Saying Goodbye

The grapes have checked out.

The zinnias are on their last lap.

The beans don't have a clue about what's coming...

But I do. And even though the light splashes over the leaves around me like they were lit from within, even though the reds and golds and tawny browns paper my world...I can't help feeling the loss of the "stay outside" season with somewhat of a dry, closed throat.

And I am not alone. This morning, the sign was crying.

Back to the Birds

Oddly enough, while my soul was going through the spiritual laundromat, my hands have been busy with the simplest of stitches.

Or maybe it is not so odd.

I made this little window hanging to help remind a dear one of her intention, which is to be more like the sun in the lives of those around her.

 And of course I am still having a love affair with my birds, who now are six.

I took the time to learn how to do the fancy-shmancy embroidery stitches Sue Spargo recommends in the pattern. I am shocked, shocked I say, by how much I love doing all this intricate stuff since I tend to think of myself as the proverbial bull in the needlecraft shop.   But look how much personality they give to my flock:

Drizzle stitch make hair!

Pistil stitch makes a garden

Woven picot stitch makes beaks

Bullion knots make...well, whatever this is.

And just in case you're keeping track, I have 208 of the 276 octagons I need for the wedding one-block wonder completed. I am counting on winter camp for the rest. Ok, gotta go, off to the dentist to replace a cap that just can't handle the amount of Atomic Fireballs I eat.

Still Waters

My travels the past two months rolled right over the Jewish Days of Awe--those 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that asks us to look hard at our soul and make some adjustments for the year ahead. The nearest equivalent in the secular world is making New Year's resolutions. The difference to me is that in the Days of Awe, you first make a heart-breaking spiritual descent into yourself, from your fatty lumps of excess to your sharp razors of how you treat others...to your deepest crevices of, well, whatever they are for you.

The descent takes place over 10 days. On the last day, Yom Kippur, you remain there while fasting, standing shoulder to shoulder with your brothers and sisters in the congregation. And you gradually become empty, until the final long shofar (ram's horn) blast at sundown blows your bones apart and signals the end of Yom Kippur. At which point, your soul trickles back, and you return to the world renewed and with some intentions for the year ahead.


Because I am simple-minded, I settle on one intention for the year ahead and I usually receive direction by just staying open during these 10 days. This year, I got it on the first day, in a poem by May Sarton that our wonderful Rabbi Diana put before us. Here it is:

New Year Resolve

May Sarton

The time has come 

To stop allowing the clutter

To clutter my mind

Like dirty snow.

Shove it off and find

Clear time, clear water.

Time for a change.

Let silence in like a cat

Who has sat at my door

Neither wild nor strange

Hoping for food from my store

And shivering on the mat.

Let silence in.

She will rarely mew,

She will sleep on my bed

And all I have ever been

Either false or true

Will live again in my head.

For it is now or not

As old age silts the stream,

To shove away the clutter,

To untie every knot,

to take the time to dream,

To come back to still water.

There's so much there, but the words "still water" leapt off the page into the void at the front of my forehead. This year, I want to do the work necessary to be still water...not to make waves in the ponds of others and not to get ruffled when the wind blows through mine.

Look What I Made!

Last winter, I went to a local workshop on how to grow shitake mushrooms. (Here's my utterly gripping report, with pictures.)

I parked the incubating logs in the shade beneath the cedar that grows so close to the kitchen window that next year I will be able to store coffee mugs on it. I watered them a bit and then promptly forgot about them.  This weekend, when I was putting my garden and yard to bed for winter camp, I checked on them. One was upright but no closer to bearing mushrooms than I am.  The second one was lying on its side in the dirt, which is exactly what it is not supposed to do.  I yanked it up and holey moley, look what I found:

Its about the size of two open fists. And now its in the kitchen, where I am trying to decide whether to cook it or worship it.

Getting Distilled in Scotland

Ok, I am back from mowing the weeds.

No, I didn't do it blade by blade with a rusty nail clippers. While you weren't looking, I slipped in a quick visit to Thing One in Chicago. But I now expect to keep my feet planted in my own backyard and just soak in everything I have learned from my wonderful travels in 2014.

So what did I learn in Scotland?

I planned this expedition because I yearned to know what it feels like to distill each day into its most simple of activities: putting one foot in front of the other. The first thing that happens is that decisions become very simple--and exquisitely meaningful.  

For example, since everything I put in my pack for the day was going to literally rest on my shoulders for at least 7 hours, I had to really weigh its ultimate value.If it wouldn't keep me dry in the rain, warm in the wind, full in the belly, or safe in an emergency, it got voted off the backpack.

Or put into Mr. E's.

Even the decision to take extra steps becomes consequential in a way that walking dogs through the playground across the street does not. I waged a constant internal battle when we needed to choose whether to go out of our way to see a site. On one hand, I would never be this close to blah blah blah again. On the other, my two feet were now my most important resource and I needed to conserve their well-being in the face of the 35,000 steps they had to tackle each day.  Looking back, this seems lame (hah) but at the time, it felt very, very serious. And so uncomplicated.  

Second, problems also become very simple--and solutions exquisitely meaningful. An overly tight left shoulder strap on my pack consumed my attention one entire afternoon.  And finally remembering to let that strap out and take up its counterpart on my hip was a Blessed Event.

Twelve miles with the tiniest of irritations in the tiniest of toes gives new meaning to one-pointedness meditation.

I worried all night about being able to continue hiking. But it happened that our home that night was in the only town on our route with a hiking gear store. And that the store would be open early Sunday morning when we wanted to get back on the trail. And that they stocked Compeed gel bandages...and that my traveling companion was a doctor who knows her way around meticulous bandaging!  Every morning after that, I made sure each toe had the protection it deserved...and every night, I inspected and treated any little malingerers.

And in a weird way, I loved that these 10 little guys were the focus of all my love and attention.

Speaking of attention, or lack of it,  let's talk about The Burn. You would think that Americans who read "after one mile, cross the Achmore Burn and turn right" would take the time to find out what the hell a burn is. Because if they don't, they will continue an extra mile only to find out from a nice Scottish lady on a bicycle that the Hiking Gods sent down to peddle past us that a "burn" is a creek. Then, they will have to go back the additional mile to get back on the trail. (See notes about step conservation, above.) That was really our only misstep over 7 days, which I'd like to think is a tribute to our our map-reading skills. But is probably because the Scottish hiking authorities had our backs.

  Finally, and as you might expect, our pleasures were simple--and exquisitely meaningful.

 

 

I'm feeling unable to distill this learning into the right words. In the end, it wasn't so much about simplicity but that the stuff that mattered REALLY mattered. If you didn't chart the nuances of the trail map (this is the bridge we just went over, it looks like we need to cross another creek and then there's an intersection), if you didn't make sure your toes and shoulders were happy (I need to get some more Compeed before the stores close), if you carelessly let the piece of paper with the name of the night's hotel disappear out of your pocket not once but twice  (oh wait, I did), well, you'd be lost,in acute pain, or pretty damn anxious about where you were going to sleep just as it started raining.

And I loved that. I guess it makes sense that in Scotland, I discovered the power of a distilled life.
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PS and on a different note.  I promised you Cullen Skink. The servers all pronounced it "Cullen Skank." So when you mix that with a few rounds of single malt, you get into an uproar about all the sailors who knew her. (Go grab some scotch, it will get funny, I promise.) Those who are not drinking, however, recognize Cullen Skink like this:
Speciality of the northeast Scottish coast, it is delicious soup made with cream (of course), smoked haddock, and potatoes.

Seven Days, 101.84 Miles, and 236,261 Steps

That's how my pedometer describes my walk through Scotland's Rob Roy Way. A walk that took us through (start singing now) the high roads...

 ...through the low roads...

And smack through the middle of the extraordinary election for Scottish independence from Great Britain!

 

 On the side of the road, we thought we met an elf who had way too much static electricity.

He told us a story about his fabulous sweater, which his mum made for him when he was eight. It developed a hole when he was 14 and he darned it. And he has never stopped darning it. He told us his name was Malcolm Applebee, which, he said, we could google. I did and expected to find he had escaped from somewhere. I didn't expect to find he was an MBOE and an award-winning engraver!

There were several other signs to add to my collection, too.

My mother wanted to know if this meant slow down...or speed up.

 And just in case you wondered exactly where the Universe got started...

Like Scotland itself, the hike was a largely a sheepfest.

The trail wound us through many pastures, each with signs requesting that we "do not worry the sheep." That's because, near as I can see, sheep as a species are already dangerously overwrought. They're a bunch of old ladies, wringing their wooly little hands dawn to dusk and just begging for some Xanax.

In their defense, they do have something to worry about.

The other animals were much more at one with the Universe.

And finally, the forests themselves were full of things I had never seen before. An old hag made out of lichen...

 A man-sized termite mound...

 A storybook array of funghi...

 

And this.

So that's the sights. When I return from mowing the weeds, I'll tell you about what it felt like...and everything you need to know about the Drum of Clashmore, the Wee Burn, and, of course, Cullen Skink.

Making Tracks

Not quite Lawrence of Arabia, Wadi Rum Jordan

I am besotted with stories that feature a Hero Who Goes. In The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce, mild-mannered Mr. Fry heads out one morning from his London home to post a letter...and just keeps walking. In Wild, Cheryl Strayed starts out on the Pacific Crest Trail clueless and weighed down by a pack overflowing with silly camping stuff that she doesn't know how to use and, mostly, her own demons.  In The Memory of Running by Ron McClarty, an obese chain-smoking couch potato in his 40's wheels his bike to the end of the driveway in Maine and gets off in Los Angeles.

The journey helps these heroes eventually burn away the pain that fueled their first steps. That's how it works in good stories.

I do not feel propelled by pain. Nevertheless, I am always yearning to get my boots on a path and walk from one point to another, to another. Our walk from Nazareth to the Sea of Galilee gave me a great taste of that, but it was only 4 days. I want to be able to keep going, however long it takes, without having to stop.

If I were the hero of a good story, I would do that tomorrow. But I am the hero of My Story, which contains a lot of other characters and a plot that borders on ridiculous. At the same time, I am turning 60 in a matter of months and decided this was the time to honor that side of myself in a way that worked for my life. And so, tomorrow, I will Go by getting on a plane with E (and Mr. E) and walking for eight days in the highlands of Scotland.  We're hitting the Rob Roy Way, a 94-mile trail which is either named for a famous Scottish outlaw or a cocktail from the 1950s, I forget which.

Himself heard "highlands" and deduced that this was a code word for "uphill." He also saw the packing list, which is heavily weighted toward staying dry in the rain. While I tried to seduce him with thoughts of decaying castles, he decided to be the hero of His Story and stay on dry, level ground right here in Pennsylvania.

Each day will involve a 9 to 12 mile hike, from one tiny town to the next. We hired folks who booked the lodging,forwarded us detailed maps and itineraries, and most important, will shlep our stuff from one town to the next. So all I have to do is walk. Every day for 8 days, no matter what kind of terrain or what kind of weather we encounter. Just me, my very good friends,and my daypack (which contains a compass, a knife, matches and, lest the challenges of the trail get too much, a cell phone and a credit card.)

I don't know what to expect.

And that's why I am going.

The Purple Five-Step: A Dance for the End of Summer

Step One: Make concord grapes. But not raisins.

We have a mysterious malady that gives us just hours between ripe grapes and models for a Raisin Bran commercial

 Step Two: Spend days fetching ripe grapes-that-are-not-yet-raisins, while avoiding 1)falling off stool resting on rocks; 2)hitting three-foot chimes that trigger sound waves that eat cells in your ears; and 3)tripping over large brown dog with slimy pink ball.

Oh, and did I mention wasps?

 Step Three: Find each ripe purple grape among its green associates...stem by stem. Pick most humid day of entire summer to do this on the porch. Then, clean and mash into pulp and boil for 10 minutes. Strain into juice...drip by drip. Spend the afternoon removing purple drip stains from white counter.

 Step Four: Dirty every possible container in the kitchen to extract grape juice from its crystals, bring everything to a rolling boil with sugar, gel with pectin and then ladle into jelly jars. Spend afternoon cleaning jelly drip stains from white counter and review Julie's Law of Canning: the number of jelly jars in the basement will never equal the number of serviceable rings, and will be exactly half of the number of fresh lids. Until you buy fresh lids, at which point, the number of lids will exceed the number of jelly jars by 2.66.

Step Five: The Pay Off for it all. 

I love eating the foam right off a spoon from the jar. Which explains why I spent the summer losing 25 pounds.

 Happy end of summer, y'all.