She was very wrinkled, her eyes barely visible. As I got closer, her skin began to change into something that made me think of the surface texture of the skin of an elephant. Still closer, her skin started to appear reptilian, then like feathers. Even though she still had a pale color, other colors seemed to be coming up from beneath the surface. A deep rosy flush spread down from her temples to her cheeks. A beautiful translucent emerald green slowly encircled and spread out around her eyes, like watercolor as it hits the paper. Her eyes, now unobstructed, focused, and clear, held my gaze, silently saying, “You can see me now. This is who I’ve (you've) always been.”

☽

I have my own ideas about these dreams, their timing, and what they are saying to me, but I’m sure they could be interpreted in many different ways. And maybe they were just some crazy dreams (but I don’t really believe that).

reaching

I had a few days to myself while my boys took a road trip to California last weekend and used them to work on a project I’d been wanting to tackle for some time. I painted the bathroom including the vanity and built-in cabinets and drawers, put pulls on the vanity doors and drawers, took down the blinds that always got stuck / put up a rod and curtain, replaced the sink faucet, and replaced all the cabinet hinges. I don’t know how long the old faucet had been in place, but the four nuts holding it to the water lines were absolutely fused on and it took over three hours and much swearing to get them all off. Frustrations aside, I love getting lost in a project like this. It’s nothing fancy, but I’m glad I persisted and that our little bathroom (our only bathroom) has been given a lift. And it feels good to have done it all myself.

So many projects in process and still in mind for this new little place of ours. I’ve gotten a small herb garden going, a greens bed, and miscellaneous plantings here and there, but the ice storm that brought down a large part of a neighbor’s tree, and part of our own willow tree as well, have us dealing with big piles of branches and debris that we have moved up onto the back portion of the yard. I had really hoped to use that area for shade planting, but I don’t think that will happen this year.

The red shed/to-be dining hall has one coat of paint on inside, and I need to get cracking on that since the weather is just getting nicer and nicer now. We also want to paint the exterior of the house and shed, and that will be a process unless we actually hire someone to do it, which I doubt we will.

These are the things I love about spring. The projects, the ideas swirling about, the days ending feeling bone and body tired from working outside - the very best kind of tired. And the hummingbirds ... always the hummingbirds.

Evenings are for getting out - rambling along the Willamette River in different spots, walking the hills of our neighborhood to and from the park, or maybe sitting outside in the sun at a downtown spot for drinks. This time of year feels so magical, as we unfurl our winter selves and start reaching for the sun in all the ways we can.

✹

slow notes:

⩥ This, from Laura Marling.

⩥ This, about Gordon Hempton & silence, by Kathleen Dean Moore.

⩥ This, from Hakai Magazine.

⩥ This, on Nan Shepherd’s river from the BBC’s Slow Radio.

✹

book notes:

I listened to two audiobooks while working on my project, and I really loved them both:

⩥ I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell.

⩥ The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair With Nature by J. Drew Lanham.

Currently:

⩥ Field Notes by Barry Lopez.

⩥ The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.

⩥ Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto.

Until next time ~ keep reaching.