Silent Nights

We used to put these amazing lights on my family christmas tree. They were multi colored, the small bulbs, and had about 7 different settings. We needed two strands to surround the whole tree. We put our tree in this fancy room that I can never remember what to call it; family room? living room? After 20 years in that house I still refer to either as "tv room" or "piano room". Anyway - we put our tree in the piano room, with wooden floors, dark green walls, and fancy paint / plaster designs on the white ceiling.
My family of five plus an entourage of pets has always been busy. Baking, shopping, jobs, school, everyone would whirl around; in and out of the house, around the house. It was never too hard to slip away from all of it unnoticed.
I like to slip away.
All the years we used those lights my favorite part of Christmas was the way they reflected on the ceiling. With life swirling around me, the cold settled into the hills and valleys of Botetourt County, I would tweak those lights to my liking and settle into the best spot in the house. Quiet and still on the rug I would lie on my back watching rhythms and colors flash around shadowed fir, pine or spruce.
My own version of a Virginia Aurora Borealis.

Last Christmas was my first Christmas away from Botetourt. Geronimo and I bought a wreath of western pine and red cedar and snuggled up quietly in Missoula, Montana. Sad as it was to not be amongst family - there was a special magic to the eve and day, a quiet slipped away feeling.

This year is my sister's first Christmas away from Botetourt. She has no snow, no hurried holiday shopping - just young Tanzanian orphans celebrating the coming of summer and reciting bible verses of the Christmas story. She skypes us a lot.

We have a really lovely douglas fir in the piano room right now. While our parents were at work my brother and I strung some lights in the boughs. We had bags to choose from - blue icicle, huge colorful bulbs similar to downtown Fincastle, a white light coil, and singing bells. Deciding to keep things in the white light category we opted for the coil and bells. You have to press Santa's eyebrows a few times on that bell controller to stop those things from singing - they're so obnoxious when they sing. So there's this filtered glow, and a bit of blinking from the bells. Mom put all the ornaments on herself after work yesterday.

Years of rug laying and light watching pulled me to the room after everyone else was in bed. I stood at the doorway and took in the scene. But it wasn't there. That hushed mystic escape. The tranquil meditation of a girl lost in dim light, rhythm, and the smell of pine.

And the funny thing about magic- you can't really get IT back. It just sort of - is. And I wonder what's changed so much in my life. If I'm capable of that wonder and quietness again.

Maybe I drink too much coffee for that stillness.

Maybe I don't breathe deep enough.

But sometime this winter, I hope I will, and whatever form that mystic escape takes, I hope the magic finds me again.

With the days living faster now We cast our make pretends Extra heat demands A rising constant power Darkness taking days...

Cold November rain veils pine boughs and boney decidious limbs. The white of low clouds brings soft filtered light, steady drizzle sparkles the foreground.
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
Those who want to keep their life will surely lose it, and those willing to give it up will find life to the fullest.
Haunting.
Things we know and may not recognize as the hypothetical having become real - personal.
Are these morals actually something we WILL live by?
I curl up on my Grandmother's couch. Forever a rebel rouser - I let Geronimo join me; because it's my couch now- covered in my comforter AND with cold feet buried under his warm fur I'm quite cozy.
Life.
This year I spent the second Thanksgiving that I can remember at my parents house instead of with our extended family in Keyser, WV. My grandmothers are gone, the older cousins balance holidays between our family and their spouse's family - and so another generation begins their own traditions.
No one talks about that part much. But I notice it. Montana snuck into my traditions and I find myself missing Dacia and the other Native Americans who welcomed me into their home and family during so many holidays. And the quietness. I miss the quiet space of Montana.
But I try to season the egg noodles and be supportive about pie from a box. You got what you got after all.
The first second cousin on my mothers side was born, on my birthday. And my mother left this note "Happy Birthday to YOU!! 26 years ago today you can rushing in to our lives 3 weeks early and haven't slowed down yet. You took a peek at the world with your big brown eyes and were ready to spread your love and joy!!"
Sounds like Seth Grayson may be a handful if birthdays and stars have anything to do with who a person becomes.
I will be a bridesmaid for the first time next fall. I get to put my two cents on wedding photographers and eagerly volunteered to help taste cakes. So the running buddies grow up.
In a few days I'll wake up in another running buddies home. I hope the first thing I see is her two year son grinning in my face. We're going to craft Christmas cards.
I have really amazing friends - for which I'm speachlessly thankful.
After three shots of espresso and hours of photo editing one sat in front of me, divulging the details of a recent break up. As we parted the only hope I could give is that - I understand - because romance frustrates me too- but our friends - how blessed we are for that love.
Before sleep that night Low tells me, "All this motion you know? The pushing and prying forward?
It's all just a life-long walk to the exact same spot."

He's one of the best food for thought chefs I know.
So it all marinates.

Journey. Destination. Somethings Old. Somethings New. Many things borrowed. Too much hope and motion to be blue.

Nights Filled With Longer Hours

Ode to 11

I don't get out much. Which is ironic I suppose.... considering I live "out" of what most folks consider mainstream. But here I sit in my "town" clothes listening to jazz and buzzing off espresso as people flit in and out of these doors like the syncopated trumpeted backdrop.
My 40 minute drive through Shenandoah Valley farmland, the Shenandoah River jumbled into the town of Front Royal. Which is really a story in and of itself - I have never understood this town.
Driving out of the woods, watching territory move outside my windows has me thinking about November. Beautiful November. With it's deep angled sunlight. White puffy clouds are shadowed in deep blue/ grey/ purple undertones. Few golden leaves quake in a chilly breeze. Mountain ridges and hollers are showcased one last time before Appalachia relaxes to boney silhouettes.
Silos and rippling rivers reflect golden glares from this vibrant scene.
Stakes are higher as ripe fruits are harvested, wood is chopped and we begin to hunker down for holidays, friends, family and the simple pleasures of cleansing cold.... creeping closer... with every sunset.
Chilly shivers warmed with golden filters of all that was, is, and is bound to come.

Show Me

It has come to my recent attention that I use the words beautiful and brilliant a lot.
This, along with my recent considerations of the prevalence of "love" in my dialect leads me to a personal challenge... omitting them.
The theory of love languages proposes multiple ways of communicating affection ; quality time, service, verbal, physical and gifts.
In short - if love is an emotion - how is it expressed?How much there must be beyond three spoken words.
So it is my current challenge to use other languages to express emotions. Beauty, brilliance, and love.
Perhaps I could tell you about golden sunlight, wind whipping 4th graders' hair and journal papers, warm stoney cliffs with rippling rain water pools. Perhaps I could tell you of cruising across crisp leaves peppering the Appalachian Trail, the turbulence of waves across a man-made lake as 10 year olds in blaze orange PFDs soaked in this ever present autumn light canoe through what could be the next cover of LLBean's fall catalog.
After spaghetti and garlic bread Sophia and I giggled until we cried over birthday cake and nothing at all.
Two years ago I was on top of Springer Mountain in Georgia October 7. Today is a good day for mountain tops.
It dawned on me today this life at Mountain Campus, through full of unique challenges is the most personally serene fall I've had in years. No homeless sleeping in cars or finding mattresses in alleys, no rainy north Georgia days to walk through giardia, no commutes after choffee dates and before scrounging for dinner.
Nope. Things are pretty simple around here. Wake up, eat, keep to the day's schedule while serving / protecting/ teaching students and other instructors, sleep, repeat.
At morning meeting today Izzie gave her class a quote "Life is a grand adventure, or not at all". Students interpreted this as unless you're on a grand adventure you're not really living.
But I've been wondering.... whether it feels like it or not.... we're always living. So maybe the true point is to LIVE a grand adventure; in southern terminuses, homelessness, unemployment, homecomings, restlessness, quiet breathing, pumpkin parties and pumpkin ales. All of it jumbled into the epic pages of simply complex adventures.
Maybe the "not at all" part isn't possible.
Yeah. I'm calling that bluff.
How could life not be a grand adventure?

A time for every purpose under heaven...

I am currently wearing an over the ears tassel hat, silk tank, long-sleeve shirt, sweater, synthetic puffy jacket, leggings, dance pants, a skirt, and socks. I kicked off the insulated furry boots to curl up on the staff house couch.
What a long day. What a full few days. Driving, scenery changes, loved ones, meaningful conversations, stressful work situations, more driving.
3 gents I love are safely home from a Mexico - Canada walk. It's so crazy how different and similar their worlds have been and are now. What they've each returned to, and how they're deciding which direction to progress in. It reminds me a lot of fall 2008 as I struggled through the southern section of the Appalachian Trail and fall 2009 as I struggled through finding a home and setting up my Montana life.
This weekend's theme has been life; what it gives us and how we feel about it. And a handful of people I love have weighed in on the matter.
Such brilliance and desperation, such blessing and restlessness. All rolled up into a breathing beating passage of time.
Two friends are reading Ecclesiastes with me as we try to find time in a 90+ hour work week to talk about what these words mean. There is a time for everything. There is much chasing after the wind and vanity in the world around us.
Yet diamonds sparkle in the rough, simple carbon having gone through enough heat and pressure to catch light, reflecting to the world around them.
How beautiful love is in times like these. How beautiful life can be with love.
As autumn light deepens colors and vibrance around me, these mountains drive me to rag tag outfits of layer after layer, I try to focus on each moment. The light, love, blessing and grace they bring.
And warmth.
What a perfect season.

Chilly Nights

September 13.
Night is so quiet here with empty tents.
Crickets chirp in a reserved sort of way, my ceiling fan hums.
A familiar almost comforting chill hits my skin on a long walk to the flush toilet.
Days are shortening exponentially, harkening back to a time not so long ago when every hour of daylight was a hope of warmth and radiance, pulsing through miles before the dark cold sparkle of night set in.
You're pushing through that now and I think about you all the more.
Le ciel est a tout le monde.
And lately I think about different places. That they grow us, but into a surprising acceptance that nothing happens there that doesn't happen here.
Sarah once told me life in France is still just life... only French.
How brilliant.
Montana. France. Washington. the Virginias.
Just life. Happening.

The only views from this cabin are the windowed doors and a skylight. I crawled onto my roof today, detailed my portal a la ciel.
I lay here now wondering these things, feeling alone, missing your strength.
What clarity comes from pondering the heavens?
I might build a ladder to attach to the cabin, or ghetto rig the sky light to open all the way; like a portal back to fairy tale land.
How odd to find myself needing you to root me.
Not knowing where or how to proceed from here I put my grumbling belly to bed.
Tomorrow is another opportunity, in the midst of shortening light, always under the same sky.

September 14.
Dusk.
How I love thee.
The way a day sinks into rest; as if my anxious ways could set over a horizon. As if the vibrance left of the days' color IS the light into my tunnel.
Insignificance and purpose all reflecting in a night sky.
Light. Color. And the appreciation for all of it when there is little around me. How brilliant each trace is.
This Earth around me breathes an excited content to nestle it's creatures in dirt and gentle breeze.