This Christmas Emma got a new squeaking squirrel, since her old squirrel and all of her other toys were all left behind in the fire. Now with a new squirrel love, everything is in it’s right place.  The calendar is racing to a close, and I am fairly excited about what is around the corner now.  I go up to the mountain every day if I can to walk a little while, and to go into the garden which is for the most part is still there, to sit and write, sketch ideas, and wonder about the best that might yet be to come. Pondering colors, palette & writing blending recipes, and thinking about the landscape, and how our lives will resume there in a different house in the future.
Recently I have been posting from the archives Knitting In The Wild , as I look to find the origin of colors for my Tweed Chronicles, but I am also finding in there one of my biggest passions of life ~~ being out in nature. There in the wild I am finding the tap root of it all. It is the landscape that is my true sense of energy and essence , who I was and who I strive to become. From the wild comes a pure sense of myself, and I realize I must continue going there as if I never left … to find new growth & new meaning in the contours, flora and fauna of the mountain, and to feel as a shepherd of something necessary while in it.
Yesterday while re-establishing my knitting trail I observed gopher holes bursting through what seems a cracked brittle thin shell of burned top soil, pushing up through it beautiful creamy soil from beneath, so like life bursting out of an egg shell.  I feel what is beneath the surface, what is still there wanting to shake off the soot of the fire and resume living. I watched a black raven surveying the territory, having come back from wherever it fled, I don’t know, and I heard a woodpecker too, tapping through the charcoal bark to find food. The wildlife is showing up now, on time, finding its way back to beckon me to return.  So I am showing up too.
