Alaska – Lofty Minded in Alaska

February 2026: A Snow Moon Letter

Dear Friends,

Since my last letter, I’ve received so many kind notes and in-person condolences. I’ve had phone messages and emails and a few hugs that cut through all the layers of talk and went straight to the heart. Something inside me must have known that I needed all of that, but now I know for sure that I did. To not feel alone, to not have to carry the heaviness of loss on my own, to know that grief is something we all share… it’s made me feel like I’ve got a place among you, and what we all need is to belong. So, thank you.

It’s an interesting thing that I’m doing, writing a letter to anyone who will read it, and I’m still trying to figure out why I feel compelled to do this. Maybe it’s an experiment in community. Maybe it’s just a free form way for me to write when I don’t always know what I want to say. Maybe it’s me reaching out a hand in invitation, saying, let’s do this thing together, let’s find something in common, let’s go wherever this takes us.

I don’t know why it took me so long to discover this, but in the last couple of years I’ve learned that I have a hard time looking people in the eye. I can have a conversation with just about anyone, and obviously I’m not afraid of sharing things about myself with others, but looking at someone else’s eyeballs kind of freaks me out. I watch people’s mouths when I talk to them and if I happen to make eye contact it almost stings. I immediately avert my gaze. Since becoming aware of this I’ve been working on looking at peoples’ eyes when I talk to them, but it’s not an easy thing for me to do. It feels like a fragility on my part. What is it I’m afraid of seeing? What is it that I’m afraid others might see in me?

There’s that whole notion of eyes being the window into another person’s soul, and I think there might be something to that, and that might just be what’s jarring to me about looking someone in the eye. When I make eye contact with another person, I sense that there’s an energetic connection, like a spark, and it startles me. Maybe I need to learn to stay in that uncomfortable space until it’s no longer uncomfortable. Maybe I need to learn to trust myself with that kind of energetic exchange because it feels kind of powerful. I’m curious to know if anyone else experiences this.

I think I’m going down this rabbit hole because writing these letters feels a lot like baring my soul, and yet it doesn’t freak me out. Maybe letter writing is my love language. Maybe it’s my attempt to make eye contact.

Anyhow, I hope there is something about these letters that makes you feel seen.

It’s been more than a couple of weeks now since that life-altering day I wrote about in my last letter. Without a dog, our house is quiet in a way it hasn’t been in the 35 years that Dean and I have been married. The temptation is to rush out and get another puppy but we’re trying to make ourselves wait a while. There are a few trips we’d like to take before we take on the responsibility of another dog, and this kind of quiet might actually be good for us to experience. At least that’s what we’re telling ourselves.

Also in the two weeks since I last wrote you, I’ve been to Florida and back. I’m still recovering from the trip and feeling a little raw from the mix of emotions that came from gathering with family to say goodbye to my nephew. After being with his mom and sisters and attending his memorial, I know more about him now than I knew before. The thing I heard over and over again from his family and friends is that Ellijah was a person who showed up for other people. When people needed him, he was there. It made me think about the people in my life who show up and it made me think about what it means to be a person who shows up.

I went to Florida because I needed to go, and somehow I thought that need was for my sister and her girls. In retrospect though, I needed to go for myself. I needed to remind myself that I belong to a family. We all started out in Colorado together, but over time we’ve scattered around the country. We’ve moved away from each other in non-geographic ways as well – politically, religiously, culturally – but when we were all in a room together I felt at home, and at peace. I didn’t know I needed that, but I did.

One highlight of the weekend was when we gathered for brunch the day after Ellijah’s memorial. Cousins, sisters, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, friends, brothers, aunts, uncles all together around one long table. The little boys ran around the table with their toy car and dinosaur, and my niece’s beautiful baby got passed around to anyone who wanted a turn holding her. The waitstaff at the restaurant were endlessly patient with us, and kind, and for a few hours we had the time to just be together. None of us took it for granted, because who knows how much time will pass before we’re all able to share space like that again.

It’s mysterious the way things work; that tragedies can bring about healing, that new and beautiful relationships can blossom after loss, that priorities can come into focus when your heart is broken. It’s true personally and I have to hope that it’s true collectively.

And how are you holding up? What are you doing to take care of yourself these days? Do you have any good books to recommend? Any podcasts or music that’s helping you get through the intensity of this particular moment in time? I started listening to The Overstory by Richard Powers when I was traveling. It’s been recommended to me more times than I can count but I put it off because I haven’t been drawn to reading much fiction over the past few years. Of course it’s as good as everyone said it is and the writing is a miracle. Maybe it will launch me back into a fiction reading phase again. I hope so.

We’re in the middle of a dreary weather pattern here with no sunshine icons at all in the ten day weather forecast. I’ll try to dig deep and find some of that inner light to get me through; lots of hot tea, yoga, jumping on the rebounder I bought last winter, and as many beach walks as I can fit in. It’s a good time for garden planning and tea packaging, and of course for writing. We’re halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox now and we’re gaining almost five minutes of daylight every day-even if it is behind a thick layer of clouds. Already our slow days of winter are feeling numbered, so I might as well embrace them.

Have I told you yet that I appreciate you reading these letters? I hope this one finds you engaged in something meaningful and encouraged about some aspect of your life. I hope it finds you rising above the intensity of current events. I hope it finds you well-cared-for and well-fed and at peace. But if you’re not feeling or doing your best, that’s okay, too. Don’t be hard on yourself. Let yourself rest. Know that I’m rooting for you.

Thank you for being out there and for reading my ramblings, and if you feel so inclined, I’d love to hear from you. And if this letter encourages you to reach out to someone else, that’d be cool too.

Take good care until next time.

With love,

Teresa

And just a few more things:

*I’d love to share these letters with as many friends as possible, so please feel free to share this with some of your friends. Also, if you’re not already subscribed to receive an email every time I publish, please consider doing so. It’s free and will remain so.

* The family brunch I described above reminded me of this song and it’s been playing in my head ever since. ‘Crowded Table’ by The Highwomen. You might enjoy it, too.

*I’m a sucker for note cards and stationary and just because I write these letters online doesn’t mean I won’t find an excuse to go to the Homer Bookstore and buy pretty things to write on.

Peter Pauper Press, Inc. Copyright 2020 Illustration by Terri Foss

January 2026: A second letter

Dear Friends,

When I wrote my January letter earlier this month I didn’t expect I’d be writing another one so soon. I haven’t even responded to everyone who reached out and I’d hoped to do so before writing again. But I was encouraged by how many of you replied. My soul felt lifted by the conversations that were started. My hope for deeper connection going into the new year was buoyed, and so I’m here again because I could use that kind of boost again. Perhaps you could too?

I have to warn you though, it’s been a heavy week, and this letter may not feel like much of a boost. In fact if you’re feeling sensitive right now, you might want to wait on this one or give it a pass altogether.

I’ll start by telling you about a book I listened to a couple of months ago. The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter is a book about confronting and even embracing the things in life that cause discomfort. It covers physical exertion, cold exposure and hunger – all things that have to do with our material existence, but it also considers existential discomforts such as boredom and the reality of our own impermanence. In the book, he talks about the Buddhist monks of Bhutan and their practice of contemplating their own deaths at least three times a day.

Recently I’ve been given plenty of opportunities to contemplate death, and this week in particular brought it into sharp focus.

Just after the holidays, our sweet old dog, the one we adopted after finding her on the side of the road fourteen years ago, went into decline. We recognized what was happening, and we knew our days with her were running out. Our care for her went from typical elder care accommodations to more of a hospice care situation. We fed her fresh ground beef and gave her extra cuddles. We carried her up and down the stairs and cleaned up after her when she didn’t make it outside. On Monday, I told my supervisor at work that I might need to take some time as we were getting close to having to make the difficult decision to have her put down.

Then on Tuesday morning I woke to a text from one of my sisters telling me to call her right away. That’s never a good thing to wake up to. I feared that the call might be about my 87 year old mom who’d just had a rough bout of flu and I braced myself before dialing my sister back. The news she delivered was not about my mom but about our nephew Ellijah, just 27 years old and the son of my youngest sister, who had died in the night after a tragic accident involving a gun. The exact circumstances of his death weren’t known at the time, and frankly they didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was gone, and whatever amount of pain and shock that I felt upon hearing the news were a million degrees smaller than what Ellijah’s parents and siblings were experiencing.

Then a sense of helplessness set in. We cannot undo death and we cannot ease the pain of a parent whose lost a child. We can offer comfort, express our condolences, shower them with love as best we’re able, but the hard truth is that sometimes pain has to be endured, and we have to allow those that are hurting to endure it in whatever way they need to. I can carry pain over the loss of Ellijah’s life, but that will not diminish the pain that my sister is experiencing. Comfort in her time of exquisite pain is the best I can hope for.

I was not personally close to Ellijah, but I kept in touch with him on Facebook. Interestingly, I feel like I know more about him now with the tremendous outpouring of fond memories and photos that his friends and close family members are sharing online. By all accounts he was silly and thoughtful and was an exceptionally loving uncle, brother, nephew, friend, son and coworker. And while none of that is surprising given what I did know of him, it’s beautiful to see so much love for him expressed so openly.

Like many of us, I have a love/hate relationship with social media, but I will say that this week I’ve been thankful for Facebook. It’s helped me know my nephew better. It’s given me a place to go to mourn. It’s helped me feel connected to family that’s thousands of miles away. And it’s a helpful and effective way for me to get this letter out to you, wherever you might be.

And writing this letter and knowing so many beautiful people are reading it is helping me process my own grief, and I thank you for being there.

I know there are many ways to go through grief. Lots of people prefer to keep it to themselves, but (obviously) I’m not one of those folks. I don’t share my grief to bring you down, and I apologize if that’s the effect this letter is having. I share because life is full of beautiful things and it’s full of hard things, and only sharing what’s good doesn’t feel completely honest. I promise I’ll share the good times as well so that I will not become the Debbie Downer of letter writers.

How are you? We’re just a couple of weeks into 2026 but it seems like a lot has happened. In terms of world events and politics, etc. it’s been intense and I have the sense that it’s going to be that way for a while. I keep reminding myself of the overall message of Easter’s The Comfort Crisis, which is that change for the better often comes from leaning in to discomfort. How do I lean into the discomfort of this time of chaos that we’re in? How do I show up for my family and my friends and my community? More importantly, what is my role in getting us through to the other side, whatever that other side might look like?

I’m looking for ways in which I’ve chosen comfort over growth in my own life, and there are plenty. One of them is my tendency to keep my convictions to myself.

The subject I’ve probably read the most about over the past two years is deconstruction from religious systems. I laugh about it because I deconstructed from my religion long before that word ‘deconstruction’ was a thing. I’m more in the reconstruction phase of my spiritual life and while organized religion isn’t the pathway I’m choosing, I still resonate deeply with the teachings of Jesus.

I am baffled and dismayed at how so many people who claim to follow Jesus don’t actually apply his teachings to their political convictions. It’s not my job to change anyone’s mind, but I am trying to become a person who speaks her own truth and I’m reclaiming the stories that formed my sense of right and wrong. On this subject, I highly recommend reading or listening to Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang. It’s funny, because he’s a comedian, but it points out the ways that scripture has been used to justify policies and behaviors that are a far cry from the message Jesus brought into the world.

Are you feeling challenged to step out of any of your comfort zones? If you are, I’d be curious to hear about it.

I’ll tell you about a beautiful thing that happened in our town a couple of weeks ago, although it is also a story connected to death. I guess that’s just the nature of this letter, which is a reflection of this moment in time, and a reflection of life in general.

There is a fun-loving group of people in town that have taken it upon themselves over the years to bring the New Orleans spirit to Homer. They call themselves the Krewe of Grambrinus Social Aid and Pleasure Club and every February they march in the winter carnival parade with their instruments and costumes and spread their Mardi Gras joy. In recent weeks a number of the folks that were a part of this festive group have passed on, but they were honored with a Second Line procession down Pioneer Avenue on a frigid and sunny Saturday afternoon. Nearly 200 people showed up with instruments, white handkerchiefs for waving, and umbrellas for spinning. Tears and laughter and a big group of friends walking down the road making a bit of a spectacle of themselves reminded me of the Homer of many years ago. A lot has changed about this town over the thirty odd years that we’ve lived here, but it’s still Homer at its core, and I appreciate that.

Back to our sweet old dog, Gypsy. The same day we heard the news of our nephew Ellijah, it became clear that it was time to say goodbye to her. Some days are worse than others, and Tuesday hit us hard.

Sorrow comes in different degrees, and it’s hard to hold the loss of our dog on the same scale as the loss of a beloved nephew. Still though, our house feels pretty empty without her, and our hearts are heavy that our companion of fourteen years is no longer with us. There’s that saying that love is love, and it’s true. On the same note, grief is grief, and we’re holding it right now, on all it’s different levels. You might be, too. And if so, please know you’re not alone.

Thank you for reading this letter and for being on the receiving end of all I’ve had to say. I should tell you that even though it’s been a hard week for me, I am okay. In fact I am more than okay. My life is good and my hope is that yours is too.

Before I wrap up, I have a couple of things to ask of you. If you have a beloved pet, please give them an extra scratch or a special treat. Please thank them for the joy they bring into your life. If you’re prone to such shows of affection, please stick your face down into their fur and inhale deeply.

If you’re a praying person, please say a prayer for my nephew’s parents and siblings. If you’re a Quaker, please hold them in the light. If you are an atheist, please imagine a future for them in which the pain over the loss of their son and brother is less acute.

I believe that how we define ourselves matters very little compared to the love we offer. Please offer and accept all that you can.

I loved hearing from so many of you after my last letter and I hope you’ll continue to stay in touch. All the best to you until next time.

With love,

Teresa

And just a few more things:

*In my last letter I posted the Neil Douglas-Klatz Aramaic translation of the lord’s prayer and many of you found it meaningful. I’ll post a link to it again, in case you are interested: https://abwoon.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/APwlinks2020.pdf

*What am I talking about when I talk about prayer? Here’s something I wrote back in 2018 that still feels true to me today. https://loftyminded.com/2018/10/25/imperfect-prayers/

*Responding through the blog platform, even through “reply” will always leave a public comment. If you’d like to reach out to me personally, here is my email address tsundmark@protonmail.com

Nameless

There is a mass of land north of where I live that bulges toward the heavens. It’s been measured by humans and thus determined to be the highest reaching land mass on the continent. People pilgrimage to this great land mass. Sometimes they stay in its proximity for days just to catch a glimpse.

Something so grand, so awe-inspiring, so beyond anything else, becomes revered; not because it demands reverence, but because reverence for it is inevitable. And to see it, to be near it, to feel its presence inspires us to use it as a reference. There are other land masses that protrude from this continent and each of them are unique and beautiful, but only one is The Great One.

What is the purpose of a name? I’ve had friends who’ve changed their names because they were never comfortable with the ones that had been chosen for them. I changed my name as well after I got married, like my mother did, and her mother before her, and hers before her as far back as the genealogical history on both sides of my family goes. Does my married name make me who I am any more than my maiden name did before that?

In a society that demands identification, would I cease to exist if I didn’t have a name? Without a name, how would I be known? By my appearance, my attributes, my essence? Would I be known by the evidence of my existence?

What evidence is there of my existence? There is my physical flesh and blood, although that will cease to exist one day. What about the children who were born from my body and the children they may have one day? Had I not chosen to have children though, I would still exist.

Would the words I write or the things I make with my hands act to prove my existence? Would they, even without a name to attach to them?

A name then, is a convenience. A name is something we attach to something that exists. But a name is not proof of existence.

A name gives us something to call each other.

A name gives us a sound, a visual to attach to ourselves and our surroundings, and when a name is agreed upon, it gives us something in common. When I say I live in Alaska, you recognize that name. You may not think of Alaska the same way I think of Alaska, but we have a common reference point from which we can launch our conversation.

As for me and for you, if the name that’s been attached to us were to be stripped away, what would we be left with? It depends on who’s asking. I am someone different to my spouse, to my kids, to my coworkers. We are seen from a different perspective from everyone we encounter, but does that change who we are fundamentally?

A name then, is a simplification. Who we are in our true essence is much more complicated than what a name could possibly contain. We, at our core, are nuanced beings who can move through the world and adapt to the environments in which we find ourselves.

I have different roles at home than I have at work. Roles then, are not unlike names.

I am the lady behind the circulation desk at the library. I am a Cook. Spouse. Friend. Writer. Musician. Beach wanderer. Sun seeker. Reader. Vacuum operator. Gardener. Tea maker. Sister. Mother. Animal caretaker. Neighbor. Driver. Television watcher. Internet scroller. Philosopher. Mystic.

Strip away any of these. Strip away all of these. Who am I?

We know each other by our names. We know each other by our associations.

“I don’t know your name, but you sat in front of me at the basketball game.”

“I’ve never met _____, but I’ve read an article they’ve written.”

“______ is a talented artist, and from what they’ve made I imagine they’d be interesting to talk to.”

“I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t recall where I’d know them from.”

We only know a person from the perspective from which we’ve interacted or been introduced. We can never know another person as well as we can know ourselves. And a name is never able to encompass the full story of whatever it is we are attempting to name.

If I use the word God, what does it mean? It will mean something different to you than it does to me because we only have our own perspective from which to give it meaning. We may have a guide that informs our ideas in the form of a text. We may have had experiences that add to our perspective of whatever it is we think about when we hear the word God.

A belief in God is not required in order to try to describe what is meant by the word God. What comes to mind when you hear the word God? What feeling is evoked? How would you describe whatever you think others might mean when they use the term God?

We each have an understanding of what we’re trying to describe, but my description will always be different than your description. No one perspective is complete.

What is it that we’re trying to name when we use the word God? The force that pulls us all together? All there is and all there ever will be? The endless cycle of being? That which gives us life?

We use the word God because an adequate description of what we’re trying to name will always fall short. The term God then is inadequate. It is a limitation, an approximation, a shortcut.

Could any name, could any book, could any religion or tradition claim to know all there is to know about God? No. It is an impossibility. All we can do is try to understand what is meant when we use the term God, and there is no end to such an exploration.

Could any name adequately encompass the grandness of the tallest mountain in North America? No, but the people who lived in its shadow, who lived with it as their continual reference point, described it as Denali – The Great One – so I will refer to it as that. No matter what any human calls it or names it though, the truth of the mountain’s existence, the truth of the mountain’s essence, the truth of the mountain’s grandeur is incapable of being diminished.

Remember, this is also true of you.

Uncomplicated

Sometimes the universe gives us gifts and last Friday I was given a row of three seats to myself on the first leg of my journey home from Georgia. I was grateful for the space for all the obvious reasons, but also because it was at 30,000+ feet in the air somewhere between Atlanta and Seattle that it hit me that my dog Ripple wouldn’t be there to greet me when I got home.

I left for Atlanta to visit our daughter a week prior, knowing there was a good chance that Ripple would die while I was gone. She’d been winding down for the past month, eating less, growing weaker, sleeping more. I said my goodbyes to her over the course of a five day weekend at home before I left, lying on the floor with her at times, telling her what a good dog she’d been, and thanking her for all she’d given our family, which is more than she could possibly have known.

I left on a Wednesday and she died at home late in the day the following Friday with Dean and Dillon beside her.

It was 2008. Adella was a sixth grader and Dillon was a freshman in high school when Ripple joined our family. One Friday afternoon, in the spring of the year, a young woman in Dillon’s math class picked a black curly-tailed puppy with a white patch on her chest out of a litter that was being given away in front of Safeway. Dillon’s well-meaning friend thought the puppy would cheer up her mom who was going through a divorce at the time but, as you might imagine, as sweet as the girl’s intentions were, the mom didn’t have the bandwidth for a puppy. Her answer to keeping the dog was a clear no, with instructions to deliver her to the animal shelter immediately. Dillon witnessed the whole exchange between the mom and the daughter and couldn’t bear the thought of the puppy staying at the shelter over the weekend, so he hid her inside his coat, smuggled her onto the school bus, and brought her home.

Our lives were pretty chaotic, so it’s questionable whether or not we were ready to add a rambunctious puppy into our mix of chickens and dogs and adolescent children. But it only took a few days for us to see that this quirky pup brought something to our family that we hadn’t even realized had been missing.

Family life is hard sometimes, and complicated, even when there’s plenty of love to go around. There are personality conflicts, and guesswork, and lots of trial and error. There are hurt feelings and frustrations and overwhelm. All of this can lead to a pretty serious existence.

Laughter is what our family needed when Ripple came to us. She brought us lightheartedness, and with her goofy antics she brought us together when it would have been easier for us to retreat from one another. She didn’t have to try, she just had to be her authentic self and she would crack us up. She provided us with comic relief that we desperately needed and offered us a common place to direct our love and attention. With Ripple nothing was complicated. We just loved her.

What can I tell you about this dog? Besides being ridiculously cute, she took her role as a companion seriously. Early on, on a road trip to McCarthy, she decided that I was her primary person, and from then on, whether it was down the hall to the bathroom or outside in a blizzard to feed the chickens, she would follow me. If I wasn’t home she’d just as readily follow someone else. She loved tromping around the yard and garden and trails with us and always kept an eye out for anything that didn’t seem quite right, which is how she became to be known as the property manager.

Every morning sometime between 3:00 and 5:00am she’d jump up on the bed and curl up against my legs. I was never sure if it was out of affection or her need to monitor my movement as breakfast time approached, but her warm body curled up against my legs every morning might be the thing I’ll miss most now that she’s gone.

One of Ripple’s rare and most puzzling traits is what came to be known as her “water noise.” Consistent throughout her life, before taking a drink of water she’d let out a noise. Sometimes it was a quiet whine and other times it a full blown spectacle of song, some combination of a howl and cry that’s nearly impossible to describe with words. It made us laugh every single time we heard it. The water noise was proportionately louder and longer the happier and more excited she was, and since she was always excited for breakfast her water noise was often the first thing we’d hear in the morning.

***

On the last day of my visit to Georgia, Adella and Ally took me to Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery to stroll among the flowering trees and headstones. Other than a few gardeners and maintenance folks, we were alone.

Some of the gravestones were of those who’d lived full lives, like Mrs. Talitha Dison who was born on Feb 16, 1864 and died on Oct 29, 1937. Others were monuments to young men whose lives were cut short by war. On one family’s plot the two most elaborate monuments memorialized two children, a beloved son who died at age three and a daughter who died at age five. The siblings’ lives did not overlap, but followed one after the other. Four more siblings who went on to live long lives were born after the first two lived and died. Their headstones were modest in comparison.

As we walked the brick pathways between family burial plots it seemed natural to talk about those we’d known and loved who’d gone before us, grandparents, parents, friends, beloved pets. From there it was an easy segue to the subject of our own inevitable departures.

When we brought Ripple into our family we weren’t thinking about how we’d have to say goodbye to her one day, even though we knew it was part of the deal. Dogs go from playful puppies to aged elders in what seems like a few short years and watching their lives unfold reminds us that none of us are immune. We’re all the same in that way. Here for just a while.

Dean’s Aunt Kathy, who passed on just last year, told us one time that she believed our purpose for living was to learn how to love. I’ve thought about that so much and I’ve come to agree with her. Through this lens everything and everyone becomes a teacher. Good teachers don’t bring new things into existence as much as they help us see what’s already there, they give us a deeper understanding. Ripple was with us for sixteen years and our love for her was as pure as love can be. It was uncomplicated and unconditional, and even though she wasn’t always the easiest dog, loving her was the easiest thing ever. For our family, she brought to the surface what was there all along.

Illuminate: A ten-day journal series

I count myself lucky to work in a place that’s a three minute drive to the beach. Often on my lunch break I pull on the mud boots I stash under my desk, grab my sack lunch, and head down to the shore. Most days I eat in the car and then head out walking. As soon as my feet hit the sand I feel like I’ve entered a different realm.

A person might go to the beach for any number of reasons. Sometimes after a big storm people drive out and fill their truck beds with coal for burning. Between September and April people might show up with buckets to collect seaweed for their garden beds. Friends of mine go to the beach once a month to plunge into the cold ocean. I say I want to join them, but haven’t mustered up the will quite yet. I usually go to the beach just to wander, and see what I might find.

Each beach excursion is different. There might be a calm drizzle or a raging wind, brilliant sun reflecting off the water or dense fog. The tide is either high or low or somewhere in the middle. Some days I might only have a few minutes, other days I might have a good long time. One day the beach will be crowded with people and dogs, other times it’s nearly empty.

It’s often cool and breezy and I find it tempting to stay in the car to keep myself separate from the elements, but always, even on the rough weather days, once I’m out there I don’t regret my choice to feel the ocean’s influence on my body and soul, even if it’s only for a moment. That’s because the beach is a place for receiving gifts. Some of them are physical, but more often I come away with something that’s much more difficult to articulate. How do you describe the effect of fresh salt air, the sound of waves on rocks, the company of birds, the long expanses, the being near something so vast and alive as the ocean?

When I go back to work after spending time at the beach, I’ve brought some of its offerings with me. I breathe easier. I’m better able to focus. I have fresh ideas and a new perspective. I’ve got color in my cheeks and a sense of calm and connection.

What do I feel connected to? Myself, I suppose, but also something beyond myself. I’m not just a person who goes here and there and exists on the planet alongside everyone else, I’m a part of the whole big system, and for me, puzzling about the whole big system—what it is and what my role in it might be—is the stuff that makes life interesting. It’s the driving force behind my writing.

And that brings me to my journal.

I do a lot of writing, and I share a small percentage of it here, but I consider the writing I do in my journal as the real writing. It’s the place where the inner work is done. It’s where I suss out questions and consider multiple answers. It’s where I question my beliefs and test the soundness of my opinions. It’s where I vent my frustrations and scheme about new ideas and imagine a brighter future. It’s where I give myself pep-talks and muster up the courage to do the things that are required to live the kind of life I want to live. It’s where I toss around new business ideas and evaluate their pros and cons. It’s where I’ve found empathy and ultimately forgiveness for the people I’ve needed to forgive, including myself.

On the pages of my journals are prayers for the people I know and love. Prayers for the whole of humanity, for the state of the world and for the planet that supports our existence. There are to-do lists, recipes I don’t want to forget, and anecdotes and snippets of conversations I’ve overheard. There are poorly written song lyrics and descriptions of places I wish I could teleport back to. On the pages of my journal I’ve imagined conversations with my dad and my grandparents who’ve been gone from my life now for a good many years. These conversations are made up, but often they bring back memories that are real, the sound of a voice, a specific gesture, a funny trait, a remembrance of what it felt like to be in their presence.

What I’ve discovered is that the way I feel after writing in my journal isn’t so different than the way I feel after I’ve spent some time at the beach. Each day the writing is different, but always when I’m done I feel a sense of calm. I feel connected. And often I’ve been given a memory or an idea or a vision of the future that feels very much like a gift. Where does that gift come from? What is it I feel connected to? Well, those are the kinds of questions I love asking on the pages of my journal.

For me journal writing has become a practice, and without hesitation I can say that it’s made my life better. I could continue to go on about it, but what I really want is for you to try it for yourself, or maybe get back into the habit. I want you to experience the way writing can change the way you see the world, the way it can open your heart and inspire your attention, even if you never share a word of it with anyone else.

I’d like to invite you to join me for ten days of journal writing, starting on the first day of November. Early each day I’ll send an email that will include some writing prompts along with a bit of encouragement, and then you’ll take it from there. That’s all there is to it.

If you’d like to participate in this ten day journaling series, let me know you’re interested by sending an email to tsundmark@protonmail.com and I’ll add your name to the list and send you a quick confirmation. Then you’ll hear from me again just before we get started. It’s free to join and there are no strings attached. At the end of the series there will an opportunity to offer a gift payment if you’ve found the experience meaningful, but absolutely nothing is required. For me this is about connection, and I’d love to have you join me.

An Empire of Earthworms

If you were to come visit us right now, you might feel a little overwhelmed by the nature of our house. Quite literally, we’ve brought nature inside. In our entryway we’ve got a good sized chrysanthemum plant that we’re going to try to winter over in case the ones we planted outside don’t make it. In our living space there’s a crock of sauerkraut burping away and four baskets of mint and marjoram waiting for a turn in the food dehydrator in the next room over. Near our wood stove we’ve got a good haul of onions draped over a clothes drying rack before we put them into deeper storage, and in our pantry we’ve got about a hundred garlic bulbs curing. I hate to admit it, but I’m kind of glad our potato harvest wasn’t terribly impressive this year.

As I was digging our few potatoes last weekend I witnessed something I’d never seen before, which was an earthworm producing an egg sac. What caught my attention about this particular worm was the white ring around its mid-section. It looked as though it had slithered into a small plastic ring or bead, and I watched the worm work to push the ring off its body, going long and skinny and then short and plump until eventually a little pale orb fell off of its body into the dirt. I’ve since learned that the ring was picking up sperm off of the worm’s body as it squirmed it off of itself, and once the sac was deposited onto the soil it contained scores of fertilized eggs. It was something to behold.

Peeking into the soil and seeing a healthy bunch of earthworms wriggling around is deeply satisfying but I’d never given much thought to earthworm reproduction. Anything I might have learned about them in my high school biology class had long since left my brain, so I took a short dive down that wormhole by reading the fifth chapter of Secrets of the Soil, a book about biodynamic agriculture by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird.

The chapter was packed with facts about earthworms and historical anecdotes. Turns out Cleopatra understood the Egyptian valley’s fertility depended upon earthworms and she decreed that they be revered and protected as a sacred animal. Aristotle called them the “Guts of the Soil” and Charles Darwin considered the earthworm to be the “greatest plowman, an animal of greater value than the horse, relatively more powerful than the African elephant, and more important to man than even the cow.”

And did you know that earthworms excrete a kind of mucus that helps them wriggle through hard ground, and that same mucus acts to cement the walls of their pathways, which in turn creates soil structure that’s perfect for retaining water and making space for the roots of plants? Or that earthworms have a gizzard that allows them to digest both organic matter and raw earth, and what comes out as worm castings on the other end is nearly perfect humus that’s loaded with microbes, giving plants what they need structurally, nutritionally and with the right pH?

These powerful, unassuming creatures go about their lives creating the fertile ground that allows us to grow gardens and feed ourselves. They mix organic matter and minerals around and up and down, gradually deepening the topsoil layer and distributing nutrients to where plant roots can reach them. In fact one earthworm can produce its weight in castings each day and can move a stone that’s fifty times its weight. What this means is that if the earthworm population is happy, no rototiller is needed. And that is why when I finished digging potatoes last weekend I covered the ground with grass clippings, nettle, dandelion leaves, comfrey and a bunch of beet greens and cabbage leaves. Then I added a layer of meadow straw that Dean had the foresight to rake and set aside back in May, before everything greened up, knowing that we’d need it now when it’s time to tuck our garden and our soil and all those hungry earthworms in for the winter.

This year’s garden is just about wrapped up. The garlic has been planted and all that’s left in the ground are carrots, parsnips and some kale. Over the next few weekends we’ll get the rest of the beds put away for winter. We’ll add a little compost and a layer of green. We’ll cover them all up with leaves and straw, and then we’ll walk away. In our absence, the earthworms and their microbial cohort will be mixing and churning. When the ground freezes they’ll go down deep. When it starts to thaw they’ll move up again toward the surface, and they’ll bring some of that deep earth goodness with them. In the spring when we peel that layer of straw off the garden bed we’ll find that somehow, even in the cold, the earthworms will have done what earthworms are meant to do and the soil will be ready for the seeds and the plants that will eventually grow into the food that feeds us. No matter how many times I see it or how many gardens I tend, I’ll never stop marveling over the way of it all.

I find that it’s easier to write about the changing seasons and growing a garden than it is to write about God. And I don’t mean God as a bearded fellow ruling the universe, I mean God as The Way Things Work. I mean God as the continuous cycle of death and renewal. I mean God as the all-encompassing glue that makes everything touch everything else. I mean God as that nameless energy that keeps the world spinning and the oceans churning and the earthworms tilling up the ground so that we can grow snap peas and sweet carrots and potatoes and the like. It’s much easier to stick to the facts but I can’t stop thinking about how within the workings of the natural world there’s something supernatural going on. Something so simple, so perfect, so sustainable. Something so honest, so straightforward, so real.

I don’t claim to understand how it all works, or why. I just know that in a world where it’s easy to be distracted by billionaires and politicians and the near-constant barrage of information and opinion, there is something bigger that is worthy of our attention, and that there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by reorienting our existence toward whatever that bigger thing is. To do so we might put our hands in the dirt and our feet on the ground. We might turn off the lights and look up at the night sky. We might notice how we change as the seasons change. We might learn the ways of plants and animals and fungi and each other. With practice we might remember the truth of who we really are.

And who are we, really? We’re humans with physical, temporary bodies that require nourishment and clean air and pure water. We have big brains that allow us to learn from the past and imagine the future. We’re as natural as the earthworms that are digging and tilling away in my garden and yet we have this incredible capacity to give and receive love. Where did that come from, I wonder. And how can we put it to use? There must be 8.1 billion different ways.

***

*** If you’d like to join me for a ten day journaling practice starting on Nov. 1, please send me an email at tsundmark@protonmail.com. Every day for ten days I’ll send out a few journal prompts that will get you started, and then you’ll take it from there. It’s free to join and I’d love to have your company. I promise I won’t share your email with anyone else. Feel free to share with anyone else who might be interested and let me know if you have any questions. — Teresa

Pointing Toward Winter

It’s fall equinox this weekend and this morning a light frost had settled outside, giving a gray hue to the kale and cabbage that’s still in the garden. This week we’ve draped row covers over the peas and chamomile each evening as the forecast calls for the temperatures to dip down to freezing, hoping to buy them a little more time. There’s a lot to do in the garden this time of year with harvesting and processing, planting next year’s garlic, and tucking in all the garden beds for winter. It’s a bit of a push when our energy is waning and our pull is toward slowing down and settling in.

I’m staring out at the landscape a lot these days, and in particular I find myself gazing out the window at our back garden. The fireweed back there didn’t bloom spectacularly this year like it normally does, but now it’s a mix of maroon and orange and red. The cottonwood and birch have turned yellow. The cow parsnip is fading and the alders are browning. A few of our flowers are hanging on, blue borage, purple comfrey, gold and yellow calendula, a couple of deep red poppies for punctuation. I’m enthralled with the colors themselves, but also with the depth of perspective they provide. Suddenly with a change in color it’s as if I can see more. More plants, more variety, more contours, more perspective.

A couple years ago I watched a video of a young man with colorblindness putting on a pair of glasses that allowed him to see colors he’d never seen before. I expected him to be wowed to see certain colors for the first time, and happy to have the visual experience most everyone else has. His reaction though, was one of overwhelm. He immediately burst into tears because it was all so much. He physically didn’t know how to respond to the sensory input he was suddenly tasked with processing.

I’ve also heard stories about people seeing colors they’ve never seen before while on psychedelics or during near death experiences. After the experience is over it’s impossible for them to describe the new colors because there are no words in our shared language for such things, but they have a memory, and an understanding that there’s more out there beyond our perception.

There is a book called Old Ireland in Colour by John Breslin and Sarah-Anne Buckley that features colorized versions of historical black-and-white photos. The book is beautiful and it became a bestseller in Ireland in 2020. But would the book have been a bestseller if it had just featured the black-and-white photos? Or was it hugely popular because of the added color? Does the addition of color allow people to feel a connection to the subjects of the photos – the children, the elders, the landscapes – that’s more profound?

What is it about color that changes our emotional response to a thing? How is it that we’re wired to respond to a smattering of wildflowers against a meadow of green, to alpenglow, to a sunrise? Why do these autumn colors compel me to think deep thoughts and ask so many questions?

Last week sandhill cranes flew overhead in huge noisy flocks, heading east over Kachemak Bay to begin their journey south for the winter. Now the squirrels are dropping spruce cones from the tops of trees in an effort to build their middens. Even my parents who spend their summers in Homer are starting their long drive back to Colorado on Monday morning.

Once again, like every year, everything is pointing toward winter. While I’d like to sit and write all day, the garden and all the bounty it’s offered us still need my attention. There are roots and herbs to dry, cabbage to ferment, and even a few berries still to pick. I know there will be time for more writing and reading soon enough.

While I’m out there I’ll take in all the colors and I’ll breathe in the cool fall air. I’ll work with my hands and let my mind roam free. I’ll feel the changing season and let myself change with it. I’ll feel the longing that seems to go hand in hand with the fall equinox. I’ll keep working, knowing that I’ll never really be done with all the tasks at hand, and I’ll keep coming up with questions I may never be able to answer. By the end of the day I’ll have added a few new things to my to-do list, and technically I won’t be any further ahead than when I started out, but I’ll be glad for how I passed my time.

***

On a different but not entirely unrelated note, three years ago, starting on the Autumn Equinox, I offered a twelve day journaling challenge. I invited people to sign up to receive an email a day for twelve consecutive days with a few prompts to get them going with their own writing. I put the idea out there without knowing what to expect but with hopes that people would discover a few things about journaling that I’ve discovered over the years, which is that it’s an amazing tool that lends itself to self-discovery and personal growth. It’s fun. It’s a way to jump-start a writing project or any creative endeavor. It can help a person work through a few things in their life that might need some attention and it almost always uncovers surprising insights and ideas.

Here’s the invitation I sent out three years ago: https://loftyminded.com/2020/09/16/lost-words-found-meaning-and-an-autumn-equinox-journal-series/

Around forty people signed up and for twelve days we journaled together. Many of the participants let me know that it was a mix of challenging, meaningful, fun, and inspiring. For me personally, it was the highlight of my year. I loved everything about it and I’ve been excited to do it again.

Finally I’ve settled on a start date for my next one. This time the start date will be November 1, 2023 and it will go for ten days.

I’ll send out a more formal invitation as Nov. 1 approaches, but I want to start getting the word out so that everyone who wishes to participate can start thinking about it and looking for that perfect journal. Please send me an email at tsundmark@protonmail.com if you’d like to sign up or if you have any questions, and I’d love it if you spread the word to anyone else you think might be interested.

Like last time, I’ll be offering this as a gift because I want to make it available to everyone who’d like to participate regardless of their financial situation. When it’s all said and done if anyone wants to and is able to offer a gift payment in exchange for participation in the series, there will be a way to do so. It’s 100% free to sign up and participate though, and I hope you will!

Five-Acre Almanac: Here Again

Early November

When I started my Five-Acre Almanac project I meant to write weekly for a year, but I fell a few weeks short. While I’m disappointed it didn’t work out the way I planned, I also believe there’s value in not pushing too hard. In reality working full time, managing a garden, starting a small business and writing a blog post every week proved to be too much and something had to give. Gardening couldn’t wait, and neither could mushroom hunting or summer weekend getaways. And those pesky bills were still due every month.

I never meant to take such a long break, but here I am almost four months since my last post, wondering where the time went and how to start again. My intention was just to ease up a bit on the writing and give my attention to the time sensitive aspects of summer. I thought my writing might become sporadic or less involved, but once I cut myself a little slack, sitting down in front of the computer for any extended amount of time began to feel impossible.

Writing requires vigilance, not just in sitting down and putting words on a page, but also in observing the world. While I can’t say that I missed the hours of sitting, I did miss the way writing puts me on alert and makes me notice things that might otherwise pass me by. I missed the exercise of braiding observations and thoughts together. I missed the magic that sometimes happens when I sit down to write about about one thing and something entirely different and unexpected rises to the surface.

I missed all of you too, and the very real connection I feel when I share myself through writing. It’s sometimes terrifying but I’ve come to appreciate the rewards that come from trusting that there’s a reason why I do this and that it’s not about self promotion or making money or even making it as a writer. I write this way on this blog because it feeds my soul. I do this because the practice has opened me up to something bigger than myself. Even so, this kind of writing is not effortless. I didn’t realize how much I needed a break until I allowed myself to take one.

Now though, I feel like it’s been long enough. Today I woke up early. The house was cold and instead of crawling back under the covers I decided to make coffee and get a fire going in the wood stove. I fed the dogs and stood outside on the porch while they did their business. Then I came back in and nestled into the couch under my favorite afghan and started writing again. It wasn’t until Dean woke up a while later that we realized that the time had fallen back an hour. Today that extra hour feels like a gift.

I guess I always want just a little more time. The nice thing about November though is that now many of the things I want to do with my time can wait. Today after I’m done getting this blog post written and posted, hopefully there will still be time to make some progress on our ongoing garage cleaning project. I also want to make bread and miso soup and maybe run the vacuum before the work week starts again. And while the sun is shining and the wind is calm I’d like to get outside and hang out by our fire pit for a couple of hours. But none of these things I hope to get to are so important that they have to push writing to the bottom of my to-do list.

That to-do list never really gets shorter, it just changes. But at least now the high-demand summer season has come and gone. It was glorious and we’ve got a bounty of food set aside for winter and enough dried herbs to get our fledgling tea business off the ground to prove it. We’ve also got memories of a weekend spent in a cabin on a lake and of running into lots of friends at a music festival. We picked more wild mushrooms than ever before and we had lovely Sunday dinners with my mom and step-dad.

I wouldn’t change anything about the way I’ve spent my time these last few months, but tonight when the darkness comes an hour earlier than it did yesterday, I won’t mind a bit. I’ll draw the curtains to keep the heat in. I’ll pour myself a cup of tea and I’ll find my way back to the couch and my computer. I’ll look to see who’s read these words and I’ll be thankful that I’m here again, back to doing this thing I love.

Five-Acre Almanac: July Energy

Week 45

All week I’ve been wondering when and how I’m going to find the time to sit and write this post. Whenever I think there is going to be time, something else comes along that seems to be more urgent. The truth is that our days are packed right now and I suspect they will continue to be for the next several weeks. Our summers may be short in terms of calendar days, but those individual calendar days have an awful lot of daylight in them and Alaskans typically try to fit into three months more than what’s humanly possible.

It’s time for gardening and having guests. The strawberries are ripening and the salmon are running. Our window of time for harvesting clover, fireweed, yarrow, plantain, raspberry leaves, and pineapple weed has opened and we’re trying to get enough to fulfill the needs of our fledgling herb tea business while we can. We still have full time jobs too, and we still need to eat and sleep and clean the kitchen now and again.

If this blog is meant to be a reflection of our lives on these five acres, then this post will have to reflect the fullness of these July days. It will have to reflect the way we move from one task to the next and the way we’re propelled forward by the season’s energy.

We can do this for a while. We can tend our garden and forage for wild herbs. We can stay up late visiting with friends. We can harvest a gallon of strawberries a day and empty our herb drying rack and fill it up again. We can make a batch of kimchi so as to not waste the greens and radishes we grew. We can brew up a batch of berry wine to clear the freezer of last year’s fruit. We can go to bed late, sleep hard if we’re lucky, and wake up early to a new day full of new tasks.

One of this weekend’s tasks was preparing a space for a Quonset hut on the northwestern corner of our property. The structure has been on our neighbor’s property for about fifty years and is part of the homestead that is being cleaned up and cleared out. We’ve wanted a covered space in that area for a long time but have not been able to prioritize the expense, and so when our neighbor proposed using a big piece of equipment to lift it up and plop it down on our property it seemed like an opportunity too good to refuse. It will need a foundation and a new cover, but it’s got a sturdy metal frame. And it was a gift. It’s amazing how sometimes if we wait, the things we need will come our way.

A road will go in just above our property line sometime later this summer so a semi can come in to remove cars, school buses, boats, house trailers, a giant boiler the size of a small house, and piles and piles of stuff that the original homesteaders collected. They saw value and potential in most everything, but now it’s time for it all to move on. Watching our neighbor clear out sixty year’s worth of collected homestead treasures makes our ever-looming garage project seem minuscule in comparison.

We said goodbye to a birch tree that was felled in order to make way for the pending road. It wasn’t on our property but it’s a tree we drove and walked past almost every day and we admired it from our back window. Nobody was happy to see it go but it seems there wasn’t a way to save it. To console myself I asked permission to go visit a much older birch on the property that hopefully isn’t going anywhere any time soon. I didn’t know of its existence until just a few weeks ago, but it’s a beauty, perhaps a relative of the grandmother birch that resides at the center of our own five acres.

I don’t know how a tree witnesses the world and I don’t know how a tree remembers. But it feels to me like the old birch trees are the historians of this place. They’ve survived high winds, heavy snow loads and moose munchings. Spruce have grown, died, and rotted around them. People have drawn and redrawn property lines that determine who owns them. Countless birds have perched on their branches and squirrels and ermine have tucked themselves inside their cracks and crevices. Bears, wolves and coyotes have sauntered beneath them. Porcupines have climbed up their trunks to hide away for sleeping.

A couple of years ago I was perusing the Alaska Digital Archives and found a photo of Grewingk glacier that was taken sometime between 1896 and 1913. The ice reached all the way out into the bay at a depth that was a quarter of the way up the mountain. I suspect the old birch trees around here were already well on their way when those photos were taken.

On Sunday as heavy equipment and chainsaws made way for the new road, I found some solace in the presence of that old burled birch tree and for a few minutes I put all of our crazy July hustle aside to marvel over its long and storied existence. I didn’t stay beside it for long because there were berries to pick and tomatoes to water in the greenhouse. There were herbs to shuttle from the drying rack to the pantry and as much as I wanted to forget about the sink full of dirty dishes in the kitchen, it wouldn’t stop gnawing at me. Of course there was this overdue blog post I wanted to start writing too.

Later, in my kitchen, I stood over the clean counter tops and looked out the back window at the space where the road is going to be built and where the birch tree used to be. I looked at the Quonset hut that’s now on our property and it hit me that for as long as we live here our list of things to do is going to keep growing longer. We’re never going to reach a point of having everything done because for every one thing we accomplish there are at least three more added to the queue.

As is often the case these days, I was too tired for writing at the end of the day so instead I made myself a cup of tea and sat for a few minutes before going to bed. Never in my younger years would I have predicted that one day I’d be thrilled about acquiring an old Quonset hut. I never knew that I’d find such satisfaction in growing garden vegetables or foraging for herbs. And I never imagined that I’d feel closest to God next to an old birch tree. But here I am, tired and happy.

Five-Acre Almanac: Magic Lupine/Lupine Magic

Week 44

I started this writing project last August when we were in the middle of a tremendously busy summer. It seemed like a strange time to commit to a weekly post, but I did it anyhow because I felt compelled to do so. I knew it would be a challenge but I wanted to put myself to the test and see what I was meant to learn along the way.

I set a few boundaries and guidelines for my writing before I started. First, I decided to allow myself to acknowledge that our society is out of balance in my posts, but I would not dwell on those imbalances or make my posts about my opinions.

The second guideline I set for myself was to share in each of my posts something about the relationship I have with the natural world. Most of my time is spent here on these five acres, so it made sense to keep it close to home.

I also made myself a deal to not get caught up in perfectionism, which is hard. Now that I’m down to my last couple of months of writing these posts I’ve discovered that the harder I try to write the perfect post, the less happy I am with it. When I try too hard to control the direction a piece of writing wants to go, the less room there is for surprise. I know this, and yet I have to learn this over and over again.

One of the best things that’s come from committing to write every week is that I’m learning how to get out of my own way. I’m learning how to listen less to my chattering brain and more to my heart. When I’m successful with this, I’m having fun. When I’m caught up in trying to come up with a clever line or insert my own version of meaning into a piece, I grow weary of my own voice. Like everything, this takes practice, and ultimately that’s what I’m doing with the Five-Acre Almanac. I’m practicing.

It’s a writing practice, but it’s more than that.

It’s a practice in knowing myself and my surroundings. It’s a practice in finding hope. It’s a practice in seeing wonder. It’s a practice in being authentic. It’s a practice in trying to connect with people. Mostly it’s a practice in setting myself aside and allowing for something beyond myself to find its way through.

This week it’s been hard for me to set my thinking brain aside for long enough to sit down and write as I’ve been engaged in imaginary arguments with people whose minds I’m never going to change. I even considered breaking the rules I set for myself when I set out on this year-long writing project in order to make my opinions known, but then I remembered that I set those rules for reasons I can’t fully explain.

This is a practice in setting myself aside. This is a practice in embracing the quiet rather than the noise. This is a practice in trying to live above and beyond my opinions about how the world should be. This is a practice in letting the Natural World, the Way of things, God, the Divine, teach me something new.

***

Some of you who live here might remember that a few years ago there was no lupine blooming anywhere around the Kenai Peninsula. The few plants we found on our property looked shriveled and unhealthy and none of them flowered. Our neighbors commented on their absence and even in places where they were commonly found there were no blooms. But this year they exploded. They popped up unexpectedly in our garden. Roadsides are lined with them from the Homer Spit all the way up the Peninsula. Where a single lupin plant could once reliably be found, this year there are a dozen.

I wish I knew the scientific explanation of why the lupine are having such a good year and why they failed to bloom a few years back, and I’m curious to know if there is a connection between the two. What I do know is that all the conditions that allow them to thrive must have come together at once and the result has been a stunning display of every shade of purple.

There’s a form of alternative medicine that has to do with understanding a flower’s essence and it’s based on the idea that flowers have a healing vibrational energy. When I first heard about it, the idea that a flower could bring any kind of healing seemed far fetched, but that was more about me than it was the flowers. Now I think about plants differently.

Now I think that healing can come in surprising forms.

This year the lupine was so abundant that it seemed like it might be shouting to get our attention, like it was pushing its healing vibrational energy on us a bit forcefully, so I looked it up online to see what its energetic properties might be. The first thing that came up was “Lupine – Challenging the Human Soul to Greater Acts of Generosity and Selflessness.”

For two weeks, the lupine held our attention with its beauty, and that was a gift. But maybe its greater gift was something beyond its beauty. Maybe as our eyes took in all those shades of purple we were taking in something more. I like to imagine it’s possible.