A winter residency

Three weeks of unimaginative weather have left me feeling like a reflection of the sky- sullen, flint grey with just enough teasing of the sun to remind us of what’s possible. The wind, too, has borne down and threatened to forever stay, feisty and persistent in her dominion over our valley. Snow is no longer really snow as we toggle between rain and plummeting temperatures, from slush into ice and then back again. I gloat a bit in the loose grip I hold on all of this as one of the few non skiers in our town. Unlike spring and summer, when every shift in weather has me fretting for our garden and orchard, winter, for me, is one protracted exhale, a time to observe and little more.

In the warmer pockets, we’ve been taking to the trail and road for longer stretches. Yesterday, we hiked a hilly 1.5 mile trail that used to be a mainstay of our weekly runs. Patchy ice kept us slow and mindful as we paused to take in the solemn beaver pond, the papery molting of a birch tree and the rat a tat tat of a hairy woodpecker. I wanted to stay in the woods all afternoon, bed down against a trunk and keep believing in my wellness. Nature has always been my church. Emerging from the forest, I am never who I was upon entry. My aperture is broadened, my heart more nestled in my chest. Even now, in a body still riddled by recovery, the peeling birch, the hidden beaver and the industrious woodpecker remind me of my aliveness in a world so much richer than my singular pain.

It is the first week of the calendar year and I’ve cleared the decks, so to speak. My pin board above my desk now hangs bare; even the pins have been tucked away lest there be any pressure to make use. I need to move forward in a different way this year, unencumbered by what was still papering the wall- the map of our farm sketched over with future plans, the mantra I’d crafted while seeing an executive coach last Spring, a print of a Mary Oliver poem about joy that no longer fits the mood, a polaroid of H from our first trip to Sally Fox’s farm. Nostalgia has always been a source of torment for me, especially around the holiday season, but this year it became downright treacherous. My longing for a life I believed would just carry on has eclipsed my capacity to be creative, to welcome in constraint and make beautiful of whatever that yields. Not so much on the surface of things, but in the vastness that is our true desire when all of life is so rudely interrupted, the hope that we can return, that at some point we can be the version of who we were before- when I can run, when I can tackle farm projects, when I can travel, when I can cook and feed people, when I can be the friend I long to be, the partner I long to be- like tick marks against which our days are measured.

As a creative, I have long held constraint in high regard. I can recall more than a dozen moments in my life when scarce resources and less than ideal circumstances bred tangible ingenuity. Like the time just after we were married when I was laid off from my job in a large downsizing of the company. We’d just spent our meager savings on the wedding, financed a new car and were eager to start a family. We had piles of debt, a shabby apartment one block from a park where shootings and stabbings were a regular occurrence and had just turned 40. I was terrified. And furious. After two weeks of wallowing in the bullshit of it all, I decided to spend my newfound time engaged in a highly structured ‘discovery’ process, applying the same principles I’d spent four years using with various design clients, to my own life. Our spare bedroom became my ‘war room’ with sticky notes lining the walls, affinity maps drawn around things that resonated and an ever growing list of new inquiries. I enrolled in a weaving class with mostly octogenarians every Tuesday morning. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I apprenticed with a textiles maven in the city and learned more about pattern making and how not to run a small business. Six months later, a project emerged that took on a life of its own and remains a body of work I am deeply proud of.

Constraint, rooted in the body, is a different beast. I’ve suffered the occasional nagging running injury and five broken wrists (!) but until Covid, I had never stared down my own mortality with the very real possibility that I might not survive. Further, if I did survive, what shape would that take? The last six and a half months have been a frantic research attempt at answering that question. And despite my great disappointment in our biomedical world, I do have an inkling of how this puzzle fits together and how the pieces might fare with proper treatment. Over the holiday, I collected a few critical data points that make my GI tract the number one priority in getting to homeostasis. A starting place. The really big and scary stuff has mostly been ruled out, for now. My ECG continues to solicit the comment of ‘possible ischemia’ by whatever random radiologist is reading it but my cardiologist assures me that this is just me. I have finally found a functional physician I believe in and so it feels like just time to transition power to her and relinquish sole ownership of Project WTF.

It also feels like the right time to begin shaping what comes next, breaking free from the idea of returning to what was and go in search of a richer, more technicolor vision. As the Franciscan friar Richard Rohr describes at length in his book Falling Upward, this is the second half of life, the part where we let go of all that we’ve accomplished and expected, shake loose of our entitlement that this suffering shouldn’t have happened to me (I’m a good human, dammit) and figure out what we’re really made for. I have an inkling, as this is not my first downturn, but I’m really curious about what my life would look like if I am inhabiting what I believe to be true in it’s fullest expression.

In early December, I asked H how we were going to make it through the long Vermont winter without the ability to snowshoe or gather with friends outside. He went straight to practical solutions like a fire pit and outdoor heater, which we’ve implemented. I went to more cheeky ideas, one of which emanates from that time just after we were married. I pitched the first ever Galesong Farm winter residency- 3 months of fully supported time in a well appointed studio to focus on a body of work. Writers, artists, researchers, all welcome. No need to apply; it was mine for the taking. I ‘arrived’ yesterday and already I feel the welcome shift to a familiar way of sense making, bodily constraints and all.