Hello!
Okay, I have to break the seal on writing again...here goes!  We were talking with the kids about stop-action animation the other day, and my husband found a free program to make them online.  Here is the result of our first foray into stop-action!  (We decided it's Gus the Friendly Ghost eating our quesadilla, and then he give the leftovers to his friend Mouse.)
(The upload is quite jumpy; keep in mind this is just my in to start writing again!)

Warmth & Mud

A flag for a windy day!  My boy drew it with fabric markers (and a little help from me) on leftover scraps from a  wrap I carried him in as a baby.  Tied it to a stick and strapped it to our deck:

Today's warm weather had the kids outside for hours, he in pjs, she in her "twirly" dress.  Here he works on his first mud ball of the year:

Her little feet, and her little footprints:

Spent last night with some new friends, supporting one in her courageous, laughing, crying healing.  I was moved today to let down my usual guard of not getting myself "too dirty," and played full-on with the kids in the mud.  They both made good use of my changed attitude, smearing mud all over my clothes, delighted to have me squelching my toes along with them in the frigid "ponds" they had dug in the soggy earth.  Felt like the mom I always want to be.

Spirit

Feeling grateful tonight for the rich communities I've been welcomed into over the past few months. 

Many barren years have come and gone without revealing this honest, deep connectedness with other people outside my family.  Now I look around and find that I am suddenly holding hands with many people of like mind, many people walking the same paths I am.  Moving in unison toward the same distant drumbeat, working with the same vision in their hearts. 

I give thanks for the turning of this wheel, for this new era of my life.  I give thanks for each person sharing their truth, their tenderness, their fire, their willingness to be known.

Snow

First sit in the snow this season. 

View down to the river from my sit.  I love the three layers of white.

Fox tracks (?), coming and going.

The wind-blown snow over the ice made galaxies, storm systems...

View upstream.

My summer swim hole.

Animals have been traversing the ice already, even though the river isn't fully frozen over yet.

Flames

It is said that we all get a chance to take a truthful look at ourselves as our death approaches.  That all the layers of doubt and fear and pretense and greed peel away in that moment, and we are left seeing the creature we were born as, the creature buried under a lifetime's accumulation of stories about ourselves.

As I stoked the fire in our woodstove tonight, I rested for a moment with the door ajar, the flames spellbinding in their dancing life.  I'd only placed that log in a few moments before, setting it on the embers, but already it was in full flame, brown wood giving rise to light and life.  It seemed the layers of growth in the wood were being pulled, one by one, into another form.  The certainty of the wood, the expectation of its appearence, transforming into an otherworldly creation, sacredness.

What if we start the changes now?  What if, instead of waiting until we can't stand it any longer, or until we are looking death in the eye, what if we peel those layers off now?  Take a deep breath and let go, and look inward, and accept what we see there.  And on, and on. 

Crossing

Walked the river this morning.  Cool drizzle speckled the water, clouds hung low over everything.

Took a momentous step today, beginning to remove old, heavy weight that has hung on me for years. As I moved through the woods, the river offered itself as a cleansing, a marking of the day.  

Boots off and slung over my shoulder, I rolled up my pants and waded in.  Soft, muddy clay swallowed my feet, my ankles.  It seemed I would sink forever, but eventually I sensed solid ground, and could move forward.  Chilled water surrounded my legs, and I made my slow journey to the middle of the river, dipping almost to my waist and soaking my pants before I reached the rise of deposited sediment in the center, the slowest part of the river.   As I walked downstream on this sunken sandbar, barely feeling the pull of the gentle current on my calves now, the ripples from my legs radiated out in all directions.  I saw them lapping the shores all around me, my movements touching everything I passed.  Some ripples returned at odd angles, having met with a rock or fallen tree which sent its own message back in reply.

The forest echoes and articulates so many of our human feelings in its endless appearances.  This impossible tangle of tree roots on the bank, like the tortuous and impenetrable intertwining of our lives with others.

  Exploring on the far shore, I found a stand of peculiar mushrooms I didn't recognize.  They felt to me like the potent medicine we can find when we walk authentically.  Deadly, and miraculous, all at once.

Holding

Back into my forest after many days away.  Felt the same deep sadness in the woods as on my last visit.

As I rested against a hemlock, a spiderweb on a nearby tree wafted slowly back and forth in the breeze, in and out of the afternoon sunlight.  Shining, then invisible, then shining again.

The web looked at once so whispy and so self-assured against the massive trunk of the tree: the ephemeral anchored to the eternal.