Summer as a Season of Rest

Summer as a time of rest is almost unheard of around these parts. For all those that garden or homestead it can feel as though the tasks are never-ending. And even those who don’t tend the land seem to fill their coffers with well-intended parades of vacation, work projects, or pie making, but…

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Thunderstorm Medicine

Like an anxious spike high on the thermometer, a hot summer day can hold a whole lot. The heaviness of the past, the humidity of future-tripping, the density of a too-tightly-packed schedule. It’s life, intensified, with everything being experienced at once. Like the sound of the cicadas rolled into one giant buzz or the…

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The Season of Pleasure

In the wheel of the year each season has its distinctive gifts, its own character and flavor. There is a time for hermitage and planting, harvesting, seeking, risking, budgeting and even dying. But it’s only in summer that pleasure takes center stage. Here in the mountains, we are just now tipping into the true…

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A Flower Portal

Every spring is a kind of portal. An opening where absolutely everything has the possibility to change. When what was dormant can become activated in an entirely new way. Every winter I forget something of what it means to be alive, and every spring, in the softness of the mud and rain, I remember….

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Awakenings Can Be Gentle

a·wak·en·ing Coming into awareness, a shift in consciousness, appreciating previously unseen aspects of reality, enlightenment.   In our culture we have an enduring belief that awakenings, in order to be profound, must be hard won. That awakenings always tangle with struggle. That they will be dramatic, epiphanic, and arrive like a bolt of lightning….

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Journey to Santa

Artwork – “Fly Agaric” by Amanda Clark  This past week I had brunch with a dear friend. Over scones, she started talking about how difficult it is for her to get into the holiday spirit. As someone who grew up in a family that never celebrated this time, she shared that she is having…

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