Foto Friday: Snowshoeing in the woods

My family and I had a very special visit from my aunt.  Snowshoeing in the falling snow was a perfect activity for us.  I believe my daughter was in pure bliss, a bed of snow to lie down upon.  I'm ready to get back out into the snow, the quiet; and so glad we could share an afternoon with her.

Words in the Week: February: Love #4

Finds in the Week: Logs at Sunset

 

At one of my favorite places to walk I was captured by the view of logs piled up in the lumber yard.  They looked as though they were waiting- for what? 

As I continued to walk the sky began to change colors and I loved the look of the contrast of wood that was once trees now laid horizontal, when so often I would instead see the logs as trees and pointed vertical towards the sky.

Perspective, perspective.

Recent Reads: Gaining Daylight by Sara Loewen

I am a frequent reader of 49 Writers and it was from this site that I learned about Sarah Loewen, an Alaskan writer who was one of their featured writers in 2013.  I enjoyed the essays on writing that she contributed there and was intrigued to read her book, Gaining Daylight: Life on two Islands. 

Sarah has a way of pulling the reader into her life, her islands, her home.  In Gaining Daylight her essays focus on her life as a mother and a wife for part of the year on Kodiak Island, AK, and continue to follow her life at her family’s fishing site on Uyak Bay, a much more secluded location, where they travel for part of the year for her husband’s work as a commercial fisherman.   Her life revolves around these two places and includes going back and forth between a modern life and one that follows more old fashioned ways of living.

Since I have young children and work towards being a writer I was connected to her essays and her struggles with balancing the two on top of work, marriage, and some kind of leisure time. Plus both of our husbands do a lot of fishing, mine more with a fly rod. Composed in her essays about her life and her husband’s occupation as a commercial fisherman, Loewen writes about her connection to her natural world including the discomforts that can arise, even in a place one considers as home.  Amidst the history and stories about her life on her two islands is Loewen’s steady voice that causes one to pause and take a look at their surroundings, consider life in the past, and to appreciate each day as they move and change with the seasons.

 

 

 

 

Words in the Week: February: Love #3

Happy Valentine's Day!

 

 

 

 

 

For poems on love, visit the Love Poems: The Poetry Foundation. 

 

And my favorite....[love is more thicker than forget] By E.E. Cummings

 

 

Words in the Week: February: Love #2

These are my favorite lyrics from the song "Spread the Love" by Kenny Chesney and the Wailers.  Just in case you want to hear the message of the full song, or just enjoy a little Reggae, see the video below.

Small Stone #37

What of raw materials?
        We all have our own.
Minutes, seconds.
         Fleeting thoughts captured on flash paper,
                                                                   in the heart.

Longing for Color

On winter days when bare trees stand out stark against the gray skyline and temperatures are in the negatives, I long for coral colored sand, a deep blue sky, and bare feet.  I think of a tent in the desert where we sleep with a constant influx of open air and how the smoke from the campfire remains in our clothes for days.

In this photo my kids play at our camp site on our trip to Lake Powell, UT.

Words in the Week: February: Love #1

 

 

Finds in the Week: Chris Hardman's ECOlogical Calendar

One of my friends keeps a daily planner as a bit of a diary and a way to keep track of her gardening and what she does from year to year.  Besides journaling about my day and life in general, I too like how the list of the small things that take place in every day life begin to make up my life as a whole.  I find I can be more intentional with spending my time wisely instead of watching the days move by in a blur, even though they still go all too quickly.

So when I found Chris Hardman's ECOlocigal Calendar that keeps track of time based on the seasonal changes of nature, I knew that I had found the perfect planner for me.  Each week there are various "bands" that chart the sky, the sun, the moon, the Earth, and the tides. Therefore the week is constructed more around the lunation of the moon, the location of the stars and the unique aspects of each season.  Each day is given a name- flora, fauna, astronomical, meteorological, and geological- associated with the season in which they take place, and when read produce a poem.

The calendar helps me to focus not only on what is happening in my life from day to day, but to remember to look at and take note of all the natural phenomenon's that are present in our world.