I can’t help it - I love the snow!!! Soooo much nicer than the rain :) Really glad I made it out shopping yesterday before this started though… now I can just relax and enjoy it. Usually I’m not that organized!
… and not a moment too soon. I include the picture above as the last of my photos celebrating fall in the backyard, and moving into winter. This shows the beautiful side - but actually fall was not so great - so much rain I thought I was drowning in it. A girl from Seattle should be used to rain, but this was different. The way it used to be was gentle rain, a constant drizzle. We Seattleites prided ourselves on not carrying umbrellas, because, well, what’s a light drizzle! Just something to leave a little sparkling of droplets on your hair. Instead, lately, it’s been torrential rain, which another thing entirely and not much fun no matter how you look at it.
Speaking of sparkling droplets… I woke up this morning, looked at the sky, and said, “snow’s coming.” It had that heavy, pregnant, light-colored look to it. It was frosty out, and even though a light rain began, it’s still only 39 degrees at nearly noon. Snow would be a welcome change for me after all this rain - lucky me, I get to work at home and I have a brand new espresso machine :)
There must have been a break in the clouds after the rain, because when I came out of my shower, I thought I saw Christmas lights in the trees in the forest, winking at me! The neighbors have all been busy putting up their lights, this being the weekend after Thanksgiving, and that’s what put the thought into my head. It looked exactly like someone had put those little white blinking lights in the trees, and for a moment I wondered if one of my neighbors was being nice to me. As I looked more closely I realized it was droplets of rain or frost in the spiderwebs, with a little bit of sunlight shining through them, blinking as the tree branches moved in the wind.
Life gives you little presents everywhere, if you only stop to look :)
Well, after days and days of talking about rain, the wind has arrived. Last winter we had several large windstorms and were without power for days on end, and a couple of really large trees in the back yard came down. This was pretty frightening, having the wind and rain rage and hearing the trees out back break and fall, not being able to see what was happening, night after night. Last night it started again with our first windstorm of the season. I did hear a big tree come down, but I haven’t gone out back to see where it was.
My deck has become part of the ecosystem… so thoroughly covered by wet fall leaves that you can’t see where it ends and the forest begins. 
Likewise the pond is disappearing under a blanket of leaves - I know I’ve got a job ahead of me there.
I wonder why it seems like the weather is so all-encompassing this year. Maybe it’s being in a big house by yourself when the storm hits, without even a cat for company (I need to do something about that too)… and all you can do is just listen and hope neither the rain or the wind does anything bad to your house. I’m thankful that this is a pretty new house and so far seems to be handling the drenchings thrown at it pretty well. Now the forest out back is another matter - I couldn’t live without it, but the windstorms are scary. Time to get out the candles and lanterns!
Though there are still many leaves on the trees, they have gone from bright to drab, and the weather now is either frozen and clear or rainy and grey - welcome to winter in Seattle. I knew I should have gone out and gotten those plants and leaves out of the pond for winter! At least this year the trick-or-treaters did not get poured upon - just cold. I don’t know what this winter will bring - I sense that many things may be different once it’s over. This seems like a good time to ask the Wheel of Change tarot for its sense of the coming winter - just that, nothing more.
LOL. The Fool, again. Last time I got the Fool, not long ago, it was reversed. Now the Fool is upright. Not at all the card I would have expected for a winter in Seattle, especially not this winter. But this is not the first indication that things may be better than I expect, even though I can’t see it now. This Fool looks like he’s having a grand old time - partying, flinging roses with heart-shaped petals about, playing with fire, admiring the birds, drinking wine, listening to music, and letting himself get caught up in passion with the universe. He straddles a chasm easily, out of which flows this starry galaxy.
Well, if I can make my winter like this, there’ll be no need to worry about the weather :)
I’ve been feeling really tense and anxious the last few days - just some personal stuff coming up. It’s been hard to eat, sleep well, or concentrate on work. Then I found out I have to give a deposition in early November - probably my least favorite thing to get paid the big bucks for. By timber industry lawyers even, which in my experience, are the worst. So I’m driving off to the dentist (more fun!) and drop some stuff off at the mail, when I see…
Deer munching apples in my neighbor’s orchard. This is one of those remnants of what this area used to be like - rural, farms, and horses. There is still a little bit of that around my house. There was just something about the deer, straining their necks to pick off the apples, contentedly feasting… I slowed down my car and just stopped to watch for a while. It helped.
Later today, I was sweeping all the leaves off of my new deck, which is gorgeous and beautiful, as were the drifts of leaves all over it. The leaves were dry and crackly, and all shades of color. The sweeping and piles of leaves, and more drifting down all around me, was peaceful. I’m finding myself wishing there was more daylight right now so I could do more of this natural soothing.
I was camping recently, on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula - a gorgeous place with rushing rivers, slanting sunlight through green trees and berries, rocks and cliffs and mountains. One day I was sitting with my feet soaking in the river, gazing up at the trees. There are times when I feel like what I am seeing is imprinting itself on my mind, something like a photographic memory, except it only happens in nature, mostly.
It’s as if there are deep archetypal patterns in my mind that are empty from working indoors all day, dealing with technology and artificiality, driving in traffic and cities. I’ll be out looking around at nature and some form or shape will strike me, and I can look at it for a long time. The longer I look, the more it is as if some essence of the tree or rock is filling up those empty spaces and replenishing them.
My eyes don’t move, they don’t traverse the form, it’s not about scanning the landscape…. more like an osmosis of the whole. I can’t do it from behind a camera, but sometimes it does happen quickly, when I’m walking along a trail, perhaps - something strikes me and imprints quickly… and then I am walking past, but with the image still in my mind, turning it over, savoring it.
What is this like for you?
It’s hard - we all spend so much time running around, thinking about the past, worrying over the future, noticing what’s wrong with our day, that we don’t actually see the good things. Really see them, and take time to appreciate them. It sounds trite, but it isn’t. It can make the difference between a deep depression and a positive attitude toward life in the face of all kinds of challenges. Over the last few years I’ve been coming up with some coping strategies, which might be fun to write down now and then as I feel like it - in the Good Things category :) No matter what happens to me, I want to experience the good things as they happen, and take the time to notice them.
My first approach was developed during a year when I was forced to stay in bed most of the time due to an illness. I couldn’t work much, or get online, or leave the house. Not knowing whether things would improve in the future caused a pretty difficult depression that took some work to get beyond.
This strategy is so simple - just spend a few minutes in bed at the end of each day, consciously thinking of one good thing that happened to you that day. And if your day was so awful - like a day where you had a horrible migraine all day long - that there really was nothing good, then, I was always, always thankful that I had a dry, warm house, a comfortable bed to lie in, money for food and medical care. But most days, there is something better than that, and thinking about these things every day changes your mood. After a while you get into the habit of noticing things throughout the day and stopping for a moment to savor them.
This last year I’ve had a special pleasure that falls into this “little things” category. The sun rises over my house across the street - and in the back of my house is a forest which my bedroom window looks out on. When the sun rises, it hits the trees behind my house, and there is something about the special quality of the light as it is just rising that causes them to burst into a golden glow - trunks and leaves, framed by the blue sky and green of the evergreens behind. The whole scene is truly glorious - and typically I wake up just long enough to see it for a minute, revel in it mentally, and then fall back asleep :) This has been a constant source of enjoyment all summer! Later, the sun is shining on the trees, but it looks completely different.
More of these moments to come, as they happen… in case sharing them can help
