Having been watching the weather in Sweden, I know it’s far warmer there than here — at the moment it’s about 35 degrees warmer. (it is a bit brrr-ish here at 0˚. I currently have heaters aimed at the cold water pipe in my sink and am flushing warm water down the toilet… neither of those pipes have insulation… sigh.) So it’s not unreasonable to hear that they’re going out into the woods to gather winter fuel.

Still, oddly, I find it difficult to imagine my loved ones in anything other than my weather, so I find it extraordinarily brave of them!

What they are, in fact, is far better attuned than I to the difference the seasons make in the woods and how best to take advantage of that… or rather, more rightly put, to live with that.

it’s hard, since i’m an indoor girl to be to aware of how the earth moves… and it’s good to have a circle that includes people who know the forest, know when the mushrooms crop up and the berries come, know when the forest offers what’s needed.

I’m both wildly interested and disinterested in the same moment… Sometimes I think it’s just laziness… others, i’m not sure…

So i return as I often do to the circle. To having those in my circle who know what I don’t. Who pay attention differently, who turn their heads in other directions… Those friends keep us more widely engaged.

And now I have the image of birch logs blazing merrily in their fireplace… and I think of their eating one of my favorite pastries through the Lenten season… as they presage the Sugar Moon in so many ways. (who’d expect the Northlands to lead us into the the Spring?) I love them, and I love that I’m invited to see life through their eyes.

We make Peace with the Earth, with the Seasons and with our lives in so many different ways. It’s only as we gather them together that Peace can be seen as the beautiful patchwork it’s meant to be…