Lifescapes

solstice sunset, snow, and a new year

The solstice is past now, but this is the solstice sunset, the southernmost point where the sun drops behind the mountain ridge to the west of our valley. From now on, every day, the sun will set a little further north, and further still, until the summer solstice, when it will begin its journey back to this point. In Texas, we often do our winter burning on this day, a tribute to the great bonfires that were lit all over Europe in medieval times, to cheer and bless the sun as it begins another stage in its journey. Not convenient here, so I lit a candle.

That was the solstice, December 21. A week later, it was quite a different story. No sun, the mountain ridge invisible, only gray clouds, sky as gray as goose feathers, and falling snow, falling, falling everywhere.

Snow--lots of snow, a major snowstorm--slows everything down, slows you down, makes you come inside the house, makes you go inside yourself. During the worst (the best) of it, there is nothing but white and gray and black, down the white-blanketed mountain to the white-carpeted valley, where the black Angus cattle are huddled in a circle for warmth, tails turned to the blowing wind. The mountains on the other side of the valley are white, the Ponderosa pines green-black, the clouds gun-metal gray, heavy-bellied. The snow is hypnotic, falling down, falling up, whirling lazily where it is caught in updraft eddies on the mountain slope. I feel myself slowing, as slow as the snow, nowhere to go, even if I wanted to, because all the roads are deep with snow.

That was the storm, which the dogs and I shared with much of eastern New Mexico and Colorado. And after the storm, the shoveling. I cleared the decks, fairly easy, because this was a light, dry snow, and necessary, because I knew there would be a snowslide from the steep-pitched roof. That avalanche snow was much heavier, wetter, more compacted, harder to shovel. I'm still not finished. But the road's been plowed, and Stanley, the village's valiant Grand Plow Master, has come, mounted on his doughty blue Ford tractor to dig me out. The world is mine again, and I can go there, if I want.

But I don't. I'm happy here, and working, and loving the silence and the time. Special thanks to Bill, for making this possible. And thanks to you for your comments and emails and cards. It's amazing that we can all be so far apart and yet be so closely connected. I wish for all of us a bright New Year filled with dear love, good work, and above all, peace.

Reading note. I read the landscape to help me through, to know what’s come before me there, to find my footing in time. The land can speak us back to ourselves, a kind of autobiography. To see it as mere scenery is like looking at the closed cover of a book.—Deborah Tall, From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place

Snow View

News from New Mexico. Today's big achievements have been mostly technological: setting up the computer as a clone of the one in Texas (kudos and kisses to my wizard husband), so I have access to all my email files, favorites, everything! He also installed the driver and photo software for my camera on this computer. Whew. Oh, and he assembled my Christmas present: a new computer desk. And I spent the morning organizing the journals and feeling a little overwhelmed by all the personal writing I've done in the past twenty years. The woman who spilled words all over herself.

This is this morning's view across the valley to the east, with the foothils of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background. Four inches of new powder snow since last night, and more on the way. We drove in on Monday night--an eleven-hour drive, through an interesting snow/sleet storm. Yesterday we shopped for a week, including Christmas Day. Las Vegas is the nearest town, about 30 miles away, a pretty drive through a snowy valley, with pine-clad mountains on either side.

No reading notes until I get my books organized.

morning mysteries

This is what it's been like here, most mornings--a low fog at sunrise, shrouding the distant trees and hills in lavender, making a mystery of the known fields and meadows. I love walking with the dogs on these cool mornings, seeing the familiar world made unfamiliar by the mist. They love it too, for the nighttime animals have left their delicious scents on the grass and weeds along the path, and they're wild to explore all the mysteries, invisible to me, that are so compelling to them. Moments like these, it's hard to imagine this place as anything other than beautiful and hospitable. But last night, we watched An Inconvenient Truth. It's sadly clear that things are changing. This morning, I'm possessed with a new urgency to hold this world as close as I can, do all that I can not to accelerate the pace of change. We live pretty close to the bone where consumption is concerned, but we're doing a life-ways inventory now, thinking where we can do better.

The past week has been crammed with holiday stuff, wrapping my knitted gifts (hats and scarves this year) for mailing to Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Virginia, Georgia. Also with do-ahead stuff for the rest of December and the month of January, when I'll be in New Mexico. Peggy and I have been emailing like crazy, getting everything together so that the various newsletters (ours, Story Circle's) can all go as usual. But I'm coming to the end of it now, and I can go away with a clear conscience.

A few new things. Story Circle has a podcast--you might be interested in an interview I did with Becca Taylor, the podcast host. China and I just posted a collection of mistletoe lore on her blog. And China has a new website (thanks, Peggy!): www.abouthyme.com. So you won't miss me while I'm gone, I promise!

Some people have asked about the writing I'll be doing in New Mexico. I've been promising myself some quiet time to write about my life over the past twenty years, after my big life-change in the middle 80s. I talked to my editor at UT Press about the idea, and she liked it, so that's the project: a memoir about life in place, about finding solitude in this crazily busy world, about making time and space for the necessary aloneness in a marriage that is solid and satisfying. I have lots of "old" writing, done at the various times and places where the book will be set: here at MeadowKnoll; at Lebh Shomea, the silent community where I've gone on retreat; at a ranch on the southern High Plains of New Mexico; at our place in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. I'm hoping to be able to pull those writings together and rework them--at least, that's my intention. I'd like to finish the first two parts of the book, about 40,000 words, by the end of January. Don't know whether that'll happen, but it's the plan. This writing is different. I can't turn it off and on the way I can fiction. I need some time to get my head into that writing-place, which is why I've been trying to get all the January stuff finished before I go. While I'm there, I won't have to switch in and out, the way I would if I were here and doing the usual.

If the spirit moves me, I'll be able to blog from New Mexico (see above). Bill's set up the computer out there as a clone of this one, and we have the right connections. So I can if I want to. We'll see what happens.

Reading note. Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes.--Israel Shenker

Winter has its compensations, among which are the scarlet berries of the pyracantha that grows along the wall. The birds won't clean the berries off until they're fully ripe, which doesn't happen until after a couple of freezes. Maybe I'll beat them to it this year, and make some pyracantha jelly. I've never made wine, but I understand it's very nice. I've cut some branches and brought them in--lovely on the dining room table, with branches of rosemary and three fat red candles. Very Christmassy.

Catch-up. I forgot to tell you that I didn't get picked for jury duty on Monday--not that I felt rejected, mind you. It was an interesting, if frustrating, morning. 25 of us showed up at 9 a.m. for the cattle call. I was #19, so I was feeling pretty confident I wouldn't get chosen. But then our numbers were "reshuffled" by the computer so that I was #8. For some reason, the judge decided to shuffle the numbers AGAIN, and we were dismissed while the computer went about its business.

How hard can it be to randomly generate numbers from 1-25?

Very, very hard, as things turned out. The process took some 90 minutes (the computer stalled, the clerks couldn't figure out how to fix it, the computer techs they phoned couldn't tell them what was wrong), while we stood around outside the courtroom, muttering that it would have been a helluva lot smarter to put 25 numbers into a hat and draw them out again. By the time the computer renumbered us, I was #11, and since this was a 6-person jury (for a DWI), I didn't figure I'd make the cut. I didn't. The low point of the morning: the judge telling jokes while we waited for the computer to count from 1 to 25. Out in the hall, one juror said it was a good thing the judge was a judge, because he'd never make it as a stand-up comic.

Writerly chores. Finished Hawthorn House (copyedited MSS) yesterday and sent it back to NY this morning. Started Spanish Dagger this morning, and expect to send it back on Monday. Then back to Nightshade, which is all but done.

Fiber stuff. I'm knitting like crazy for Christmas, a couple of hours a night. I've finished almost enough hats for all the grandkids, and scarves for Bill's nieces. A good way to use up some of my hand-dyed, homespun stash. There's never enough for a big project, as you probably know from your own experience, but there's enough to add some color to small things, like hats. Hoping to get finished in time for Santa to get them under the right trees.

Nothing settled yet, but we're thinking of spending Christmas in New Mexico, and I'm planning to stay on there alone for the month of January, to work on my memoir project for UT Press, Landscapes of Solitude. It's a different kind of writing. I'm looking forward to it, but with a little apprehension, and will be glad to have the time alone to wrestle with it.

Reading Note. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has give us a couple of good reasons to knit hats: 1. A great hat can make up for bad hair. 2. Hats can be knit fairly quickly and, as a bonus, children's heads grow slowly compared to the rest of them.

Early present

Hey, Michael and Sheryl, I love your present! I opened a package today to find this cool sweatshirt, which says: Careful, or you'll wind up in my novel. Thanks, guys. I couldn't wait until Christmas to put it on.

And yes, tbe sweatshirt has it right. Writers are like magpies, they'll pick up anything that attracts their attention and take it back to the nest. I keep a notebook with me, and jot down things I see. I tune my ears at the beauty parlor in Bertram--you'd be amazed at the things people say when the hair dryers are going and the ladies in their blue hair think you're reading a magazine. I love Texas names, like Billie Bob and Janie Rae and Tootles. And barbeque joints where Big Tom keeps the pickles in a plastic jug shaped like a pig, and gives you barbeque on paper plates with plastic spoons. One woman flipped me the bird at a gas pump in Buda fifteen years ago: she's in Thyme of Death. And then there was a neighbor who lived down the road from us once. She wore her bleached Big Hair, teased and tucked and moussed, when she went out to mow her grass in a red halter that barely contained her Dolly Parton boobs and white shorts that were just this side of a G-string. She's in Spanish Dagger. So yeah, be careful.

Today: worked for the second day on the copyedited manuscript of The Tale of Hawthorn House. Good, clean, helpful copyediting, very professional. Hope to finish it tomorrow, just in time to start on the page proofs of Spanish Dagger. I love this business of switching periods, voices, styles. It's the way an actor must feel, moving from one part to another, never playing the same role twice.

Reading note. --In a way nobody sees a flower--really--it is so small--we haven't the time--and to see takes time...So I said to myself--I'll paint what I see--what the flower is to me but I'll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking the time to look at it--I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of a flower. Georgia O'Keeffe

First frost & other stuff

Winter blew down from the far, frozen north this week. Flocks of robins and cedar waxwings surfed on the cold wave down the flyway and are now feasting on the dried seedheads of the sunflowers whose blooms brightened our meadows until just a few weeks ago. Last week's roses are ghosts of their former glory, but the Johnny-jump-ups are still fresh and eager, despite three nights of hard freezes. I prefer these tidy little guys to pansies; pansies are too gaudy and flamboyant for my winter eye, which enjoys quieter, more restrained colors. These Johnnies are growing in the window box outside my kitchen window, where I can admire them while I do the dishes--the old-fashioned way. There isn't room in our small kitchen for a dishwasher.

It's been a busy week. Peggy and I are still working on All About Thyme, stockpiling issues through the end of January, since I'm planning some quiet time in New Mexico next month. (If you haven't subscribed yet, please do.) We also rolled up our sleeves, pulled out our hammers and saws, and began a major makeover of the MysteryPartners website. That site has been there for nearly ten years, and it's sort of like the attic, piled up with stuff that's accumulated over the years. The remodel included the development of a new website, abouthyme.com, where we moved China and her Pecan Springs friends, with links to all the herb/garden/cooking stuff.

And when you go to abouthyme, you'll see a link to my new project: podcasting! With Becca Taylor's help, I'll be podcasting a series of ten programs about my favorite herbs. I met Becca when she interviewed me for a Story Circle podcast that will be available later this month, and immediately saw her talent for creating and publishing podcasts. There'll be a lot more about this podcasting business coming up after the first of the year, so keep your ears open. Fun!

Knitting, knitting, knitting. I only have a couple of hours a day for knitting, and not much energy (focus?) for intricate stuff. So it's hats for Christmas this year, guys. I had to laugh at Yarn Harlot's post on step outs, because that's just how I feel with all these hats. But at least I'm using up my home-dyed handspun, which combines nicely with purchased yarns for hats hats hats.

And the book goes on and on and will be done sometime next week (Nightshade, that is). The copyedit of The Tale of Hawthorn House was delivered into my eager hands yesterday, and the galleys of Spanish Dagger are on the way. Ack. Too many words words words.

And would you believe, on top of all this, jury duty? I have to show up at nine tomorrow. The population of our county is only about 30,000, not all registered voters, of course. So Bill and I get summoned every couple of years. If I'm lucky, I won't get picked. If I'm picked, I guess I'll consider it research for another China Bayles book, huh?

Reading note. Writing a book was an adventure. To begin with, it was a toy, an amusement; then it became a mistress, then a master, and then a tyrant.--Winston Churchill