Getting Outside

Christmas break has meant a hike a day. Our normal family rhythm in the last year has been to hike once a week, usually Sunday afternoons. I cannot tell you how it resorts my head, makes me love my husband again, helps me see that the world is not all bad and totally shifts my pouty little boys from crankhead mode to blissful little outdoor explorers. Its been a really big shift for our family since we moved here to California.

New Year's is coming up and I love me some resolutions, some deep self analysis, some shift and some hard soul work....New Year's is my jam. January is my favorite. Love all that starting over-ness. Once upon a time, I was a lonely resolution maker with a husband who scoffed and thought I was lame and wouldn't have resolved to do anything if you blackmailed him to make him do it. He has totally changed his tune and now we resolve separately, together, silently, out-loud and help each other accomplish, review and remember our resolutions as the year progresses and as we look back on the last year.

One we picked this last year, in our new home state was weekly hikes. And we have been stuck with it. Here we find ourselves with vacation time and what are we doing with it? Hiking more than once a week....we're seriously out on trails for an hour+ every single day. I'm kind of amazed. It feels so good to be outside this much, to be active together, to see the beautiful stuff we are catching. Today when we hiked, we watched a coyote catch mice in a field, found elfin saddle mushrooms, and watched the sunset over the rolling green hills through a lattice of oak trees. The world is incredibly beautiful and it feels so wonderful to be united as a couple in our getting out there in it.

Here are some things to consider as I share our hiking victory:

• Our kids still complain....every single week. We just go anyway.
• Sometimes we go while having an argument or with hurt feelings between us as a pair.
• We have messed up and missed our hikes...we just boomerang back into the habit as soon as we can.
• It has never been a waste. Its always a total balm.

Get outside.

Loving The Hard Work Of Things

Whoops! Its tomorrow. I truly didn't mean to stay up quite that late.

When A is gone time becomes strangely plastic for me. I am astounded, even embarrassed by how much his existence keeps me on a schedule. Somehow, knowing that he is coming home at a certain time or that he is trying to get to the gym in the morning or that he will want to eat at such and such an hour is a major motivator for me. I'm glad that I care about him and notice what he wants and needs, I'm a little concerned (hence the embarrassment) that as much as I thrive on a schedule and feel that I own my own use of routine and timing....its rather quick to fall away and become a mangled mess as soon as A is out of the house. I am finding it terribly hard to do most any of the usual things with my former vigor: getting up on time, having proper meals, making sure the kids clear the table, getting the animals fed bright and early, etc. Someone tell me this does not equate to a complete lack of moral fiber and starch on my part. Anyone?

We did manage to get the chicken coop totally finished! I forgot to take a nice shot of the finished coop....I'll have to add one later in the week. Its incredibly nice, almost absurdly nice, really. The six hens seem to have settled right in and made themselves at home. They are laying without interruption and no longer having riots at the fence and trying to all moshpit themselves out the door everytime I open the pen. I'm glad to see them so occupied and happy. They're now stationed right next to the compost pile which is giving them lots of good material to scratch about in and for a chicken....life couldn't be sweeter than living in a redwood mansion over a pile of kitchen waste. Good times abound.

The boys are doing all kinds of little handicraft projects lately. Ru has been dabbling in woodcarving after one of our recent readalouds featured a Swiss woodcarver, Dee has discovered detailed paper cutting and paper chains and Nib is really into coloring books and has started some of his first clearly representational art lately. Even Pom has begun drawing his own little crayon scribble storms on paper....and only once in Sharpie on a dining room chair which I think is a pretty good score. I would love to get all of them to do a little bit of some kind of art to use for Christmas presents this year. Have to mull over how to work it all in. So many wonderful things to make and do in the world.

Off to bed now before the gremlins get me! I've got a full day tomorrow and brand new towels that I bought myself for a treat which require a hot shower during some mama alone-time early in the morning. Somebody remind me to let go of my insane need to procrastinate and actually stay on track with my schedule tomorrow. My guitar teacher wisely quipped this past week....."one of the great keys to life is to learn to find real motivation and personal pleasure in the practice and work of life because that is most of life." I feel the need. Have to figure out how that works and what you do to switch your inner switch.

Winter Minutia

There is something very crisp and healing about a winter hike. Even here, in the land of very little snowfall the winter woods feel cleaner and peaceful. All the inhabitants of stream and leaf are sleeping deeply or gone away all together and everything from bud to burl is snugly folded for the resting season.

The palette is a simple: khaki, bone and taupe, so that every little snip of color shows up like a blinking sign in the even landscape. Its good to be outdoors and to feel pure solace, no chance of meeting other hikers on the trail, and hear only the hoot of your own voice or the echo of a raven's call in the distance.

Its time for little things to have a small moment to shine: the dark maroon purple of a wineberry leaf, the chartreuse carpet of moss under rusty oak leaves, the glint of mica in a trailside boulder. There were no bird's nests this hike but I always like to look for them once the leaves are down and all the occupants have flown off to other habitats.

 Away from highways and crowds and busy activities you can finally hear the drip of water off the spruce tips and the scuffle of a squirrel over the next rise and the rattle of the dead beech leaves in the wind. Small beauties, little things...but good to remember. All these small things are there, under the momentous importance of our busy lives if only we will take the time to bend down and see them.

Falling Along

The dogwood in our neighbor's yard is turning a misty burgundy. I can see it well out the window to my left when I sit here on the second floor at our computer even though on ground level, standing in the garden, picking tomatoes view of it is entirely blocked by the large viburnum hedge that divides our yards. The dogwoods are changing, the bees are going into a genuine work-halt at nighttimes now, the cucumbers have petered out completely and gone to a new life on the compost pile and the boys and I had our first little hearth fire this morning during our story hour. We are on to the chicken roasting season of the year. Time for baking and interior design and teetering stacks at the library every week.

I have begun a Pinterest page all about Autumn pleasures (so much fun!) and am working to carve out time again for reading. I find it more difficult suddenly with so much school happening. Am also finding that fall means more volume of clothing to wash and put away since everyone's wearing layers, cold weather in the morning and night and then hot by peak of day.....clothes, clothes everywhere. I feel like I spend all day collecting things and tossing them basementward for washing. On the upside, my new attention to life indoors here has meant that I am getting into a housekeeping rhythm for the first time in my life. I am sweeping the kitchen floor, wiping down the counters, swiping out the bathroom sinks and getting a little laundry moving, almost without fail every morning. Not bad for 10 years of housewifery lessons. Finally getting a little somewhere!

And now I'm off to heat up the oven for roasting dinner and take a quick breeze out to the garden to pull old plants and put in a few more fall crops....better late than never.