Untitled Map of the New Year

I spent New Year’s Eve with my table spread in all the year’s ephemera. The paper record of our lives stowed away in a basket and then added to the mighty, heaving scrapbook that has documented our days for ten years.

Here are a few holiday scraps to add to the Old Recipe archive, also…

Wood and Water. My child! She got tired of the wood tossed in a big pile on the ground, and led the charge to neat and tidy stacked rows. We would have gotten to it, eventually, I’m sure, but…

She is quite handy to have around, this one!

Feast making. Note to self in times of doubt: yes, it is always worth it to spend a day cooking with your children and mother, to occupy an alternate world in which we are slowly and satisfyingly nourished.

My other sustenance: Holy Darkness.

I need more of this.

Ah, there we go.

I am craving night, especially after reading, by absolute chance, Waking up to the Dark. I really would press this book into each one of your hands if I could. It is lyrical, prophetic, soul stirring.

“What is to become of us? That is the question waiting for us in the the dark.”

–Clark Strand

Meanwhile, in the endless La Niña sunshine, my daughters are making doll quilts.

And on New Year’s Day we climbed our beloved ridge with dear old friends and found a  spiral overlooking the city.

At it’s center, we discovered a miniature deck of the Wheel of Fortune.

We drew cards in a circle, and made a map, of sorts, of our work in the year ahead.

May Justice see her work done with our hands.

With each year, and each day, may we rise, and rise up, again!

::

To your reading list I would also add Down the Dark Mountain, a gorgeous essay from High Country News about beauty, grief, and ecocide. Do you have any suggestions for me?