Observations from the land: Lookin' out my backdoor

   

The Power of Observation and Connection

     While jointing with a month long intensive I'm tasked with looking out my own (literal) back door.  I'll like to share those observations with you, even if I don't know where they are going just yet.  I know the reach of observation of the land around me.  I know that I've felt disconnected from my land, rushing though my life.  We revel in the outdoors during the warmer months, but the outside doesn't cease to exist just because the land has gone to rest.

     #1 Dec 8  A fog settles over our land, like a  goose down quilt.  The land waits.  Nether the land nor myself is sure of the weather day to day.  We are seesawing back and forth from 30 degrees to 65 every other day.  My mint is still growing as though it were a balmy 70 degrees.  The sodden ground knows not when it will truly feel of winter.  The stream in my back yard is still running higher than normal from all of the rain we have had.  The oaks in the back yard swing forlornly and wait for spring buds.  It's rainy for the fourth day in a row and 45 degrees is higher than normal, but it makes the land feel like an old man who grumps because in his day we had snow by now.  Today is Waning crescent in Libra.

#2 Dec 21.    The Solstice here in the joining of MD, DE and PA was windy and bitterly cold.  The wind carves through your carefully constructed layers with knives of ice.  The rain has been deceptively soaking.  The stream is up the highest it has been in our 9 years of residence here, including the last two hurricanes.  The land seems sad for the loss of the sun over the last week, so the Solstice was the perfect time to remind our land that the Sun was on its way back to us.  The wind may carve your warmth away, but the howling though the trees reminds us it is all bravado and the spirits of the wind need recognition too.  WIth fall setting in late this year, it didn't feel like true winter until the Solstice. In year's past we've had a good snow by now.  Thanksgiving snowball fights, or a White Christmas to mark the passing of time.  Our 'weather guessers' are currently arguing over projections for snow Saturday.  Since the hurricane 'dented' the atmosphere earlier this fall, our weather has been a petulant child and this has caused meteorologists to be more wrong than normal.  Just bring a jacket and dress in layers and hope for the best, because this winter is just getting warmed up, so to speak.