Spring has been a whirlwind of learning and trying and failing and resting and trying. I’m learning to say yes to spending time, and also earning a living, with work that feels fulfilling and purposeful. Projects that are stretching creative muscles I have been longing to move. And folks, I’ll tell you that I am both tired and nourished in the best ways. Our home garden is filling, the orchard is setting fruit, and the native plants in the prairie are working hard to use what little moisture we’ve had to outstretch the grasses. I am curious to lean into the observations of a potential drought year on this land. Sandy soil is certainly proving to be a test of patience and practice. But despite being not yet calloused, I can feel the slow simmer, the build of Summer, approaching.

June carries a certain joie de vivre that the other summer months do not. Cool early morning dew of remarkability, fresh greetings of extraordinariness practically every day. June is a tuning fork that brings me back into harmony with the Earth. My son is giddy with anticipation of the first strawberries. He laid out his rocks painted like red ripe fruits on the ground around the patch, a practice we know to discourage the birds. The children and I have been offering songs to the land, and I am feeling very grateful to be in community with this place and the gifts we are receiving during these longer days.

My work in the summer months tends to be mostly in isolation and observance of more than human kin, and human connection can feel filling during this time. I often crave gathering in June, and I hope to find balance in this. May the full moon usher you into the familiarities of June, and may you linger in the fertile fragrances hanging on the still cool breezes.

In Belonging,

Holly

To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

I wrote the post below in November of 2021, nearly two years into the Covid-19 Pandemic, with two small children and lofty dreams of a future that didn’t turn out anything like I’d thought. I sat in circle with community on this week’s Scorpio New Moon feeling a bit unmoored, and someone sang the poem above. It led me back to this post I wrote on my old Journal “Letters from Home” which still feels like such an important component of my rediscovery of self, as we happen to be gathering supplies to do this very ritual in present time.

It reminded me of the simple ways in which rituals take form, the ways we connect to seasons and sentiments, like stars making a map, the constellations of the spiral of our lives. How belonging is really just a return to our most authentic selves and the serendipitous ways that we arrive here.

May you carry the light within into the months ahead and may serendipity lead you, perhaps by song, back to belonging.

x

The autumn is fading and we have begun our descent into the darkest months of the year, a time when we embrace a slumber of restorative rest. The children have declared it cocoa season as they bustle from outdoor play to indoor handwork like rolling beeswax candles and wool felting. And while we are missing simple rituals such as gathering by the hearth, we are dreaming + designing the coziest spaces for our future home while we continue traditions like planting paperwhite bulbs to coax indoors for a winter solstice bloom. By now, the garden beds have been put to rest and we miss the work of growing + tending, so this is a beautiful way to get our hands in the dirt. This year we’ve opted for the Ariel Narcissus, a variety of paperwhite, which you should readily be able to find at your local garden center. This tutorial is for starting indoor bulbs in soil, though you can also grow in water, in which case you’ll want to add rocks to the bottom of your jar for the bulb to rest on. There are several other bulb options such as amaryllis or hyacinth if you’d like, too. We love to pick up extra bulbs to plant in recycled jars as gifts for teachers, mail carriers, or neighbors + friends.

So I brewed the children and I a pot of chamomile tea, laid our soil and bulbs out across the table, and dug in. As we nestled bulbs into their places, crowding them ever so slightly for a truly spectacular show, we whisper spells of sunshine filled days in the windowsill until we wake one late December morning to the scent of musky floral blooms. A magic which happens nearly overnight. And we will be reminded that while the winter world sleeps, the light is beginning to return, and we too will awaken with the pulse of the earth. (Paperwhites will bloom about four to six weeks from being planted.) As we embark on the journey into the winter season, I am wishing you introspection + rest, folks. I hope you enjoy this simple winter ritual as much as we do!

In gratitude + kindredness,

Holly

Indoor Floral Bulbs

What You’ll Need:

• Floral Bulbs

• Container that will allow root growth at least 3-4 inches deep, preferably with drainage

• Potting Soil

• Water

Planting Instructions:

Fill container with potting soil at least 3-4 inches deep. Nestle the bulb(s) snuggly and fill with additional soil need be, so the top one third of the bulb is exposed. Water soil to keep moist, but not wet. Place in a location with plenty of sunlight.

PRIMA MATERIA

Slowly, a bubbling

the effervescence of my psyche, a sort

of quiet crumbling and emerging chaos. 

Holding a match in one hand, watching the moon swell. 

Maybe I will light it, just to watch

the orange streak sparkles of creation,

of survival. 

Could you understand if I told you I felt

that a Soul is a mountain, carved for

thousands of years by rage and grief and tears?

Brown bracken edges, my feet meet

the autumn earth of the forest. 

The electricity of life beneath me carries me, 

a cooling current; alchemizing fire, air, water. 

Shapeshifting, a holy gift. 

I hope this season is unfolding with beauty that finds its way to the betwixt and between spaces of your physical and spiritual worlds— beauty that impresses onto your soul.

In belonging and connection,

Holly

I sent this text last week to a thread of Matriarchs, a group of Wise Women who I am honored to be in circle with through this journey of motherhood. It was a chime-in to a days’ worth of sharing of celebrations, challenges, and photographs regarding the ritual of back to school. My personal ritual, to offer my gift of tears into a hot latte at the cafe in our town square after drop off, shifted this year to a take away cup and a cool, foggy morning cry in the farm field where I am working. I reflected on the many rituals that this notion holds true- birthdays, funerals, the shifting seasons, the plants and the weather patterns. A pretty curious list, also, is how we move through these rituals, perhaps similarly or even matter of factly each time, but with a different provocation, feeling, or offering. That we are moons, waxing and waning, practicing over and over our expansiveness, if we can lean into the enduring.

Many of my daily rituals move with the rhythm of nature, and as it turns out with my elbows, too. I’ve been asked to expand this Full Moon by way of a reminder of gratitude for my physical body and the many ways I have taken it for granted. I fell the other day and hyperextended my dominant elbow, rendering it useless for the foreseeable future. Help, and the asking for it specifically, continues to be a lesson for me (hello Scorpio placements) and as we near the Autumn Equinox I can feel an invitation to slither out of my skin, to abandon what feels comfortable, what I have known. A necessary shedding to turn towards uncertainty, what I cannot do, to step towards the unfolding of each moment a true lack of control. I am relieved to peel away the layers of the summer season- expectations for what would get accomplished, the hot heat of the sun, the salty sweat of physical labor, even if it means feeling raw and full of grief, the rot building aliveness in the soil of my heart space.

I have been finding this presence fundamental at present, meeting each day with the unknown- joy, despair, grief, anger, love, fear. To name them and call them each what they are- corruption, greed, collapse. And also hope, reciprocity, remembering, service. To move in and out of each, soft and often bruised, a mighty altar of bones and stones and tears. When I don’t need to curate my humanity or make myself more palatable for consumption, I offer my innate nature to interconnection. And perhaps in this ritual of existence begin to expand, survive; a way to witness my smallness among all beings in a vast universe.

These reflections, summons, and devotions are one of the many ways that I am staying grounded in curiosity currently. How you have been navigating your humanity, lately?

When I was a child I believed that you could tell how harsh the coming winter would be from the bands of brown and black hair on the woolly bear caterpillars. Also that if they were slinking south, it would be a harsher winter, but if you found them slinking north it was because the coming season would be mild. My grandmother would say that if the cows were laying down, there was rain coming. The experts that taught me these things were simply generations of people and lore that come from storied observations and using lived experience to place trust in a sense of belonging to place. We now study what is known as phenology- the cyclical and seasonal natural phenomena of plants and animals- as a result of peoples who believed in the importance of spiritual communion and harmonious relationship to the natural rhythms of the Earth.

In today’s modern industrialized society, we place trust in people and groups who have come to be known as ‘experts,’ which range from highly educated scholars to folks with popular social media followings. We are connected to so much information that I often wonder how many of us are even observing the actual weather rather than reading about it? I’ll spare you my cynicism and simply say that there is a great deal of information, and misinformation, asking for our consumption. By design it is overwhelming, extractive of our time and energy, and can feel distracting to our ability to discern.

It’s no wonder that I been reflecting on the role my intuition plays in my experiences with trust. On the ways that simple listening and observing have been powerful practices of connection for me. For example, when I developed a mature understanding of my personal autonomy in womanhood, separate from what I’d been taught to fear in school and by doctors, I fostered a relationship of deep listening with my body. When I began my first garden with a new little family of my own nearly a decade ago, I journaled daily noticings of weather, insects, animals and other plant life who played an active role in our backyard ecosystem. I placed trust in the buds forming on the maple trees and the cranes returning from migration for knowing signs of the coming season. Even now, each spring, I plant my peas when the forysthia are near bloom. I sit in community circles and practice deep listening as a form of lovingkindness and care for myself and others. Listening and observing have kept my heart open to tender self honoring, and shown me the integrity of my intuition and belonging. I’ve learned that if more of your day is spent consuming with time + attention, you are left with less for connecting to the grounding energy of physical life. For communing with the forest. For the ritual of making a cup of tea. For gathering. For holding hands and singing on living rooms floors.

There are so many ways in which we are asked to define our identity rooted in capitalism and ego. There is so much pressure to be a something or a someone for what feels like grasping to maintain relevancy amidst the hurried world. The more life I have lived in this physical realm realm the less I desire to fit into any niche box of validation, and the less trusting I am of experts. I am quite content being a non expert. A committed lifelong listener and unwavering curious observer, rather. Unafraid to get it wrong, lovingly correct, and try again. Perhaps we need more folks who can feel the ways forward. There are enough fast paced spaces to be distracted by egos; I am welcoming connection to the slow rhythm of my own presence with heart and mind. Today’s Full Snow Moon won’t be visible to me with the current weather, but I trust wholly that she is there. May this moon illuminate the way to your own remembering.

Here is a poem by Joy Harjo that I come back to often, for just such times.

Remember | Joy Harjo

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

In connection, 

Holly 











        

At my Women’s Circle gathering this week, we are connecting with the pagan cross-quarter celebration of Imbolc, meaning “in the belly of the Mother,” associated with the goddess Brigid. Brigid is portrayed across many cultures’ folklore in various forms, but is most commonly known as the goddess of fertility, handcraft, and alchemical forces of fire and water. She represents our unique talents and gifts to humanity, inviting us to resurrect our imagination as an act of collaborative contribution. She is a reminder that separation and duality are illusions, constructs created to drive apart the power of co-creation and unity. She is urging us to embody bravery in examining the individualistic nature of societal structures, to confront the capitalist tendencies inside of ourselves, and forge a future out of our dreams that is rooted in collective growth and communal care.

I am reminded of this essay by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in which she reminds us that no act is too small to go unfelt as it ripples out to the broader world. This sentiment has felt like a primary element in grounding back into my physiological body, and certainly has allowed my capacity to continue holding space for historical injustices and current events to widen bit by bit. There is a fine line between dissociating entirely from the understandable overwhelm and rooting into maintaining capacity to enact actionable change. The New Moon this week seems to be asking me what gifts I can offer right now in this moment in time and urging me to imagine those gifts as a conduit into my relationships, community, into humanity. Is it in sharing seeds + eggs with a neighbor, is it in taking a walk with friends as a way of meaningfully connecting, is it offering poetry as a reminder of the intrinsic beauty also in the world, is it holding safe spaces to gather and share our grief and rage? Maybe you are feeling it, too? It’s almost certainly an invitation to connect, imagine, and most importantly, create a more loving microcosm.

In the nurturing spirit of renewal and light, I am also sharing this poem, which is inspired by the liminality of the late Winter season as it nears Spring’s arousal. I welcome you to share any gifts or words of your own you’d like to offer in the comments of this piece as a form of collective care.

In kindredness,

Holly

A fifty-degree swing to the dense fog and rain that I stood in yesterday at the edge of the orchard.

In the same place, at a different moment in time.

Time has been a strong curiosity living in my heart in these late December days, having whirlwinded through another holiday season, and now being served reminder after reminder that a new calendar year is on the horizon, so you’d better buy the sale thing, hurry to plan your resolution thing, or (insert another scarcity tactic thing) before the clock strikes midnight. Over culture loves to advise us of how time is perpetually in shortage in this modern world, but in nature, time isn’t measured in ticking sales, working hours, or hustling exhausted bites of energy. Time is measured by the place where the sun bows gracefully from horizon to horizon and by the dormancy of tiny seeds waiting in patient winter months of sleep. Yet I can feel the pull of both. Time is not a linear passage, and as I put one foot in front of the other winding back and forth in the labyrinth, I was reminded of the way that each season nourishes me, nudges me toward what I need, making way to embrace death + rebirth again and again.

In this season of dormancy, I lean into the ways the rituals in my life hold me in unconditional love and caretake me in the darkness. We observe the hens’ respite from laying eggs, a respect for the necessary way that stillness prepares us. I can feel this message of time teaching me how to let go of the storied urgency, through the discomfort, and how to nurture a deeper practice of presence. What if we could hold time as a gift, one that we receive each day we wake up to draw a breath, each sunrise we get to see because the children tiptoe in for early snuggles, each moment we practice being with ourselves right now? In my experience, it makes it easier to recognize seemingly ordinary moments with reverence and immense gratitude. Time was never meant to be the vehicle that carries us hurriedly between moments, but rather the moments in which we linger between the places in our journeys. This Capricorn New Moon and the turning of the wheel of the year feel like a beautiful juncture to honor this.

And honestly folks, I have been navigating some transitions in my life recently which have been calling me back to values that I hold dear in this lifetime, away from things that hollow me, instead toward things that guide me in wholeness. As I continue to sit with where and to whom I allow access to me, I am grateful for you sharing in the things that feel good, that feel important. If you are a member of my physical community spaces, I am excited to be offering more opportunities to gather in 2025.

Warm wishes + coupe glass clinks,

Holly

If Libra season was an untethering, floating in the abyss, Scorpio is a cold plunge into icy waters. Water is already calling me, through a dream about crossing a bridge only to find that the middle was missing. I descended into the cold, dark waters of a nighttime river and there was little I could do or think before sinking into the enveloping water. Time seemed to move in slow motion, I fell until I could see the bottom approaching and planted firmly before using all my strength to propel myself upward until I rose to heave a great breath in. 

As soon as I woke up I told my partner about the dream and his response was simply, “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, you’ll have to go through it,” a quip from the children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt that we've both memorized after years of reading it at bedtime.

This morning I walked through the forest, intent to search for the golden feathered needles of the Tamarck trees and a few mushrooms for a pizza dinner. I stopped to listen to the snake-like rattle of the Poplar leaves and looked up to see a bird’s nest tucked into its branches. As I walked I noticed another and then another, nests that spent their vulnerable seasons guarded by thick leaves, unseen and protected in their high-up hiding places. As the leaves let go, the now abandoned homes sat sighted, a reminder that it is not until the swift shed of autumn that what has been sheltering us becomes visible. I’ve been wrapped safely in the nest of heart and home space, isolated out of protection, and it wasn’t until the wind swept the veiling from the branches that I noticed how unobserved I felt. Yet also there above, to be witnessed, were the Cedar Waxwings feasting on autumn berries in the tops of the trees. Jubilant and fluttering about plucking fruit with their beaks.

I’m certain that the watery descent in my dream and the trail of leaves crunching beneath my feet were intuitive observings and a gentle nudge of, “You’ll have to go through it.” Transformation is in the stick-bare trees, with nothing but berries and beautiful love-drunk Waxwings. Perhaps they’d been there all along.

I’ve been lingering in the long summer corridor, slipping into the Autumn Equinox like a cozy sweater waiting patiently to be worn. The natural landscape of this season lends itself to the reminder that time is cyclical, death a necessary part of the endless loop of beginning again. The holiest hues of green and sickly shades of rotting amber, holding hands. The goldenrod has been a harbinger of the memory of death for me for the past several years, and I’ve softened to greet them with fondness + gratitude. This past week I sat in the wet grasses of the September prairie, the scent of sweetgrass clinging to the morning dew, starburst sparkles of asters hanging overhead, and let them hold my tears as I greeted grief once more. Grief is so humbling, the way it brings us to our knees and leaves us without breath- if only to remind us of our tender aliveness. It clings to every bit of us, muddying memories of pleasure and pain. I’m learning that grief isn’t something that we overcome, rather grief is the thing that overcomes us, again and again. Each time feels more visceral, each season feels more visceral, a letting go giving way to softer beginnings.

My heart plays a bittersweet reel of my evolutions of self that have led me to this place in time and I have been finding myself in quiet, soft moments of forgiveness and love for those parts that couldn’t give the grace I’d needed all those years ago. Maybe grief isn’t a catalyst for endings, maybe grief is the alchemy of beginnings. Maybe this is how we tie up loose heart strings. Being in relationship with grief has felt profound. Rather than feel a separation between grief and joy, I’m learning their rythm, their synergy. I’m learning that I can feel both sorrow and sensuality. Autumn does this, too.

Autumn surrenders bits of its living parts and yields things both unalive and deeply sensual, like the grasses and sedges. The withering vines of the wild grapes that hang heavy with rich and elegant purple fruits. The golden twilight carresing the fingertips of nearly bare trees, the milkweed pods bursting with contentment. Autumn is a final breath, a cyclical exhale of gratitude giving way to the deep rest of winter. Autumn is warming- spiced with cinnamon + star anise, comforts like warm bread baked with fennel and fresh figs. We mourn the fallen leaves at our feet and marvel as they turn into rich Earth between our fingertips. Endings beget beginnings. This season feels like it may unravel me in a way that leaves me aching from feeling, from shedding, decaying. An ending that is a beginnning. Equinox blessings, folks.

In connection, Holly

What a dichotomous experience, being human in this world; navigating the nuance of living relationally to all beings. I feel fiercely the decay of humanity, lying like forgotten logs on the forest floor, ready to be enveloped back into the richness of Earth. On our drive to the children’s school, we pass a vast prairie that rolls for miles and several weeks ago we came upon it smoldering in ash. At first, we gasped, what little fallow life left was now completely gone. Then just days later we drove by after a hearty weekend rain to discover it completely covered in vital green life, sprouting only a few inches out of the ground. What had been waiting patiently under the soil was granted its cycle of life through the transformation of death. What if we reveled in the pleasure of alchemizing this way? Taurus reminds us that sometimes we cannot see that which is transforming, sometimes we need to lay roots before we can burst from the ground into the light of the sun.

My meaningful work lately has included fostering a practice of pleasure in presence. So much of this intention is grounded in simplicity and daily ritual. Ritual plays such a profound part in connecting me to a larger whole, a spiritual guidance that reminds me that being is an integral part of this life. It is a step back from the constant chaos of the identities we create for ourselves as humans. To be honest, I’m not sure that the word ritual carries the same potency as it’s been saturated by the buzz of capitalism in the United States. But perhaps instead of discussing what rituals are it would be helpful to discuss what I have come to know they are not. Katherine May wrote this so beautifully in her book Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age when she said, “Ritual is different from worship: a matter of instinct rather than construction, a gesture that lets us weave significance in the moment. It is so undemanding, so simple, almost passive.” For me, ritual is woven as a thread into the rhythm of daily life; intuitive moments that nurture living a life more considered and less hurried. A life that deepens my relationship with my more than human kin. Ritual tends to my well of vitality.

Maybe you too have been longing for a connection to some greater being, an other than human life force, something outside of yourself. But there is a reason that my feet on the bare Earth, greeting the Bluebells in the woods among the great grandfather Oaks, dancing delicately along the edge of a brimming flower garden, and under the light of the Moon all feel so good. These are the locality of connection between the sacred and my own divine being, already inside of me, the Moon a hierophany. It sounds so elemental, really, but with the weight of distractions in our everyday lives, the simplicity of being, of really just sitting and feeling on a cellular level, it’s so easily lost. And while there can be great reward in having material goods as tools of practice, there is so much worth to be found in presence.

All of this to say, I’m most interested right now, in this place in the world, under these cosmic happenings, in exploring an awakening, a curiosity. Lately, the most potent medicine for me is a practice of sharing experiences, of storytelling how we navigate these human bodies in this world—a practice of allowing and inviting, in love. I wish I could say there is a best practice for doing this, but I’m rather consistently unlearning most things I think I know about the world. What I can say is that safe, physical community care grants us permission to come as we are. Being present with ourselves, our minds, and the Earth, allows us to open our hearts in lovingkindness. No curation or veils of illusion. To truly see the full spectrum of ourselves, the shadow and light, joy and grief, sorrow and gratitude.

My wish is that you are able to take notice of that which plunges you deeply into the soil of being. Relish in the luxury of a strawberry warm from the Earth. A carpet of moss under bare feet. That the seeds you are planting with this season are laying strong roots, growing with vigor and love.

Warmly,

Holly

We’ve been swallowed whole by dense fog for nearly a week. I find myself pausing on the porch in the moments before the door opens, listening for the guttural sounds of the belly of the whale. This liminal midwinter space where the snow still holds tight to the crispy cups of last Summer’s queen Anne’s lace and the tulip tips have begun to peek through the muddied earth. I’m learning to harmonize with these cross-quarter corridors of the year, the places where you sway between feeling the deep hibernation of the coldest winter nights and daydreams of greeting chirping fledglings at the edge of the robin’s nest, tucked safely in the apple tree. I’ve come to feel this time as an incubation. Most of the natural world is wrapped tightly in the darkness of Mother Nature’s womb—a delicate duality of hope and hopelessness. Of being both ready and afraid of being born.

We watch the larks along the farrow fields of the roadside as they peck at bits of gravel and stone, a necessary behavior for birds in aiding their digestion. When I see the horrific images, stories, and realities of the world right now I imagine these small rocks as spells, breaking down the overhwelming grief inside of the great belly.

These doorways between seasons offer a chance to rest and feel, a practice of patience, an ever-observing, listening, and being space. Every season at the present is a new one for me on this land, and I am taking great care in the noticings of each shift as we get aquainted. Small buds forming on branches, songs from the arrival of migrant birds, the broken evergreen boughs from the lacerations of the buck’s antlers, desperate to shake loose from his body. I am beginning to feel much like the plants, readying below ground to be liberated by the thawing soil and returning Sun, bringing me closer to being cracked wide open, and welcoming the renaissance of Spring. But I am also relishing in the sacred pause of this corridor, and the practices and rituals of savoring the quiet. However the duplexity of these late winter months find you, my wish is that you hold reverence and stay curious to whatever feelings arise.

Imbolc Blessings + Happy Observings,

Holly

Winter quietude is much different than the quiet bits of other seasons. The silence of the woods after a snowfall is perhaps one of the most solitary places you can meet your heart and mind. The fallow stillness feels so deeply equipped to hold anger, grief, and tenderness simultaneously with joy. The quietude of Winter beckons a presence that can fill a belly full like the moon as she embarks on her ascent into the sky.

We snowshoed out to the coop to take the chickens fresh water and small veggie scraps from the kitchen, and knocked a foot of snow off of the woodshed roof as it fearfully bowed from the weight. Without being able to see the road conditions and unable to traverse the driveway, the worries of responsibility seemed to melt away and left so much room for enchantment, a feeling my inner child hasn’t relaxed into in quite some time.  The children built a snow horse they named Daley with river birch branches fashioned into a tail and dried tansy from the prairie as a mane. Watching them navigate challenges and play in a new space has been such a giving lesson to my own presence here as we move through the seasons in our first year on this farmstead. While the newness still feels like a bit of a retreat, it feels good to put time and energy into stewarding a place with such reverence. We’ve already begun a seasonal journal of sorts with items that need minding, most of which we’ve learned from failing to notice them the first time. The Winter has a way of elucidating things that we wouldn’t otherwise see.

Since the snowfall, the male cardinals stand out with their bright crimson plumage against the evergreen branches. The same with the blue jays, hopping and quarreling with one another as they gobble crabapples. I laugh, as it reminds me of the children when they count marshmallows for cocoa, just to make sure they’ve received equal amounts. At night, when the deer come out of the woods to forage the last of the frozen apples clinging to the trees in the orchard, they no longer disappear into the nighttime. And when the moon casts her light, in even the smallest sliver, the entire world is aglow over the frozen sea of white. The quiet also carries Winter sounds, the caw of the crows perched in the treetops and the howl of the coyotes on the woodland’s edge. It carries the hungry cry of the harriers as they fly low along the field listening for a meal below. I notice, too, the way the quiet of this season catches my tears when I am enraged by the reports of devastation to humanity in wartime, frustrated at how much harder simple tasks are with frozen fingers, saddened to find a tiny junco frozen in the snow.

It draws out thoughts + gentle kindness from my heart space that my conscious is not aware of. Things I don’t yet have words for. Things that the noise of the world hums just too loudly to be heard. Where the beauty of the land and the tenderness of being human coexist in a vast, silent expanse in which we can be witnessed simply by feeling.

Hello. If you’re here + reading I’ll suppose you either found your way through happenstance or something piqued your curiosity, and I certainly hope the latter. Recently I was minding about the house and observed that the songbirds had vanished from the crabapple tree outside of the kitchen window, a sign that a predator is imminent. I know this mostly from anxiously playing the role of protector to a free ranging flock of hens before our rooster Richard joined us. Sure enough there was a red tailed hawk circling in front of the house. But the crows were making a raucous- not the usual chase of the hawk- but flying tree to tree in unease. I set out quietly down the porch and discovered a bald eagle perched at the top of a white oak tree along the woodland edge. Everyone else had taken to hiding but the crows. What I hope this space can offer you is the same gift the crows offered me that afternoon- an invitation. A crumb of curiosity to follow, a request to be present. It is in these invitations that I feel the connectedness of myself and all beings. It is in this inquisitiveness that I have found a remembering again and again of the tenderness of existing in this world.