Dear Reader,

As you can see, I’m growing my hair out. A rare moment of me in the meadow behind my house. I keep considering giving myself a challenge — go to the meadow everyday. Take June and walk over the ridge and visit the vast expanse each twenty four hours. See what’s changed. See what’s stayed the same.

I find this challenge to be difficult in the subtle moments of nothingness. In the vast array of settling in to the frigid north woods I go entire days without going outside. The quiet turns cavernous; the house becomes both anchor and archive.

I don’t want to tell you this. I want to tell you I am committed to the outdoors in an impressive way. That of course I walk my dog without fail. That being outside is easy and fun and effortless. I want to tell you I greet the sky each morning.

I find this not just to be true in the winter months, but sometimes in the summer as well. I wouldn't quite self diagnose as agoraphobic as much as there is a tendency to stay safe and stay sane in the confines of my home. A story of — if I stay here the elements can’t reach me. As if stillness could protect me from the fact that life keeps happening, even when I’m not looking.

The elements themselves are what keeps us ever changing though. The sharp temperature on my cheek. The whip of the wind on my neck. Or the heat of the sun on the top of my head through my baseball cap.

I desire these things, I desire the improbability of sameness. I long for knowing what the Earth wants to speak to me.

Sometimes I just need to organize my long johns better so I know where they are and can be sure to put them on before I face the world. From November to April it’s rare a pair of pants hits my bare skin. Dressing for survival, dressing for the weather.

I return now to my challenge, to greet the meadow once a day. Forever feels long so perhaps we’ll try once a day for a week. Or just even today. I feel the tendency to start a spreadsheet or perhaps a database in Cody’s World (my digital garden available to all paid subscribers) to track this journey. The journey of bringing my growing braid to the meadow to see what tracks. The raspberry bushes on the ridge are still raspberry bushes even without the berries. The patches where the deer sleep, the spot I once found twenty three morel mushrooms. A catalog of devotion.

In visiting the beach every Monday for years I understood the turning of the tides in a new way. I desire this again. To keep count of my own mood, my own small journey, and my own lineage of being here. A record of presence. A ledger of staying.

I just celebrated three years in this meadow house, the longest I have lived anywhere since I was married. Betrothed to myself and the land which I am so lucky to borrow, I cast this spell that my commitment to noticing grows.

Everyday to the meadow.

This weekend on Saturday December 13 at 12pm EST I am teaching a compositional improvisation patchwork class in Zak Foster’s amazing quilt membership space The Quilty Nook. It’s only $10 to join! Read about it here :)

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