The beautiful calm of the Windermere Hotel

Ok.  I know it’s been two weeks, but you know the minute things began to slow down just a bit, so did my ambition!  Before we went up north for a few days, I was loosing my perspective, grumpy and tired.  We escaped to Mackinaw Island and regained our balance. Each night I would listen to the waves coming in off the straits, the gentle cadence of the horse-drawn taxis, the call of geese overhead and the occasional fog horn cutting through the mist.

Into the light.

During the day we biked around the island, talked about our farm year, made future plans, ate well, and rested our minds as well as our bodies.  I needed to look out and be calmed by the view, rather than see something that required my attention.  It was just what the doctor ordered.  What a difference a couple of days make!  I came back with renewed appreciation for our farm and the vocation we have chosen.  We hit the ground running. On Friday we harvested for Saturday’s market; then went to market Saturday.  Then we spent the next several days splitting and stacking wood.  That’s when it hit me…I have a new obsession: splitting wood.

I have never been very physical (the exception being hiking and backpacking).  I am quite content to read and write for hours.  I am a confessed daydreamer who studies how light moves through a day . Yet here I am, for the first time in my life, craving physical activity. I’m finding that movement is the necessary counter balance to my thoughts.  When I move my body my mind becomes more fluid.  When I was younger I hated to sweat.  Now it feels good to push myself to do the unfamiliar.  I smile as I split log after log and place it in the bucket of our tractor.  Sweat rolls down my face and arms.  Give me more ways to feel my muscles and body.  Let me resist the pull of aging and dive into the work that feeds me.

Respecting the power of the splitter.

When it was time for a break, I relaxed in the shade of one of our barns.  With a mason jar of iced tea I could watch the leaves falling from the trees, while our chickens searched for grubs.  I am no longer in a fevered search for meaning.  It has been replaced with a sense of belonging to our land and all things within it.

Happiness.

“Faith it seems to me, is not the holding of certain dogmas; it is simply openness and readiness of heart to believe any truth which God may show.”  –Margaret Deland