11.5.16 The best reminder

    


 It may take awhile, but if we're here long enough, we begin to understand that the particular quality a friend or relation has, that is so challenging in some circumstance....is perfect at other times. We begin to get that one neighbor or beloved or co-worker would suck on a cross country adventure, but is the very best when we are canning or fixing our car or bowling or problem solving a sudden glitch or comforting a crabby baby.
     A few years ago I began to notice this. 




     As I hung with my younger kids who were trying to figure out how the really great sleep over friend was horrible to study with.
     We had these long talks about discovering who fit us well in what situations, with the reminder that things do change. To stay present for the inevitable changes.
     One of my dearest friends can be such an opinionated person, who is set to defend me against anyone at all, even when there is no one to blame. They try to fix whatever anyone shares with them, but I finally got that they are just a protective charged up person. Thick and thin, they are just right there.
     Other people will shy away when we're sick or in trouble, because they just can't handle it, not because they don't care. But they'll show up with soup, smilingly looking away the whole time, and all ready to sit out and watch the day come to a close. Caring in their own way.




     Which really is the best reminder.
     That we all shift and change here and there. We tune in and tune out, we sometimes crash and burn. We sometimes think and say dumb things we don't really mean later.
     So it ends up really being all about the fit. The long view.
     Coming closer together when it fits. Giving space when it doesn't. And (maybe) talking about it; maybe not. Depends. On the fit.

11.4.16 In the meantime

     The morning light was golden and bright with huge puff-daddy clouds that swayed overhead. I passed by an Eagle, early, on the way to greet the day, in s field by the road, with a freshly caught rabbit.
     Later, down by the farmers fields , it was stark and beautiful and chilly, as I searched out a small deer's tracks in the wet soil, a happy leaping coyote of quite some size, and a small coyote or fox , farther along, living their loved last night.
     In the meantime, the recent rains are slowly rejuvenating our low low water table, the fields emerald green, all the growing ones well once again.

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.mcclellan/videos/10208117586840930/

11.4.16 Happiness

is a cold mud puddle with two tennis balls.

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1121532957883487/

11.4.16 Conflict Conflabulation and the Tough Stuff of Dissembling Grudge

Over here, in the midst of all this life stuff, we're inviting some family for Thanksgiving, to celebrate harvest and closeness and life. It's by the skin of our teeth, but he really wants and I want. Our kids all very much want. And it's next to impossible to get bigger family together, or manage to go visit.
So we're carefully planning and trying to distribute the work evenly, instead of doing that thing we all end up doing, of doing so much extra, because that simply is no longer possible. Which is why more of us stop trying to pull this off. 
To make things easy, I text everyone, asking 'Can you prepare this and this? ' and 'Can you bring that and that?' as we carefully map out how to pull this off once again.
One of my kids asks if they can come a few days early, and offers to help clean and do prep. I ask all four if they can come a bit early to do all the food/people arranging ,once people get here. It seems good. Simple. Possible. 
Some have to leave early for a second gathering, so it needs to be boom boom boom. But nice. Easy peasy. 
We plan on everyone helping do the dishes after, instead of being left with the job. It seems solid. 
Today I get a reply, saying one person, bringing 1-3 others, doesn't really like the two root vegetable dishes I asked them to prepare, and they want to bring one other dish they like better, instead. 
I'm thinking 'Thank the Lord more people didn't respond with only wanting to bring what they like. What would we do?'
In my haze, I imagine first asking everyone what they like, then what they'd like to bring, then figuring out how to do the work ourselves, to have the basics covered too. 
Somehow I can't fathom preference being the most important factor, when coming together, when it has not been possible for so long. When who knows who will have the energy to bring us all together again.
But then I realize the funny things we humans all do, in response to emotional processes. 
Sometimes we dig in or insist upon something, in lieu of something else, we know not what. Other times we differ from each other, in our absolute priorities. 
And I remember that sometimes I and you and others get riled up by the past, and generate a response that just may belong in the past, too. 
I sit with it. I feel how little room I seem to have for these complexities. Skin of teeth.
I think of how unhelpful it is to avoid. To pretend. To act like its peachy when it is not. And too, how helpful it is to simply be with what is. Just keeping it simple.
Then I get it. That it works for people to be themselves and for us to ask if that or this is possible for them.
I realize I can simply reply that we're asking people to bring enough dishes to have things covered, because we can't cover the extra this year. We've divided up all the basic harvest dishes. If they are able to make those things and want to add their fave, that would be helpful. And if they don't, let me know, and I'll see who else can add them.
I know everyone in my whole family would shy away from the whole deal of talking about some funny glitch like this. Potential conflict. They would eat the extra work. For some, the grudge would be assimilated. The resentment tendered. Ugh.
But I don't want to shy away anymore. I don't want to make a big deal where here is none, I don't want to avoid conflict. I don't want to carry more grudges than I already heft. And I just don't feel like living my life compounding assumptions about others, that freeze frame them into some simplified characterization. 
It's kind of cool how there is no right and wrong. We can go for the outcome we want. The relations we want. 
We can accept who each other seems to be, what with all our stinky human tangles and momentary lapses and all. 
That we can say " I see what you want to do. Let me know if you could manage this too, or not. We will be this many people." 
And then embrace it. Let it go. Say to ourselves "Yeah, here is this process." 
And then move on to this delicious brazen moment we have been given.

11.3.16 Down by the river it was

 overcast and warm, as people and dogs wandered along 
The Adele Dawson Memorial Trail, leaving behind their 
worries and finding their peace of mind.

11.3.16 Unfurling

Up up the incline, past the sparse intermittent homes and fields, 
past the wide stretches of forest, with the steep range rising up 
on the other side of the stretch of road; up steep enough 
to not ascertain height or summit, the road unfurls 
from the High Hadley Fields to my home.

11.3.16 Those small magic moments

That appear, and then are gone.

11.3.16 The Posse of Young Crows

My five sibling crows, born and nestled in here together for two years, 
have grown up this summer, and gone off with the Young Crow Posse. 

They roost together and forage together and bully raptors together,
 a way of manifesting their sense of territory and group cohesiveness. 

I see the five of them at the compost now and then, as the weather cools. 

But mostly they're all grown up now, off with the big group.

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1121009134602536/


The Meander of the day

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.mcclellan/videos/10208111223641854/

11.3.16 By the way

1. It is what it is.
2. Something is better than nothing.
3. Don't push the river; it flows by itself.
5. You can never have enough of what 
you don't really need.

11.3.16 What we have here

We have here a beautiful overcast morning , with mottled skies, so many colors.

 The temperature is mild, there are scattered rains beneficial to all, 
and somehow a feel of smooth, a little more ease, to carry us through the day.


https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1120671071303009/

11.2.16 Out of the night

     When I was six, I would get off the school bus with my big brother and our next door neighbor, who was my best friend, and we would play 'Zorro' . Or my big brother's best friend Michael would come over and the four of us would race through the endless Pine Forest being Zorro. 
     When I was eight, my next younger brother joined us in our untiring game , and when I was ten my next brother too. 
     We would run like the wind, like agile fleet footed horses, over fallen trees and through deer thickets and past mossy land, veering by enormous Holly trees, calling 'Out of the night when the full moon is bright ...'
     Sometimes there would be a male revolt, where all of them would suddenly think about how they were all boys and I was a girl.
     They'd all say 'Hey, YOU can't be Zorro. You're a girl.' And I knew it was true. It was.
Zorro was a man and boys grow up into men and I was a girl and I could not be Zorro.
     But I also felt no different than my five brothers. Talk about all for one and one for all. We were FOR each other. And they were mine.
     And yeah, I noticed the world. When Cardinal Cushing came to speak at our Unitarian Church, I knew I'd never be a Cardinal.
     When Medgar Evers came to speak I knew I could never be Medgar Evers.
     When President Kennedy spoke on the tv, I knew I could never be President Kennedy.
The truth was just obvious.
     And when my friend down the street looked at President Kennedy or Cardinal Cushing, or Medgar Evers, I knew that she knew that she could never be Cardinal Cushing or President Kennedy or Medgar Evers. Or Zorro, either, because not only was she a girl, she was also black.
     That distressed me so much, the rules. There was no one to talk to about it. It seemed so certain , these rules. It seemed certain to me that nothing could be done.
     It didn't even connect in my mind, my parents' work with Fair Housing or the NAACP.
     It didn't seem as though any of this would ever change, and yet the rules made no sense to me.
     So when my brothers and neighbor every once in awhile started teasing me about being a girl and not getting to be Zorro, I'd ignore them. Or distract them. But I wouldn't give in.
     I too much longed to BE Zorro. Thundering about on a horse. Escaping. Saving people. Being cheered and loved. And I knew if I gave in, in my own mind, it would just be the beginning of the end.
     So I'd wait, and their crabby mean stuff would pass, and then we'd race off through the twilight, through the aromatic pines, each of us being Zorro.

10.30.16 We often

Good morning, good afternoon , 
good anytime. 
The expansive beauty of a fall morning.

     We often feel as though life 'happens' to us, or that we are 'in control', and therefore responsible for consequences, even worthy of blame. We tend to unthinkingly be drawn to settling ourselves into the relative comfort of conclusions , verdicts, whether they are accurate and true or not. We seem to derive reassurance from taking the uncertainty or the seeming random we experience and willingly deciding it is anything but.
     This make-believe-for-the-sake-of-feeling-better does not work. These stories we tell ourselves are not real, and we know that, so our anxiety and uncertainty ramp up, which moves us to live into assumptions, characterizing ourselves and others, stereotyping entire unknown groups of others, as if we can know such a thing. 
     We begin to pretend we know people we see on the street, via their appearance or actions, that we can draw conclusions about a class of individuals, based on our reactions or fears related to one. 
     Pretty soon we are living our precious lives through so many reactive filters, that portray our experiences through our very own distorted looking glass, and our distress increases, because we have swept ourselves far from home.
     Far from what we, deep inside , can rely on to be true and clear and untwisted up and real for us.
     Which is that there is much we don't know.
     That we can slowly learn to back ourselves up, settle ourselves down, and begin once again.
     We can sit or walk in silence and rest in he present moment.
     We can be the one who watches the Thought or Feeling come up. And instead of thinking that thought or feeling IS our life and IS us, we can say to ourselves 'Oh look, THAT is a thought', and then sit back and feel and think it, til it quietly passes by. 
     We can say to ourselves 'Oh look, this here is a FEELING', and,identified as such, instead of being the one pretending to have life 'happen' to us, or pretending we are 'in control',instead we simply watch the identified feeling , and , felt with awareness, it will slowly pass on by.
     In the beginning, we feel as though we are are being assaulted by SO many Thoughts. So many Feelings. We wonder what is real.
     And then we realize that wondering what is 'real' is a 'thought '. And the Feeling we are having is a 'Feeling'. So we sit or walk with both , and they slowly pass on by, til here we are, breathing and sitting or walking, right here in the present. 
     We can always manage this present moment. No matter what is happening, we can find rest in our inhalation and then our exhalation. 
     In this way, we slowly learn to breathe and stay , resting in breathing, noticing when we have a      Thought or a Feeling come up and then pass on by, and then settle back into our breath again.
In this way there is no need to decide who is good or bad to us, wrong or right. We don't have to live in a story of grave difference or disillusionment or fear.
     Instead we can feel how we feel about situations , and then let it pass by. We can think what we think and then let it pass by. 
     We begin to learn to reside in the clarity of being with what happens. 
     We make our choices of action and response, have our learning curves and learn how it seems best right now to navigate. 
     Without characterizing ourselves or others as one 'way' or another. 
     Without feeling or thinking a need to pin a label on situations or people. 
     We become drawn to that which is a good fit and we pull away from that which is not, all the while watching our thoughts and feelings.
     Pretty soon we begin to notice we have been spending most of our days rueing or yearning for a past that wasn't, or wishing hoping for some make believe future. 
     When all along, the present day is here, in front of us and within us and all about us. Holding and unfolding in its own inimitable way , as we walk along within it, being with what is.

10.31.16 Small Humm dee dumm fb video of the day

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.mcclellan/videos/10208077581680826/

10.30.16 There's just something

about this small mountain range, transitioning from 
the high open fields, into the enclosed mountain forest. 
The small curling road that winds its way up past 
so many ravines, so many different woods, 
til it opens up along the broad conservation fields, 
where you can venture out early morning or late at night, 
and at any time of the year, inhale the river 
and the forests and the aroma of the old old soil.

10.30.16 I love the

 nature of these mid-fall days, 
lingering between waking, and the deep winter's rest.

10.28.16 As one more Fall Over Friday begins

These days, inching up upon November, we have the thick heavy snowfall 
from last night , as more and more leaves fall down upon it. 

I'm imagining bears and chipmunks diving into their winter's rest. 

The Connecticut streams all the colors reflected from the skies, and 
down by the Eagle Sanctuary the puddles become shimmering golden blue ponds. 

It's a no car day, so I'm out early, running that big boys dog through the woods, 
going around to a few nearby places for a small quiet meet and greet, 
then out out across the conservation field, now that the first snowfall 
buffers us from ticks, to hungrily catch sight of the lower fields, 
to see where the young coyote went last night. 

To stand at the top of the hill, listening as the Goshawk calls out to mate or child,
 and the call is returned, resonating out across the soon to be bare forestland.

To gaze back at our house, nestled just so upon the foothill of
 the small mountain range. As the Fall Over Friday begins.


https://www.facebook.com/gwen.mcclellan/videos/10208057349895044/

10.28.16 AS the covered Beeches

The snow early this morning was wet and heavy, covering the mountain's forest, 
melting its way home. 
Dante leaped and jumped and slushed through it with delight, his racing less far flung, 
as we both investigated a fox hunting area beneath the leaves. 
As the leaf covered Beeches shone golden and fluttering in the early morning wind.

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1116026268434156/

10.28.16 All the snowfall

All the night snowfall melting slowly, 
as weighted limbs are released, 
and the welcome waters sink into the earth.

10.28.16 This morning looked so much

 like an evening, the reflection another world.

10.27.16 The first snowfall

always seems amazing, somehow.

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1115093575194092/

Snowflakes float down upon the Aster.

https://www.facebook.com/GwenMcClellanWordsandPictures/videos/1115094785193971/

All in a day slideshow:

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.mcclellan/videos/10208049882908374/


Yes and yes, snow and snow. 
Hey, our water table is so low , 
we'll take any precipitation we can get. 
In the meantime, the happy pup 
leaps and shouts.

Our little home, nestled into the foothill of the range, alongside the conservation fields,
that extend down to the outwaters and
The Connecticut River.

10.26.16 Venturing forth

In the tiny place of Hockanum Village  is a post with all the dates 
of all the remarkable times The Connecticut River ventured forth.

10.25.16 No matter how

"It was there, I now understand, that I started to grow up, to study, to make love, to eat and drink,

 to be me and not what I was expected to be.

 It was there that I learned it is blessed to receive, as well as that every human being, no matter how base, is worthy of my respect and even envy because he knows something that I may never be old or wise or kind or tender enough to know.

M.F.K. Fisher -from the preface Long Ago in France

10.25.16

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.mcclellan/videos/10208029312274121/

10.25.16 It's beginning to look at lot

like November

10.24.16 Kestrel Lane

Half shorn, one foot in the deep winter sleep.

10.25.16 Nature is

much like a dear friend or a beloved,
every day revealing a new face

10.24.16 What morphed beauty

10.24.16 That which seems difficult

 

     I've been thinking over the way in which what we think is difficult, as we slowly live our lives and slowly grow older, are really kind of nothing, compared to the things we increasingly encounter. 
     Funny how that works, right? And in this process of living our lives, unless we crash and burn, we slowly become stronger and, if we work really hard at it, increasingly resilient.
     I remember discovering some similar dynamic when I had my babies. There the newborn would be in your arms, mine were all huge, and it would be so tiring, just lugging them around, holding them up while they nursed for hours, putting on them on one shoulder and then the other, as you attempted to eat and wash a few dishes and do things.
     And the thing was, they kept getting bigger and heavier. And as they did, your workout, your muscular development, increased also. So that by the time you're lugging about the two-year-old or even the three-year-old, held to your hip, as you went about your day, you really had gotten a whole lot stronger physically.
     There was also that deal where, with one newborn, it was devastating. Exhausting, overwhelming, sweetest thing in the world, but really.
     And yet, if it was your third newborn, and you already had another baby, and an older kid, or whatever your deal was, then the first situation just completely paled by comparison.
     You thought to yourself " How on earth did I think that was so impossible?"
     With all things, we slowly learn that, all things being equal, our strength and agility dealing with situations can slowly increase. Our endurance. Our wisdom.
     And it's really worth the effort to see if that can be the direction we go in , versus the opposite, when all that happens is that things fall apart.
     At the end of the day, what we realize is that that tough thing that happened when you were 20 - really was that tough. It's just that the experience when you're 42, or may be 63, is something even more difficult. It's all in the context of the situation.
     I think about these things, waiting out in the gorgeous warm fall day, overdressed, my husband in with the dentist, all the rich and difficult and precious and unfathomable aspects of life puttering right along.