Category: Living simply

Settling Even Deeper

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

My grandparents owned the land,
worked the land, bound
to the earth by seasons of planting
and harvest.

They watched the sky, the habits
of birds, hues of sunset,
the moods of moon and clouds,
the disposition of air.
They inhaled the coming season,
let it brighten their blood
for the work ahead.

Soil sifted through their fingers
imbedded beneath their nails
and this is what they knew;
this rhythm circling the years.
They never left their land;
each in their own time
settled deeper.
~Lois Parker Edstrom “Almanac” from Night Beyond Black. © MoonPath Press, 2016

My husband and I met in the late 70’s while we were both in graduate school in Seattle, living over 100 miles away from our grandparents’ farms farther north in Washington. We lived farther still from my other grandparents’ wheat farm in Eastern Washington and his grandparents’ hog farm in Minnesota.

One of our first conversations together – the one that told me I needed to get to know this man better – was about wanting to move back to work on the land. We were descended from peasant immigrants from the British Isles, Holland and Germany – farming was in our DNA, the land remained under our fingernails even as we sat for endless hours studying in law school and medical school classes.

When we married and moved north after buying a small farm, we continued to work full time at desks in town. We’ve never had to depend on this farm for our livelihood, but we have fed our family from the land, bred and raised livestock, and harvested and preserved from a large garden and orchard. It has been a good balance thanks to career opportunities made possible by our education, something our grandparents would have marveled was even possible.

Like our grandparents, we watch in wonder at what the Creator brings to the rhythm of the land each day – the light of the dawn over the fields, the activity of the wild birds and animals in the woods, the life cycles of the farm critters we care for, the glow of the evening sun as night enfolds us. We are blessed by the land’s generosity when it is well cared for.

Now 46 years after that first conversation together about returning to farming, my husband and I hope to never leave the land. It brought us together, fed our family, remains imbedded under our fingernails and in our souls.

Each in our own time, we will settle even deeper.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Something Is Calling…

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Something is calling to me
from the corners of fields,
where the leftover fence wire
suns its loose coils, and stones
thrown out of the furrow
sleep in warm litters;
where the gray faces
of old No Hunting signs
mutter into the wind,
and dry horse tanks
spout fountains of sunflowers;
where a moth
flutters in from the pasture,
harried by sparrows,
and alights on a post,
so sure of its life
that it peacefully opens its wings.
~Ted Kooser “In the Corners of Fields” from Flying at Night.


I am a visitor here,
even though we’ve lived here
for more than 30 years.

There is something to be discovered in the field
each day if I make an effort to look and listen.

My Merlin app on my phone tells me
the birds I hear around me.
A photo of a wildflower or weed
is identified by Google.
The jet flight tracks overhead
are pinpointed by another app
saying who is flying where.

Yet I’m placed right here by my Maker.
He knows where I am at all times,
the words I write,
the thoughts I pray.

I try to be at peace in these turbulent times:
to be sure of this life I’m given,
to be sure to Whom I belong,
to simply open my wings to the light,
to be ready to fly when my time comes.

AI image created for this post

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Warned By Wild Things

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Frightening the foliage from its sleep, we travel along
the Quinault Lake Loop in our big red truck.

Roofed by dank rainforest, we know
we are not alone, though we see no bird, no beast.

You say, It’s beautiful, but do we really belong here
where creatures hide? Then an elk herd stomps across

the dirt road, and you brake, shocked. The fattest turns
to stare over his long beard. To know or warn us.

Yes, my love, we belong, but on soil-stained knees,
asking for each wild thing’s consent to stand.
~Lauren Davis, Home Beneath the Church 

I’ve been to the temperate rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula,
only a short ferry ride and two hour drive away,
where 300 year old trees tethered to one another
with connecting crepe of dangling moss,
hiding the creatures within,
taking all down with them
if they someday fall to the wind,
lying still, nursing the growth of the next generation’s seeds
from long rotting trunks.

We can only pass through this place,
having been banished from the Garden.

We are not to dwell or cut or shoot or burn or slash,
at risk of being ensnared by reaching fingers of moss
seeking yet another woody heart to soften

Whispering grassfeet
steal through us
fir-fingers touch one another
where the paths meet
thick dripping resin
glues us together
summer-greedy woodpeckers
hammer at hardy
seed-hiding hearts
~Inger Christensen  trans. Susanna Nied

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

June Trembling Like a Butterfly

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Green was the silence, wet was the light
the month of June trembled like a butterfly
~Pablo Neruda from “Sonnet XL”

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
~Billy Collins “Morning”

We are now four days into summer but aside from the date on the calendar, it would be difficult to prove otherwise.  After a dry stretch of warm late spring weather, it is now unseasonably cool, the skies stony gray, the rivers running full and fast, the ground peppered with puddles. Rain has fallen at night, hiding behind the cover of darkness as if ashamed of itself.  

As it should be.

What all this moisture will yield is acres and acres of towering grass growth, more grass than imaginable, more grass than we can keep mowed,  burying the horses up to their backs as they dive head long into the pasture. The Haflingers don’t need to lower their necks to graze,  choosing instead to simply strip off the ripe tops of the grasses as they forge paths through five foot forage. It is like children at a birthday party swiping the frosting off cupcake after cupcake, licking their fingers as they go. Instead of icing, the horses’ muzzles are smeared with dandelion fluff,  grass seed and buttercup petals.

In the northwest, June can tend to shroud its promise of longer days under clouds. Outdoor weddings brace for rain and wind with a supply of umbrellas, graduation potlucks are served in the garage and Fourth of July picnics stay safely under cover. There is a wary anticipation of solstice as it signals the slow inexorable return of darkness from which we have barely recovered.

So I tremble as I too splash through the squishiness of late June,  quivering like a wet butterfly emerging from its cocoon ready to unfurl its wings to dry, but unsure how to fly and uncertain of the new world that awaits.  In fact the dark empty cocoon can look mighty inviting on a rainy June night. If I could manage to squeeze myself back in, it might be worth a try.

After all, there is no place like home.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Turned to Stone

barnstormingblog3 Comments

Our shadows bring them from the shadows:
a yolk-yellow one with a navy pattern
like a Japanese woodblock print of fish scales.
A fat 18-karat one splashed with gaudy purple
and a patch of gray. One with a gold head,
a body skim-milk-white, trailing ventral fins
like half-folded fans of lace.
A poppy-red, faintly disheveled one,
and one, compact, all indigo in faint green water.
They wear comical whiskers and gather beneath us
as we lean on the cement railing
in indecisive late-December light,
and because we do not feed them, they pass,
then they loop and circle back. Loop and circle. Loop.
“Look,” you say, “beneath them.” Beneath them,
like a subplot or a motive, is a school
of uniformly dark ones, smaller, unadorned,
perhaps another species, living in the shadow
of the gold, purple, yellow, indigo, and white,
seeking the mired roots and dusky grasses,
unliveried, the quieter beneath the quiet.
~Susan Kolodny “Koi Pond, Oakland Museum”

The boardwalk,
a treachery of feathers ready
to receive another broken bone,
looms just above the surface.
Step deliberately when approaching.
With few exceptions,
ice has claimed this part of the pond.

This is where you see her,
moving through what
free water remains:
a sluggish ghost in the shadows,
slow, conserving the fragile heat
she still has in this late winter.
A canopy of juniper dressed with light snow
overhangs, watching.

Last year, a quorum of her kind was lost,
turned to stone, to frigid silence.
She doesn’t know that story,
but some instinct guides her to keep
what warmth she can, to cruise
in stubborn torpor.

In her drift, she remembers the summer,
her long, languid vowels,
the accompanying texts of her companions.
How they interwove manuscripts,
narrations of sky, tree, sun, and moon.
Warm days are a memory now,
and thoughts rest lightly in her body.

She has held the same posture for an hour.
Her bones have reached a conclusion—
an idea about hope itself—
there, near the indifferent bridge,
inches from the force that will take her
~Carolyn Adams, “Koi Pond” from Going Out to Gather

The water going dark only
makes the orange seem brighter,
as you race, and kiss, and spar
for food, pretending not
to notice me. For this gift
of your indifference, I am
grateful. I will sit until
the pond goes black, the last
orange spark extinguished.
~Robert Peake from “Koi Pond”

Koi and goldfish thrived in our pond after we covered it with netting, finally thwarting the herons arriving at dawn for breakfast.

Thus protected, our fish grew huge, celebrating each feeding with a flurry of tail flips and gaping mouths as I tossed pellets to them each evening.

When the pond cooled in the fall and sometimes ice-covered in winter, the fish settled at the bottom, barely moving silhouettes of color in the darkness. Spring would warm them to action again. As the water temperature rose, so did they, eager and hungry to flash their color and fins again.

Two winters ago, the chill winds and low temperatures lasted longer than usual. As the pond ice began to melt, the fish at the bottom remained still as stones. Netting them for burial felt like burying the sun and the moon and the stars, relegating their rainbows of light and color deep into the earth.

No longer would their colorful glory shine, an illumination now extinguished.

I haven’t had the heart to try again. I need a pond heater, a new filter system, and a total clean out of the pond if I am going to restock.

But then I remember the joy of feeding those flashes of fins and fish mouths, so I just might try again.

Rainbows promise to return, even from buried stone.

AI image created for this post

Lyrics
From the love of my own comfort
From the fear of having nothing
From a life of worldly passions
Deliver me O God
From the need to be understood
From the need to be accepted
From the fear of being lonely
Deliver me O God
And I shall not want I shall not want
When I taste Your goodness
I shall not want
From the fear of serving others
From the fear of death or trial
From the fear of humility
Deliver me O God

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Just a Pinch of God Inside

barnstormingblog1 Comment

To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended
skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other dogs
can smell it
~Alicia Suskin Ostriker “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog” from The Book of Seventy

Some claim the origin of song
was a war cry
some say it was a rhyme
telling the farmers when to plant and reap
don’t they know the first song was a lullaby
pulled from a mother’s sleep
said the old woman

A significant
factor generating my delight in being
alive this springtime
is the birdsong
that like a sweeping mesh has captured me
like diamond rain I can’t
hear it enough said the tulip

Lifetime after lifetime
we surged up the hill
I and my dear brothers
thirsty for blood
uttering
our beautiful songs
said the dog
~Alicia Suskin Ostriker “Song” from The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed is to know
God is inside all created things,
even those seemingly hopeless.

To be blessed is to sing
a lullaby of loving kindness
that settles a restless heart.

To be blessed is to become a blessing
so contagious, there is no hope of cure.

AI image created for this post

Lyrics:
Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas!
~Rudyard Kipling “The White Seal”

translated lyrics from the Lakota:
Ah I say, I say to you I am speaking to you…
Ah I say, I say to you To you I am saying it
My kind-hearted boy go to sleep
Tomorrow will be nice
I am speaking to you

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Keep Pouring

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

As long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum  
in painted quiet and concentration 
keeps pouring milk day after day 
from the pitcher to the bowl 
the World hasn’t earned 
the world’s end.
~Wislawa Szymborska “Vermeer” tr. by Claire Cavanagh
and Stanislaw Baranczak from Here

Vermeer’s “The Milkmaid” from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

As ever, the sun rises and the sun sets, day after day.
God continues to pour out His colors across the skies.

God loves us enough to plant each of us here
with a plan for our redemption.

We don’t know how much longer.

Today we wave flags,
some in a show of power,
some in a show of gratitude,
some in a show of discontent.

Instead, I pour milk as a daily sacrament:
quietly, with great concentration and appreciation,
as that is the work I must do, day after day.

To milk the cows and raise wheat for bread
and conceive children and raise them up to pour and bake.

This is God’s created world, after all.
We must do our best to restore and preserve all that He has made.

So keep milking and keep pouring.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

An Undivided Wonder

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

One grief, all evening—: I’ve stumbled
upon another animal merely being
             itself and still cuffing me to grace.

             This time a bumblebee, black and staggered
above some wet sidewalk litter. When I stop
             at what I think is dying

             to deny loneliness one more triumph,
I see instead a thing drunk
           with discovery—the bee entangled

            with blossom after pale, rain-dropped blossom
gathered beneath a dogwood. And suddenly
             I receive the cold curves and severe angles

             from this morning’s difficult dreams
about faith:—certain as light, arriving; certain
            as light, dimming to another shadowed wait.

            How many strokes of undivided wonder
will have me cross the next border,
            my hands emptied of questions?
~Geffrey Davis “West Virginia Nocturne” from Night Angler

So much happens in the lives of creatures in the world
above, around, and beneath our feet.
The dewy immobilized bumblebee,
the ladybug floating, rescued by a cloverleaf,
the translucent spider hiding in a blossom fold.

Most of the time we are oblivious,
absorbed in our own joys, fears, and sorrows,
struggling to understand our own place in the world,
unsure if we people are the only image of our Creator.

But life’s drama doesn’t just belong to us.

It is the baby bird fallen from the nest too young,
rescued from mouth of the barn cat.
It is the farmyard snake abandoning its ghost-like skin.
It is the spider residing in the tulip, ready to grab the honey bee.
It is the praying mantis poised to swallow the fly.
It is the katydid, the cricket, the grasshopper trying to blend in.

When I struggle with my faith in this often cruel world,
I realize not every question, not every doubt, needs answers.
It is enough, as a trusting witness of all that is wondrous around me,
to pray someday it will no longer be mysterious.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

A Soft Landscape

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Now have come the shining days
When field and wood are robed anew,
And o’er the world a silver haze
Mingles the emerald with the blue.

Summer now doth clothe the land
In garments free from spot or stain—
The lustrous leaves, the hills untanned,
The vivid meads, the glaucous grain.

The day looks new, a coin unworn,
Freshly stamped in heavenly mint;
The sky keeps on its look of morn;
Of age and death there is no hint.

How soft the landscape near and far!
A shining veil the trees infold;
The day remembers moon and star;
A silver lining hath its gold.

Again I see the clover bloom,
And wade in grasses lush and sweet;
Again has vanished all my gloom
With daisies smiling at my feet.

Again from out the garden hives
The exodus of frenzied bees;
The humming cyclone onward drives,
Or finds repose amid the trees.

At dawn the river seems a shade—
A liquid shadow deep as space;
But when the sun the mist has laid,
A diamond shower smites its face.

The season’s tide now nears its height,
And gives to earth an aspect new;
Now every shoal is hid from sight,
With current fresh as morning dew.
~John Burroughs “June’s Coming”

Out of the deep and the dark,
A sparkling mystery, a shape,
Something perfect,
Comes like the stir of day:
One whose breath is a fragrance,
One whose eyes reveal the road to stars,
The wind in his countenance,
The glory of heaven upon his back.
He steps like a vision hung in air,
Diffusing the passion of eternity;
His abode is the sunlight of morn,
The music of eve his speech:
In his sight,
One shall turn from the dust of the grave,
And move upward to the woodland.
~Yone Noguchi “The Poet”

Each month is special in its own way:  I tend to favor April and October for how the light plays on the landscape during transitional times — a residual of what has been, with a hint of what lies ahead.

Then there is June.  Dear, gentle, abundant and overwhelming June.  Nothing is dried up, there is such a rich feeling of ascension into lushness of summer with an “out of school” attitude, even if someone like me has graduated long ago.

And the light, and the birdsong and the dew and the greens — such vivid verdant greens. The stir of the day stirs my heart…

As lovely as June is, 30 days is more than plenty or I would become helplessly saturated. Then I can be released from my sated stupor to wistfully hunger for June for 335 more.

One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly

Morning Has Come Again

barnstormingblogLeave a comment

when the sun peeks over the horizon to greet
the day and spread golden honey warmth
to the dark, sleepy earth

when the birds begin to stir and twitter
and tune their songs to one another

when the trees rustle as the morning breeze
opens her eyes from slumber, and the dew is heavy
on the blades of grass

when I know morning has come once again
and we are not lost to the night, even as we
are not lost to the day

light dawns, and I can move again
breathing in streams of fresh morning air
lighting a candle for rejuvenation
and praying the day in with ginger and
salt and clay

oh how lovely it feels to be alive
how magical to wake with the light
and live
~Juniper Klatt “when the sun” from I was raised in a house of water.

Each morning is a fresh try at life,
a new chance to get things right
when our yesterdays are broken.

So I drink deeply of the golden dawn,
take a full breath of cool air and dive in head first
into luminous light and bushels of blossoms,
hoping I too might float on the morning magic.

AI image created for this post
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly

Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts

Make a monthly donation

Make a yearly donation

Choose an amount

$10.00
$25.00
$50.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00
$5.00
$15.00
$100.00

Or enter a custom amount

$

Your contribution is deeply ppreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

Your contribution is appreciated.

DonateDonate monthlyDonate yearly