Everything changes, constantly moving. Rivers continuously flow downstream, across landscapes, and through channels carved by their own persistent forces. Our lives are equally dynamic, as we follow our own course through time. When I started writing this blog over 10 years ago, it was from a very different place in the course of my life, and a very different landscape. I was raising young ...
Life
Finding Those Moments
Sometimes life gets busy. Busier than you ever thought possible, where you suddenly find that you're putting all of your energy into just keeping up. The consensus of advice seems to always involve giving yourself small breaks, but it can be hard to figure out what that actually looks like for you as an individual. My greatest success with this as of late has been what I would call ...
Golden October
October is a golden month. The hard work of the summer is finished on the homestead, food is harvested, canning is done, and root cellar is full. It's a time to stop and catch your breath, and take a moment to look around and appreciate everything. That burst of activity in the late summer and fall is well rewarded with the leaves changing color and the crisp, cool nights and mornings. After our ...
Mount St. Helens: A Backpacking Adventure
For our family vacation this year, we decided to explore a little closer to home, and spend some time at Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. It erupted just a few weeks before I was born, so this is a place I've had the opportunity to watch grow and change throughout my lifetime. It's a place of constant renewal, where you can keep going back again and again, seeing completely new things ...
Canoeing Clear Lake
This past Sunday, I was finally able to check "canoe around Clear Lake" off my bucket list. The headwaters of the McKenzie is known for crystal clear waters with views of the bottom of the lake in many places, and while still very amazing to take in from hiking around the shore, is reported to be nothing short of spectacular from watercraft. Having been without any sort of watercraft for the past ...
Spring on the Quinault River
There is a vitality in rivers that becomes more visible with the emergence of spring. The willows budding out on the banks, birds singing in the brush, and water rushing down from the snow melt all convey a sense of waking up from a state of rest. Right about this time of year, I'm feeling it too, as I start spending more time outdoors, digging in to preparations for a new growing season. Right ...
Emergence
When you think about it, the shift from winter to spring is a pretty incredible one. No mater how much you know about plants and what's going on within them, how all their processes work, and their chemistry, it feels miraculous to watch them unfold from snowy ground and bare twigs. There are so many lessons here that we can take away from observing this shift in the seasons, but one of the most ...
Rosehips in Winter
Winter decided to really show up and linger this year, and since we're not really used to that in this part of Oregon, I've found myself gravitating toward things that are bright and cheerful. I noticed some flaming red rosehips peeking out of the briars along our driveway, and went out one morning with pruners and a basket to investigate. I may have gotten a little carried away, and ended up ...
These Boots are Made for Marching
On Saturday, January 21, I marched. I joined over 3 million people across the United States, and roughly another 300,000 across the globe to take a stand and take a walk in support of women and equality. I marched with my closest friends, with women I know, and women I do not know. Not all of the marchers were women. Many men marched with us in solidarity. My partner marched with ...
Migration
I've got some exciting news to share. My blog has migrated. You may be asking yourself, "Wait, what? Blogs migrate? How and why do blogs migrate?" Well, I have been wanting to move my blog from Blogger over to Wordpress for quite some time now, so I can set it up more like a website with my Etsy shop and bean-to-bar chocolate, and links to the magazine articles I've gotten published. I ...