Let the waters settle and you will see
the moon and the stars
mirrored in your own being.
~Rumi
March —> April, May, June, July, August, September —>October
Six months between a home base where my daily tasks are centralized. After a winter that was equal parts harrowing and heartwarming, I left Montana in March. I reduced seven years of life into a 10′ Uhaul truck decorated with a lime green alien I nicknamed Zebadee. Sharing the cab with Semi, Oona, and a small selection of plant clippings, we traversed the country like 21st century pioneers, praying for a motel each night with an outdoor entry between Zebadee and our beds.
We landed in Virginia when the red bud trees were budding and spring gully washers softened our newly carved edges. We adapted to a home mostly off-grid in a little cabin at the foot of national forest land stretching to the Blue Ridge Mountain tops a couple miles away. I sent hundreds of people down the Upper James River. Life was busy attending to simple tasks in a contemporary frontier.
The leaves began to fall. Oona and I strapped on our backpacks and sought cooler temperatures and orientation in the Adirondacks. Semi and his new friend Nimbus, (former wild cat) looked after the homefront. Once reunited, all of Appalachia exhaled the efforts of summer into autumn. Cool nights, the return of rain, and walnuts decorating a fresh blanket of fallen leaves.
We are barely moved into our home for this season. I have been sorting through boxes sealed in Montana in March. Reconfiguring which things are essential to daily life. My plants have been repotted many times in six months, and now stretch happily in window sills. Semi and Oona are cozy, warm, content. I am happy to make meals from scratch and be surrounded by art again. Creation. Nourishment. A grounded foundation of comfort.
The waters continue to settle while the landscape of who and how I am shift and reform from the storms of last winter. I am so thankful for this container of the in-between. A cozy cottage coccoon.
gracefullybound 