Settling in

It seems like the world is spinning much faster up here.  I’m still thawing out from the coldest Spring I’ve ever encountered (what will I do when winter comes?), but She has finally gotten up out of Her Winter slumber and is busying herself with decorating the mountainside with wild flowers, daisies, daffodils, hyacinth, tulips and many others that I can’t begin to name.  Yesterday I went on a walk with my daughter and her friend  through the woods (actually they took their bikes so we called it a bikike,) and found myself in bright, colorful meadows amidst pines and cottonwoods.  The cottonwoods smell so very sweet.  My daughter’s friend said smiling that they smelled just like her grand-pops tobacco pipe before he died.

I can really understand now the difference of an environment that is nurturing, and an environment that is depleting.  I couldn’t hear myself amidst the noise and energy of 5 million people and the industry it takes to sustain them.  I had to check out a lot, because to be so present in that place hurt.  In Roslyn, WA there are only 900 people.  When I hike up on the ridge, and I see the little town like a tiny mole in the midst of so many trees and mountains – and I can see how slight and insignificant we humans really are- and it makes me feel really good for some reason, comforted actually; I am able to hear Her voice resounding as loud as any civilization.

When people stress me out, which they inevitably do no matter where you go, I go into my backyard and simply listen to the wind in the trees, or marvel at the sky which has no flatness to it up here, but more like a fishbowl quality.  Sometimes the clouds drop down to touch the still snow-peaked mountains.  When I come back I feel fed.  I am full.