This has been an extremely difficult month. I haven’t written because, in my head, it was important that this blog be uplifting, light, happy. It has been mostly about our new life in France and I haven’t wanted anyone around me to feel that I regret the decision to move here. But, I am realizing is that one can be both grateful for what we have and also grieve what has been lost. I can be happy to be in a long-term partnership and miss the excitement of new love. I can feel lucky to be alive and struggle with getting older. Life is complicated. It is messy. It is often tedious and uninspiring. And, sometimes exhilarating. Life can bury us under an avalanche of sorrows or send us catapulting into the clouds on wings of joy. All to say, it is never really easy or simple. Life demands that we grow, whether we want to or not.

A new friend in the village has fallen in love with the love of her life. The village is rather lost, tucked into the crevices of deep forest and vast expanses of cow pasture. There is not a lot going on. Our population is somewhere between 170 and 174 people, depending on how many newcomers there are and how many centenarians breathe their last. So, to say it was unlikely at best is no stretch. Yet, it has happened. It was not straightforward because she was already in a relationship with someone whom she loved deeply but who has been depressed and withdrawn for over a year. When I told her how happy I was for her, she responded by saying that she felt like life was tearing her to pieces. I imagine that is how it must feel when we are being born. The passageway between one way of being and another is often devastating but we come out the other side a new person. Last night, she stopped by with her new love on their way to the big village costume ball which signals the end of summer vacation and, for those of us who live here all year long, the return to quiet and calm and the beginning of the long winter. I hardly recognized her, or her new partner. They were radiant, transformed, filled with new love and hope.

I want to say that it didn’t make me just a little bit sad, but that would be a lie. I had a costume all picked out: I was going to go as a peacock because I have a large number of peacock feathers that I gathered last year at my mother’s house (gratefully, because the last peacock died shortly after). I didn’t end up going. My heart was just not in it. I have been moping around for over a week now. Down in the dumps, my mother would say. I wondered if I was, perhaps, getting sick. I never get sick so it seemed unlikely, but I couldn’t find any other explanation for my total lack of enthusiasm for life. This morning, as I was walking the dog in the gift of cooler weather, I realized that I am grieving the loss of my youth. I stayed young for a very long time, thanks to the great genetics of our parents and my very active lifestyle. But, I am officially over the hill now. And, while I don’t wish for a new love to upend my peaceful life, it would be nice to still feel attractive. Watching the younger women fall in love has only made it clearer to me that I have lost whatever it was that drew men’s attention all my life. It feels sad. Like a kind of death. It happens to everyone, I know…I know. I understand that but it is happening to ME now and I am grieving the loss of the girl I was. Never the most beautiful or popular girl in the room but not invisible. Not like now.

Suddenly, I understand how Madame Huguet must feel. She is in her 90’s and was clearly a very lovely woman in her youth. Life has humbled her and she is not happy about it. When I ask her how she is doing, she replies, “Pas terrible” which, oddly enough means not very good. I understand how my neighbor, Sophie, must be feeling. She took a very bad fall from her horse a few months ago and broke several important bones. She is having to grapple with the very probable reality that she will never ride again. Just as I am realizing I should never ride again either. The idea of falling again just terrifies me. I understand how my mother must feel as pain rules her days and nights. I always thought aging would be easier for me than her because I was never truly beautiful like she and my sister are, but it isn’t true. Society judges women primarily by how we look. Youth determines beauty, to a large degree. Men are generally judged by my how many dollars they can make in an hour but women are expected to look good. To look young. To be appealing. Most societies don’t find age very attractive on a woman. So, it is a challenge to find where one’s worth lies when the years take over one’s face and body.

So, what to do? One can’t give up, certainly. We have to keep going. I’m not sure why exactly, but I am sure we do, have to keep going. If only so those who love us don’t suffer unnecessarily. Or, perhaps, reincarnation is real and we will have to come back and do it all again. Thank you but, no. So, where do we find the strength to continue when we have no desire to do so? Where do we find hope when the world has gone dark around us?

For me, it has always been beauty. The beauty that surrounds me. The beauty I create. The potential of beauty everywhere. The rain that falls just as everyone is about to give up hope. The beauty in a really good bottle of Saint Emilion. The beauty in my puppy’s joy in getting to go to the rigole, for the nine hundredth time. The joy in the harvest that came out of my own efforts. Seeds that became pumpkins, peppers, tomatoes, squash and eggplant. The mystery of fresh figs left on my doorstep. The design that feels just right. The sun setting over the hayfields. It is the loss of beauty that drags me down but it is the beauty around me that keeps me going. It is the beauty of this world that I will miss when it is my time to go.

I’ll leave this post with a poem I wrote a long time ago. The last line is the one that I keep coming back to. Get up now. Enough with grieving. The beauty of the world is calling.

How Could I Not Love?

Splayed out where I have stumbled,

legs and arms twisted and tangled,

I decide to not gather

together my broken pieces.

Not just yet.

I want to take a good look

at this muddy mess

of beast and spirit,

burdened by a heart

too heavy, too vast

to carry

in a tidy package.

Yes, I am unwise.

Out of step.

Out of time.

Out of my mind.

I know well how

to give everything

and lose it

on a foolish gamble.

But, oh how sweet,

how like a flower

erupting in my chest,

how bitter and cleaving

to have held you all night,

naked in your beauty

and cravenness,

to have watched you shed

your shell in the milky light

then crawl into me,

a pilgrim

an innocent

a man

unbroken.

How could I not

take you?

Take the world?

Take each trembling

lost and lonely soul of us

to my aching breast to suckle,

to succor?

Though it cleave me

in two, render me

fractured and fallen?

From here I see

the tender face of God

gazing down, with sad compassion.

“Time…to get up…now”

she whispers.

Sometimes the decisions we make in life come with unexpected gifts and consequences. Certainly, they are not always simple, straightforward or easy. The decision to move to France has been like that, from start to finish.

I once saw a cartoon of a cat shoved down into a glass jar, head first. The caption reads something like: Cat, having tried very hard to get somewhere, wonders where it is she’s got. I saw that cartoon probably 40 years ago and it has haunted my every decision since. I am very much like that cat and can push and push and then push some more to do something, often against every red light put in my path to slow me down. Being a fairly quick study, I am aware of that tendency and also of my tendency to often regret the decisions I have forced through, in spite of every effort to stop me. During the process of moving to France, I checked in often to see if I was swimming against the current or if I was in the flow. It felt like the Universe helped in every way possible to make this move a reality so, even when it feels hard, I feel certain it has been the right decision.

Yet, I miss a lot about my life that I left behind. I miss my best friend. I miss my gardens and the option of creating new gardens. I miss my sister. I miss having really good cappuccino at our favorite coffee house. I miss my language and of moving fairly effortlessly in my own culture. I miss feeling confident I am not going to be refused the right to remain in the country. I suppose every decision requires we let go of something dear in order to gain something else that will be also dear in time. In all that I am missing, I am keenly aware of how difficult it must be for immigrants who are forced to leave their own countries because of war, famine, climate change, lack of work, etc. For me, it was relatively easy to move. It was a choice. I was able to ship most of my beloved belongings and to travel comfortably. But, what about people who are crammed onto overcrowded boats. People who have to leave everything behind. People who have to make the decision to risk their children’s lives in a stranger’s van or the back of a truck or on a rubber boat in the middle of an ocean. Because not making that decision means certain death. Deciding between uncertain death and certain death. Then, they arrive and are met with hatred or guns or forced back onto the boats to go back to, where? Certain death. There really is no element of choice involved. It is survival at its rawest. It puts my missing into perspective. It allows me to feel compassion, one of the most valuable of human emotions, in my opinion. Compassion usually arises out of our own need to make impossible decisions, the unbearable moments of grief and suffering, or mistakes that cost us everything. These experiences that nearly kill us also allow us to understand others and their all-too-human frailties. It is one of the emotions that separates us from machines. It may be what saves humanity from a cyborg takeover. Maybe.

We live in a time of great uncertainty. The world is changing at lightning speed, and it doesn’t feel like good change. We are witnessing a drastic shift in global temperatures and weather patterns. This was the hottest year on record in France. It has been exhausting and terrifying. We are witnessing the emergence of AI, with all the uncertainty that comes with that. We are seeing wealth siphoned out of the hands of the many and into the hands of the few. People are losing their homes, their jobs, their sense of place and self. It creates an undercurrent of deep anxiety and I see it in the faces of nearly everyone around me. I want to gather all of my people near me. I want to hold onto the simple things that make life meaningful. I want to hide away from the all-seeing eye of satellites and technology. I want to stop time.

How do we find balance in a world that is spinning, faster and faster? How do we find truth when everything can be doctored and manufactured? When reality has become illusion? I am reminded of Madeleine Engle’s book “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” where a mad dictator is on the verge of unleashing a nuclear holocaust. The hero travels through time to inhabit his ancestor’s minds in order to find the answer to change history.

To me, this is a call to return to a way of thinking and living that existed before we outgrew our own wisdom as a species. I am not sure how we do that as a planet but I do think that each one of us can make an effort to return to a way of life that honors and respects the planet we rely upon. We can make an effort to buy locally and to choose to support real people rather than turning to quick answers from artificial reality machinery. We can consciously build community and kindness and habits of joyfulness. We can slow down. Unplug more often. Share meals and labors. Learn more about harvesting wild foods, and growing our own.

I borrowed a friend’s greenhouses this summer and we are now overrun with cherry tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and potatoes. Pumpkins, spaghetti squash, and watermelon are on their way. The plum tree and blackberries in my yard are bowed down under the weight of fruit. My mother is busily making ratatouille and salsa with everything we have grown. My job is to dig potatoes and figure out how to store them, and to preserve the plums. Please leave a comment of your favorite ways to preserve Mirabelle yellow plums. I am going to have far too many!

This weekend I got to enjoy the Water, Rock and Forest festival (Eau, Pierre, Foret) celebrating both the nature and the history of the Black Mountains. Communal meals with music and performances were held each evening. People brought food and wine to share with others at the table. Hikes into the forests, meditation, intentional walking, dancing, singing, and art were some of the offerings of the weekend. It reminds me that we are stronger together than we are divided. That we are more alike than we are different. That we all have everything to lose if we don’t decide to save that which is valuable, truly valuable.

Aurora sings “You cannot eat money, ah no. When the last tree has fallen and the rivers are poisoned, you cannot eat money, oh no”. These are not really her words, however. They are, most likely, taken from a Native American, Alain Obomsawin, who said something to that effect in 1894. Which only goes to show that greed is not a new phenomenon. It is just that it feels like our greed and our ability to impact the planet have grown to obscene proportions. That can feel overwhelming and depressing. But, the answer to this problem is, and has always been, the same. We have to get our feet under us and firmly on the ground upon which we walk and rely upon. We have to get out of our heads and our fears and move more into our bodies and our joys. We have to turn away from the dark and desolate inside and turn toward our neighbors, our families, our friends, total strangers. Rather than thinking of what we lack and what we want, we can think of what gifts we already are fortunate enough to possess and what gifts we have to share. Through sharing we build crucial networks and webs of caring.

I hope that this finds you surrounded by community. I hope that this finds you with someone who cares, and someone to care for. I hope that this finds you with your feet in a body of water, the sun on your skin, the forests whispering above your head. I hope that nature’s beauty is filling your soul with peace. I hope that this finds you with your heart wide open and your arms open wider still. Only we can be the change we wish to see in the world. That gives me hope.

I’ll leave you with the new prayer I awaken with each morning: May I remain open to receive the beauty of this day and all the gifts it holds for me.

There was a small fairy in the garden last evening. It is difficult to capture magical beings in photos, but she did stay still long enough for me to get this rather blurry image. The village is quiet for summer as we are all hidden behind our thick stone walls where the heat has not yet taken over so foxes, squirrels and other animals that usually hide can be spotted from time to time trotting down the main street. The dog and I go for our village walk early in the morning, then we drive to the rigole to play in the water under the shade of ancient beech trees around mid-day, and then again out to walk just as the sun is setting and cool ribbons of air slip through the cracks of heat. Each evening as dusk falls, I water the garden enough to keep it alive. Last night I noticed a little bee butt wriggling down into the soft violet petals of the artichoke that I left to flower for just this purpose. I am always impressed to see several species of bees, and often butterflies, working the same flower quite peacefully.

This morning, when I headed out to let the dog into the precious cool moments before the sun climbs over the horizon, I found the bumblebee, nose down, in the flower. Wondering if it was alive, I gently nudged it. It sleepily crept onto my extended finger and hung on with prickly feet. I swear it stretched and yawned. I gently put it back on its bed to wake up slowly. These moments of magic are keeping me going as the heat drags on day after day.

I’ve been feeling a strong presence in the forest these days. It is as if someone, quite large, has stepped up behind and is standing quietly, close to me. The noise and air actually change. I am fairly certain I am sensing the tree energies, if that makes sense. When we walk through the cool forest or along the shaded rigole, I always thank the trees. They are protecting the water that is so vital to our survival. They are blocking the worst of the sun’s strong, hot gaze. They are cleaning the air we are breathing. They are supporting a multitude of insects, birds, squirrels, fungi and so much more. They hold the soil together and pull nutrients up to the surface for smaller plants like the Columbine I love so much. Then, yesterday, my eye was drawn to this tree; I felt like it had communicated something profound with me. Nature is just waiting for us to come to our senses. To realize how our actions are destroying the possibility for survival on this miraculous planet. Any small, loving action we take the time to make is appreciated. I am increasingly certain of it.

My little potager has been feeding me, and my neighbors, all summer. The lettuce has all finally gone to flower but now the yellow and purple bush beans are coming on in abundance. I’ve made 10 jars of pickles with the cucumbers grown in my friend’s greenhouses. Peppers are ripening and tonight I made a green curry with gorgeous eggplant I harvested yesterday. The plants have had issues with aphids and I noticed a few days ago that they are now covered with lady beetle lions, happily feasting on the little sap-sucking pests. This is why it is so important to not use pesticides of any kind. I washed off as many aphids as I could with a strong spray of plain water and made sure the plants were staked and a few days later these little superheroes showed up to take over the job. Bumblebees have been pollinating the flowers and the plants are loaded with the most amazing, heavy eggplants.

The tomatoes are taking their time ripening but are so heavy with fruit that no matter how I try to stake them up they are all tilting like drunkards each time I go to check on them. For some reason, the watermelons delight me the most. Perhaps they remind me of hot, humid summers on Mrs. Cosby’s screened porch eating fresh watermelon and listening to the ladies talk in their thick southern accents. It is such a joy to harvest food I grew from small seeds. There will be pounds of potatoes, if we are lucky, to be harvested in the late summer.

There was a nest perched on top of my friend’s mops in the basement. He must have forgotten the door open for a few days, or maybe this industrious bird decided it was a nice, cool spot to nest and darted in and out each time he opened the door. Unfortunately for her, he didn’t see the nest when he closed the door and left for a few days. We left it open several days after discovering the nest, in hopes she would come back, but she never did and we finally removed the nest and the forgotten eggs. I see traces of our life here in the hay that makes up the body of the nest and the tufts of sheep fur she has tucked in to make a nice soft birthing place. Sometimes the best laid plans go astray, despite our best efforts.

I have discovered glow worms in the garden! They remind me of my childhood on the East Coast where the dusk air would be alight with fireflies and my little sister and I would run around, barefoot and bare-legged, trying to catch them to put in mason jars. When the pup and I take our last tour of the garden each evening around midnight, I often see the glow worms, neon green, in the grass or the patch of mint. This one looks like it is most likely a female because of its huge size (comparatively speaking). I brought it in just to take a picture and then took it back to its hiding spot, in case there were eggs nearby. I am amazed by how much it looks like a chiton. It is a kind of land chiton that glows.

I have been working on organizing all of my Illustrator files and the over 1000 designs I have obsessively created over the past 3 years. It is a bit overwhelming but it is also fun to see how my design work has grown. I still don’t really get the concept of “collections” but I am working on it. I almost gave up on the whole idea about 3 weeks ago and, in a last ditch effort, I finally gave in and asked Chatgpt to tell me, please and honestly, if my work was any good as compared to other surface pattern designers on the web. The response I got has given me new direction, and hope. And, some very good ideas for how to refine and clarify my style and vision. I hate to admit that I was really impressed, actually. I know the environmental costs and the dangers but it was like talking to the best personal coach I could have ever had. I’m a bit blown away. I have made a website that, while not finished, I am feeling pretty happy with. The section that comes next, the gallery, is what started the organizing of files. At the rate I am moving at, it will be a while before I get the gallery up and running. Have a look, if you are interested: www.pollinatepanoply.com

Somehow, each day is full to the brim. I don’t think I have had a bored moment in many years, but that is especially true here. There is always something to do, somewhere to go, someone to talk to, ceilings to paint, repairs to make, weeds to pull, puppies to walk. I feel wealthy, in all ways. What more could want than to be happily engaged in things that bring about beauty and joy in the world? Well, maybe to not have sore hips and knees or wrinkles but, such is life. I work to remember to celebrate the small moments of peace that arrive in each day. We never know when things can change. My friend, Sophie, just fell from her horse a few days ago and broke a bunch of bones, including in both arms and wrists. She is at a “re-education” center for the next 6 weeks. It took only a few seconds for her life to change. My other friend, Camille, desperately wants a sweetheart and thinks it will never come to her. She is losing hope. I tell her that we just never know. Life can change in a second. We just have to hold on. We just have to enjoy every moment. To believe that this is the most beautiful, magical, perfect moment of our lives. To be filled with gratitude, no matter how challenging the time, for this opportunity to be alive. To be present for the endless and open possibilities that beckon us onward, deeper into the beauty of the day. We will never be this young again. We will never have this day again. On difficult days, I celebrate the gentle in and out of breath. I remember my stints at the Vipassana center: enicha, nothing stays the same. What we do have, every second of every day, is now. This moment. And, then this one. I have wasted so many years being depressed and I can only think that my practice of gratitude is what has changed that for me. For that, I am grateful.

Now to bed for my tired puppy and me. I hope you enjoy reading these little snippets.

Today I went to Lautrec to explore and enjoy a few hours on my own. I didn’t take the dog, and I didn’t need to be anywhere. I just went for pleasure. I realized it was the first time since arriving in France that I had gone somewhere, alone, simply for fun. I stopped at the small bakery, where the three women ahead of me were taking far too long as is not uncommon here. A man came in behind me, clearly in a hurry; he had left his work truck running outside. We exchanged a look equivalent to an eye roll with a smile. Since I wasn’t in a rush, I told him to go ahead of me. He gratefully accepted, grabbed his late lunch, and hurried back out. I bought a beautiful baguette and a muffin for tomorrow’s breakfast, then headed into the small village center.

I had come here months ago with my mother, so I had a vague idea of the layout. There had been an older man in a garage with a kind of yard sale set up and he was still there today. I hadn’t stayed long last time because he assured me his dog was very nice just as his dog lunged, snarling, at my dog. Internally I laughed as I thought of Inspector Clouseau ‘s “Does your dog bite?” from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Peter Sellers is one of the best comedic actors of all time, imo. Watch for a quick giggle:

This time I was without a dog so I went in. The older gentleman greeted me with “Bonjour princesse” and started showing me dresses he considered suitable for a princess such as myself. The first, clearly his favorite, was a peachy pink affair in crepe. I pointed out that it was A. way too big for me and B. clearly not my style but thank you so much for the suggestion. He agreed that it was, indeed, too large and remarked that I really was quite a petite thing, wasn’t I. Shoes were suggested and more frills. I went straight for an enormous, vintage encyclopedia and beautiful embroidered bedspread, at 2 euros and 1 euro each, respectively. He asked if I was married to which I replied, “more or less, yes”. He then proceeded to tell me he was 87 years old. I was shocked, but I am often shocked in France by how young people look once they are over 80. He then told me that he had started his yard sale venture because his wife of 63 years had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck 6 years before and he had to come up with something to stop crying.

He said they had met in an orphanage when they were 14 years old. They had both lost their parents during the war. They found comfort in one another and were married as soon as they were old enough. He said they had gone everywhere together. To the market, to the doctor, everywhere and, then, she had made her “betisse” and fell down the stairs and left him alone. The year before she died, she insisted they buy a puppy. He had told her they were too old for a puppy but she insisted. This is not the first time I have heard such a story. There was a man in New Mexico who always brought his Pekinese to the park; his wife had also insisted upon buying the puppy the year before she died. It reinforces my belief that we always know when our time is coming. We don’t know we know, but our soul knows and it tries to prepare us, and our loved ones. I tell my friend G that his husband must have known as well because I showed up just 2 weeks before his husband died and I am the perfect friend, from his perspective, since I pose no threat to his memory. He was always jealous and afraid someone would steal G from him, but a woman is no threat whatsoever.

M. Cavalier is the gentleman’s name and it is a perfect name for him. He is indeed a knight. He told me he did all the repairs around the house, and any hard work like scrubbing floors. He cooked and cared for his wife all her life. As tears began to trickle down his cheeks, he smiled and told me that he had been blessed to love his wife and that he was keeping himself busy until he could see her again. He wished me good day and, with a sparkle in his eye, told me to come back to visit soon. I am always amazed at the magic that happens to me when I wander around alone. These moments are treasures. Like the dragonfly wings I find scattered along the edges of the streams. Or the Kiwi flowers like ballerinas dancing along the stems of my mother’s overgrown vine, or the wild strawberries beginning to fruit just at fairy level, and the ancient Beech trees chatting far above my head. Moments of such beauty, I clasp them to my heart with a gasp. The world offers herself generously to us every minute of every day.

Our local WhatsApp chat went crazy over the past few days. Apparently, there is someone in the village who is setting some sort of noose trap and cats are being caught and injured in these traps. My friend A is in a fury because her cat has been caught twice now and recently another cat was found hanging by its neck. Someone cut him loose but they weren’t able to get the noose off. There were messages flying all night long about how best to capture the cat to remove the noose and what should be done to the “connard” doing the trapping and finally a message that perhaps it would be better not to start naming names but rather to contact the appropriate authorities. It has been quite a drama. But, at the end of the day, it shows how much our village cares about animals and kindness. A fellow was nominated to go talk to the trapper to try to convince him to stop before authorities are brought in. It is interesting how everyone seems to know exactly who the culprit is, and how reluctant they are to involve authorities. There are so many undercurrents and so much bad blood between families but I, thankfully, am mostly oblivious to it and am mostly left out of it. In my life there is, so far, just goodness and kindness.

My friend, C, is in town for a few weeks. She is, unlike me, a true extrovert and cannot stand to be alone for 5 minutes so she is often at my house until the wee hours of the night. Last night, she hung out until way after dinner time so I opened a good bottle of wine and made dinner. Food is definitely her love language. Then, she heard another neighbor pass by and invited him in for coffee. Finally, at midnight, I suggested it was time everyone went home. I heard them later, still laughing in the street. She is a powerhouse of energy and mischief. I adore her but am so happy to go to my quiet, peaceful bed.

Hay is being harvested in the fields. We are finally able to go out to play again in the pastures now that the grass has been cut. The dog and I have both had ticks and I am starting to develop a phobia. We have been going to the Rigole every day so she can swim, and to avoid the tall grass. The other day we encountered a young Australian Shepherd with an older couple. The woman was having great difficulty holding onto the puppy, so I suggested she let it loose to play with my dog. After about 20 minutes, it was clear my dog was fed up, so we ran around trying to catch the puppy. Once caught, the woman handed the leash to her husband, who was in a wheelchair. As the puppy dragged him closer to the edge of the rigole we both rushed over to rescue him before he could fall in. It was chaos. I was happy to walk away with my dog and not their puppy, but I do worry a bit for them. I hope everyone survives.

It has been chilly and stormy here this past week and the light has been amazing. Bees are busy and fruit is forming. The Swifts are nesting in the rock walls of the houses and screaming up and down the streets at dusk. Bats come out from somewhere each evening and hunt gnats and mosquitos. We have a Hibou Moyen Duc, otherwise known as a Long-Eared Owl, hanging out in the garden next door. It makes an odd grating noise like a squeaky gate rather than a hoot. It is a gorgeous bird and fairly common in our area. Little by little, I am learning how to be here. Words are starting to clump together in groups of comprehensible sounds. I have a handyman to help me with the many repairs that need to be done to the house. We have been repairing cracks in the facade, painting window frames and doors and shutters and it looks so beautiful. The bars were removed from the downstairs windows and that has changed the feeling entirely.

I feel looked after by the Universe, in every way. Today, coming back from Lautrec, I took the back way up the mountain. It is much shorter but my heart is always in my throat because it is a single-track road that winds and twists like a corkscrew. There are huge logging trucks going up and down this road (I don’t know how it can be allowed!) so there is a strong probability of encountering a fully loaded double trailer truck full of dead trees on any one of the many hairpin turns. I pray the whole way up. Today, just as I came out of the forest and was turning off of the winding road, a huge loaded logging truck was turning to come down the road. I thanked my angels and whoever it is who is always on duty looking after me. If I had been 3 minutes slower, I would have run into him on a blind turn. I feel so blessed. So looked after. So lucky.

This Furrow Bee was hard at work this morning on the Gaillardia in my garden. Watch how she tucks the pollen into her pollen baskets and then, every so often, pauses to drink some nectar. So amazing! Nature is just mind blowingly cool. Every act of kindness on her behalf is appreciated, I am sure.

I will attempt to catch up with all of the beautiful, funny, interesting things that have happened in the past month. The days are filled to the brim and I often think that I will take the time to write down something that happened, or something that made me laugh out loud, and then I find myself tired, like tonight, and I forget to write it down and then I forget it completely. Lost gifts. So, I am going to work through my photos to try to remember all that has happened…or at least the highlights.

We have a new couple in the village. They are gutting a house just down the street from ours. He has a perpetually amused look that lights up his weathered, leathery face and she is rarely without a cigarette in her mouth. I haven’t spent much time around them but my friend, Camille, is across the street from them and she has struck up a fast friendship. As they were cleaning out the upstairs, they came across boxes of ancient nightgowns of the sort I have often searched for in Emmaeus. Hand-spun linen with hand-embroidered initials. I believe these are from the turn of the century, if not earlier. Camille dared them to dress up in the nightgowns. Alain, always up for a joke or a laugh, quickly created this scene. The photo was taken by Camille and she posted it on the village listserve for all to see. I can only imagine how hard they must have laughed.

A few days ago I went on my first hike with one of the village associations that is mapping out all of the water sources in our area: chercheurs de les sources. I had asked if it would be okay to bring my dog and they somewhat reluctantly agreed. Somewhere between arriving and departing, my friend Anne had handed me the leash for her dog, Paco, and asked if I could take him with us. So, there I was with 2 dogs. With sighs all around we set off. After an hour of hiking through thick underbrush, to follow the small stream that feeds the lake, we realized we were pretty much totally lost. Right about that time, I realized that Paco had disappeared as well. With much discussion of what direction to head off in, and yelling for Paco, we started climbing uphill. Finally, we found a road and Paco showed up shortly afterwards with feathers stuck between his teeth. At no point did anyone get upset or complain. We just kept walking in what felt like the right direction and eventually everything came back together again.

I have taken over the neglected greenhouses at Guy’s house and planted tomatoes, peppers, squash, and eggplant for my mother’s ratatouille. Cucumbers for the pickles I am craving. Potatoes for winter. And, watermelon because I love it. The squash are bursting out of the greenhouse. Tomatoes are already forming. Cucumbers are starting to come on. And, one small eggplant has formed.

The pup and I stayed at his house a few nights to take care of his dog while he was away. It was like stepping through a time slip. Our room felt like that of a castle in the Middle Ages. The pup seems right at home. Like a werewolf, she was on duty defending the castle, all night long.

Yesterday, I woke up early and took her to a nearby lake. There were a few fisherman on the near side so we headed across the dam to the far side to swim. She was so happy she bounced like a bunny as she raced to the water’s edge. She would look back for permission to jump in but, since we were so close to the dam and it is dangerous, I kept saying “keep going…go find your spot” and she would bunny hop/run a bit farther down the lake’s edge. She would run a few steps and then look back, waiting for me to throw her stick. She makes me laugh out loud because she jumps into the water like a child. She belly flops, squinches her eyes shut and turns her head away from the splash and begins doggy paddling for all she’s worth. It makes a tickle in my belly and a catch in my throat. She is so precious and I love her so intensely that I feel I could burst sometimes.

Lunch was at my mother’s house. It is still a novelty and a wonderful thing that I can just get in the car and drive to her house for lunch. We worked together afterward in her wild, beautiful garden where poppies, peonies, delphiniums and sage bloom with reckless abandon. She has just had a successful surgery on her back and, like the trooper she has always been, is recovering like a champ. I never doubted her strength but it is a relief nonetheless. We went to Toulouse to see Swan Lake the weekend before and stayed in a great hotel called L’Hotel des Beaux Arts, just in case you happen to need a hotel in Toulouse.

As I was driving home, a new neighbor invited me to join him as he banded birds. He is a naturalist who specializes in birds and bird diseases. Each year he sets up long lines of nets on his property to live-catch birds to measure them and band them or record the information on the bands from previous years. He moves fast and I was hard pressed to keep up with him. He is sure and gentle with the birds and they seem to just relax in his hands.

Each day there is some new, challenging, lovely thing that happens. Often when I least expect it and even more often when I least want it to happen. Today, I overslept. With the shutters closed and the curtains drawn it could be midnight or, as it happened today, 10 am. I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know, in fact, and woke up in a bit of a panic, threw on some clothes, ran down my very steep, very French stairs, and opened the curtains to find Michel already here and working on the patio. His coffee was late. As was I. I raced around, stumbling over the dog who was also in a bit of a hurry to go for her walk. As I was making coffee, our new doorbell rang and there was Alain, the nearly blind gentleman who comes every few months to the hamlet next door, and his young friend Julien. Alain had brought some plants for me. On a whim I invited them for an apero later in the day and off they went to talk to another Alain about shutters. I threw on some shoes and the dog and I headed out to the rigole for her swim. After that we went to a nearby village whose main attraction is a gorgeous ruin of a Cathar castle. What takes me there most often is the small épicerie (grocery) run by Sophie. Since I had now committed to an apero (this is another word for a small tapas style pre-dinner consisting of cheese, sausages, bread, olives and anything else that can be nibbled along with good wine or champagne) I needed to do some shopping. Sophie has an amazing selection of local cheeses and other goodies. Then, I headed down the mountain to buy more paint. We are painting all of the windows and window frames to brighten up the face of the house. This has started a whole cascade of other work but I will save that for another day. Suffice it to say, once you scratch the surface the whole thing begins to unravel. By the time I got back and walked the dog again, my friend Guy had arrived. Right behind him was the wife and grandson of Michel, who was still working.

Then, Alain and Julien showed up. Alain had his arms full of gifts for me: cheese, fruit in liqueur, cds of French music to improve my enunciation, tomato plants, a mystery box for my “Zen” garden and a mirrored French café sign. Everyone was talking in rapid French and Alain was correcting my French every other word. Have I mentioned yet that I was already tired before this all started? Several hours later, and several bottles of wine later, my mood had greatly improved. The mystery box contained a golden Buddha that Alain had found in a vide grenier and bought for me. This started a whole conversation about reincarnation and the importance of living a life of kindness and positivity. Which reminded me to remember to begin my days with the thought: What wonderful things does this day have in store for me? I can’t wait to find out!

Each day, I feel like I am stretched way beyond my social limits and, yet, each day I am gifted with moments of such warmth and welcome that I breathe deep and stretch a bit further to take it all in. I feel so unbelievably fortunate to have found community in this remote village. To be so welcomed and cared for. Although most days it takes everything I’ve got to stay grounded and to keep moving forward, the rewards are great. There is laughter every day. Some little surprise. So much love. What a gift.

I have been thinking a lot about passion lately. The overabundance of. The lack thereof. The search for. The finding of. The loss of. And, just why it is so freakin’ important to the human experience. To my human experience.

There is a fine line between madness and genius. I remember the palm reader at the Unitarian Church in Roanoke Virginia who looked at my palm and said that I would walk a razor’s edge between those two states. I think I was all of 13 years old and I have to say it scared the beejeezus out of me. And, if I am honest, excited me. Did I know about Camille Claudel yet? I am not sure but I think I understood exactly what she was all about. She was, after all, a fellow Sagittarian and a fellow woman afire with creativity and…here is that word…passion. A dangerous word. Especially for women.

It is a hackneyed word. Overused and misunderstood.

Of course it immediately conjures images of sexual (mis) adventures. But, I believe, passion is something so much bigger than the physical consummation of desire. It is the holy fire. It is the thing with feathers of flame. It is the elven liqueur that revives the hero who has given his last ounce of energy. Passion is that thing that we search for that will not be found until we stop searching. It is the lifeblood. It is the reckless. The unreasonable. The non-sensible. It is the scent of the heart that leads us on a merry chase through the maze.

I have spent my life trying to be reasonable. To be kind. To be normal, whatever the heck that is. And, I find myself so tired. Wrung out. Without passion. Because passion will not be kept like a goldfish in a bowl. It is a hawk. A wolf. It will not apologize for its greatness. It is the wind at the door. The adventure that refuses to be denied. The moon disturbing our sleep. Passion is the thing that kicks us out of bed in the morning when we’d rather sleep in. It simply will not lie down and behave.

I look at my roses. They are so unreasonable. They make petals that are really just not necessary in a color that borders on garish. Their decadence is displayed for all to see, sprawled out on the stone wall. “Come pollinate me”, they yell. They threaten to break under the weight of their exuberance. They refuse to see sense. I adore them. And, yet, I keep myself small. I am afraid to bloom like that.

The gift of the grape is to loosen the tongue, and the heart. In this land where the grape and her lifeblood are almost worshipped, there is a kind of permission to overindulge. Yet, there are rules for the table to keep everyone in line. In France, it is impolite to keep a hand under the table because of the naughtiness that can happen there. Everyone is required to keep their hands in full sight, for polite society, because of the excesses inspired by the blessed grape and her juices. For me, there are glasses of wine drunk, alone, at the ancient baker’s table that serves as my dining table and no one is at risk of naughtiness. Least of all me. Yet, it opens this longing. A longing to live it all again. Braver. Stronger. Perhaps a bit meaner. A bit less accommodating. A bit more demanding. Certainly with more abandon and less caution. One cannot be filled with passion and remain safe. Passion is not wise. It is the antithesis of security. Wherever we choose to put our passion, it is never obedient. Never docile. It is the rose who blooms without care. It is the swallows who scream through my garden, nearly colliding with me, as they chase each other. It is the heartbeat of the planet.

May you find your passion. May I find mine. What a worthy venture. Bon courage, mes amis!

This has been the month of small beauties. Small things with big impacts. Like so much of life, it is often the little moments we hardly take note of that make or break us. I am always drawn to the smallest, most daintiest of flowers…the ones that almost escape my notice and end up blowing my mind. I love to zoom way in on them; I am never disappointed. Nature’s imagination and attention to detail delights and amazes me. Many of us are wandering through our lives at a macro level, consumed with the big, shiny objects; our senses dulled by the obvious. It is a kind of walking meditation to refine one’s attention, to zoom in on that which exists a bit beyond the big picture, to find the magic that is always there. Perhaps this was the secret of the fairies: they have always been around us, are still everywhere around us, hidden in plain sight because we don’t tend to look for the humble, the delicate, the shy.

A fairy bower tucked into the roots of an Hetre (Beech) tree. Magic is afoot. Guard your hopeful heart fervently. Each and every day is birthed anew, fresh, full of promise.

May brought with it an exuberance of growth, here, in the mountains. The rains that fell all winter long nourished the wildflowers and trees into an ecstasy of flower and bud. Unlike last spring, we did not have hailstorms to knock loose the early cherry and plum blossoms. Trees that have not made fruit for many seasons are now laden with young fruitlets. The grass is over my head and cricket songs run zigzags through the pollen thick air. Memories of my childhood drift along on the backs of warm currents of afternoon breezes. Memories of lying in my bed as the light shifted into a deep blue and cricket chirps blended with the haunting calls of nightingale and whippoorwill. I feel deeply at home in these gentle hills.

Neighbors brought small bouquets of wild muguet to the house as tokens of friendship. My sister is visiting for a few weeks and we went seeking the small, white, fragrant bell flowers with directions from my neighbor Eric who showed up with a handful for me. I was so touched that he had thought of me that I impulsively gave him a big hug. Hugs are not a thing in France and he stood like the trees he works with, shocked and unsure of where to put his hands. He told us, “you just go past the ruisseau and continue until you pass the wooden mushrooms, then you will see plein plein plein.” I’m never sure I have properly translated anything and the wooden mushrooms had me scratching my head a bit. My sister was sure he meant mushrooms growing out of wood but it isn’t mushroom season here. So, we decided to go explore. After several false forays, we finally found the carved wooden mushrooms and the deep curve in the road and, finally, a patch of many Lily of the Valley growing alongside the road. We felt like little elves leaving our bundles of goodwill on gates and in mail slots. It was a small thing, but one filled with love and a growing sense of belonging.

For almost 12 weeks, I have been deeply immersed in an intensive, online, surface pattern design course. My brain has been mostly somewhere else most of the time, trying to piece together everything I am learning. When I started the course, I felt pretty confident about my designs but have lost the thread through stretching myself to the limit to stick to the exercises and to try to learn new techniques and unlearn old ones that were not well informed. I think that much of life is like this. We get comfortable and then are called to, or forced to, move outside of that comfort zone. I know there are people who spend their entire lives in a kind of stupor but that has not been my experience. I crave new knowledge and new skills and this leads me, all too often, to leave behind the things I have mastered and love for new horizons. My dog reminds me to stay in the present. To stop and smell the cornflowers. To really look around and SEE my surroundings. Sometimes there are hidden treasures if we have the eyes and the patience to look.

I was thrown from my neighbor’s horse a few months back and have continued to deal with quite a lot of discomfort from that. This has led me to seek out healers of all stripes, in the hopes of correcting whatever it is that has gone askew in my hips and back. When I first came to France, I went to the St. Felix de Lauragais farmer’s market. It is such a beautiful, little village that any excuse to go will do. The market is only 4 or 5 vendors, and one of them recommended a healer who lives in the same tiny village I live in. Then, I was talking to my neighbor about still being in pain and she, also, recommended this same healer. So, I went. Her beautiful farm is down a long, rocky, dirt road that opens up into the most gorgeous, wild farmhouse. A fat, orange cat dozed on a bench in the sunlight, just begging to have her belly petted. Of course, I obliged while I waited to be called in. Another fat cat dozed on a cot on the floor in her session room. The healer introduced this cat as “my assistant.” I didn’t dare pet her while she was so obviously working. Straight off, the healer said I was out of my body and had been out of my body most of my life. This is no surprise to me. I have been many times to healers to get back in my body. But, what surprised me was that she went on to say that I had dealt with an enormous amount of pain this incarnation and that I find it much easier to be in the astral realm than the physical realm. As I reflected on that, I realized it was certainly true. I remember having a dream, when I was very young, that I was stuck in mud up to my waist and I was beating my enormous wings to try to get free but was stuck fast. That has been this lifetime. As I look back over it all, I see that there has always been physical pain, and difficulty that has stretched me to the outer limits of my ability to survive. And, yet, there have been so many moments of beauty as well. As limiting as it can be to be incarnate, the body also experiences the most amazing pleasures and sorrows. I am committing to discovering more pleasures and fewer sorrows in whatever time is left to me.

I want to imagine myself like this small lamb, curled up on her mama’s warm back. Safe, secure, protected. That is my new meditation for this month. I will imagine myself safe, secure, protected, nestled on the back of this beautiful planet. I will focus on my feet more and how they connect to the earth. I will bring my spirit in from the ether, into my heart, and ask her to guide my rooted footsteps through the days remaining. I will remain present for magic and miracles. I will believe in fairies and trust my gut and flashes of insight. I will gather to me all of the small things that make up each day and remember to be thankful for it all. There is so much to experience. So much to learn. So much to love. It is regretfully easy to get lost in the suffering side, to forget what a short time we have, and each moment spent regretting, judging, comparing, complaining is a moment when pleasure was denied. Only we can say yes to our lives, and to our joy. Breath by breath. Footstep by footstep. Day by day. Today, I say yes.

This is not the first time I have tossed my life into the air. Each time I do it I guess I think that I will be different when all of the pieces fall back to earth. Nope. Still me. Pieces all around me like leaves floating in the stream of life.

It is easy to think that we will somehow be magically transformed by a new love, a new job, a new home. And I do think that all of these do change us, like the slow sculpting power of water on rocks. It isn’t sudden. It isn’t usually the dramatic transformation we (and by that I mean me) hope for. After the noise of the change settles down, there I am. Me. Same same as usual. With all of my angst and doubt and worries. Just on a different stage. There is subtle change, to be sure. But, I am certainly not a new, shiny person. Not a person that I might like a bit better. Just me. The question this begs of me, then, is how to make peace with that person I find myself to constantly be…no matter where I am or who I am, or am not, with.

One thing I constantly am, and can’t seem to outrun, is a chronic gardener. Even though my back is a disaster, especially since getting thrown from a horse a few weeks ago, I have started renovating two greenhouses at my friend’s house in order to grow food for all of us. They have been neglected for over 5 years and the stinging nettle has definitely taken advantage of having unfettered freedom and plenty of water from a leak in the irrigation system. Gregoire has been helping me. He made me giggle, as I worked in the other greenhouse, with his loud singing and conversations with himself. Every once in a while he would yelp. I would ask what happened, thinking perhaps he had uncovered a snake but, no, he says he just likes to yell every so often. I love listening to him, oddly enough, because it is like the noise inside of my head made audible. Sometimes he lands on a word or a phrase and he just says it over and over again, turning it this way and that. Just like my poor, busy brain. He seems to take it all in stride. Songs, conversations and yelps aside, we now have both greenhouses prepped and today I planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and the great big blue pumpkins called Bleu d’Hongarie and the classic Potiron Rouge as well as Spaghetti Squash, a favorite from childhood.

Spring is in an ecstasy all around us. Giles, one of the farmers in the village, is training his enormous Comtois gelding to draw a carriage. I secretly think he was inspired by mom and her gypsy wagon. His idea is to offer rides to tourists and summer residents. We have a new mayor and team and the ideas are flying! The village is waking up. Several houses sold recently so we are getting new neighbors from Toulouse and Paris. There is a palpable excitement in the air. I had thought that, living in a village of less than 200 people, I would have time to rest, sleep and read this winter but really life never slowed down and now summer is just around the corner. I have never been so busy, socially and otherwise, in my life. Welcome to the relaxed French lifestyle! Wherever you go, there you are.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to a picnic in the hameau next to our village. The picnic was hosted by a cattle farmer who, with his wife, tends to both his hundreds of hectares and the 80+ hectares of my closest friend in the village. The whole adventure felt like a study in contrasts as we arrived in my friend’s brand new, white, pristine Mini Coachman and trudged out into the pasture where I found, much to my amazement, a group of folks who could have been my father’s family in Pennsylvania. The day was stunningly beautiful. The pasture opened out onto a view of the snow-capped Pyrenees mountain range in the distance and the green pastures rolling gently down into wooded valleys. Several long tables were set out in the grass, with bags of chips, boxes of pizza, bottles of soda and many bottles of wine. A fire pit smoked nearby and several quads were parked with wagons attached for ferrying supplies. Most of us were over 60, with a few nearing at least 100. I thought to myself how strange that I had come all this way only to end up at an Ecelberger family reunion!

Everyone tucked into the bottles of wine right away and the party started in earnest. Tents appeared on a quad and were quickly assembled over the tables. The farmer’s wife started making omelets at a makeshift grill and pizza bits were passed around. Everyone wanted to know how an American had ended up at this family event. One older gentleman (the one in the Velux hat) spent some time discussing the state of our country and how sad it was for him to see the return of a world he had hoped was gone for good after WWII, which he remembered from his childhood. The conversation strayed into philosophy and the importance of community and kindness. I would never have expected to have this discussion with him, which reminded me yet again that we can never imagine what people have tucked away in their brains. You cannot judge people by their outsides. There is so much richness inside, if you just dig a bit or even just leave space for people to open up. Everyone took special care to allow me a few moments of quiet each time I tried to participate in the conversation in my very rough French. Then the talk roared back into chaos, as is normal here. Everyone speaks at the same time, and no one seems to feel it is rude or to get frustrated; they just speak faster and louder.

Before leaving, the farmer told me the story of he and his wife. I had commented upon her youthful appearance. Her two grown children were at the picnic and she did not look old enough to have adult children. He shared how her family had moved into the hameau, where his father had established the cattle farm, when her mother was pregnant with her. He was 7 at the time. Later, he babysat the kids. And, as she grew older they realized they were in love and married when she was old enough. I see them often on the road, she snuggled up next to him in the cabin of the large tractor they use both to move hay and cows and as a primary means of transportation. He took me for a tour of the barns and explained all of the breeds of cattle and their importance to the family, pride resonant in his voice. They work long, hard hours and yet, they find time to picnic with friends and family. I was impressed that with all of the wine, whiskey, beer, and the odd bottle of rum imbibed that no one was overly drunk or belligerent. No one argued. No fights broke out. Just good folks sharing a beautiful moment together in a breathtaking atmosphere.

Hours had slipped by, with more wine than I am accustomed to, so I decided to head home by way of the trail that connects our village with this hameau. I was again amazed, as I rounded a corner, that the trail is exactly what I painted over 30 years ago. There are no accidents in this life. I am right where I am meant to be, changed or the same. I am among people who are unfailingly kind, generous, and surprisingly welcoming.

What a gift it is to find that the road I am on is the one I am meant to be walking. Life offers me so many signs to show me I am right where I am meant to be. That I am just who I am meant to be. We exist in time. And, yet, somehow we are timeless. Passing between worlds and timelines. Finding ourselves on the road we imagined many years before. Time travelers. Spinning through space. Drifting in and out of incarnations. How lucky I am to find myself. Here.

I got thrown from a horse a few weeks ago. It is the first time in over 40 years that I have found myself tossed out of a saddle and, I have to say, it is humbling. One of the many aspects of aging that puts one in one’s place, so to speak. I have been hobbling about with a very sore butt and back for weeks, and my ego has taken a bruising as well. Do I have to stop riding now? Or, can I take the fact that nothing broke seriously as a good sign and just be more careful? Do we begin to die when we start being afraid to live?

On top of already being humbled by getting dumped on the ground, there have been visits to the radiologist and doctors and physical therapists. I remember in the Master’s program I undertook in Sri Lanka 20 years ago, one of the concepts we learned about was cultural blindness. If you aren’t familiar with this term, it refers to a phenomenon where you, unconsciously, assume that everyone everywhere thinks the same way as you. Not in specific ways, since we are of course all different, but as a culture. Our learned assumptions tend to make us blind to the nuances and subtleties and unspoken truths of cultures different from one’s own. Imposing our cultural beliefs on other cultures can be highly offensive and, ultimately, destructive. We can see the effects of that sort of cultural colonialism in the hatred of Americans in Arabic countries and in many Muslim countries. Cultures that feel they are losing their traditional ways often become even more rigid in those ways. Respecting one another’s cultures and being aware of our own biases and unexamined beliefs are all good practices for becoming better global citizens.

An important aspect of integrating into a new culture, as I am currently doing here in France, is to realize I have blindnesses because of my own cultural assumptions. I am often taken off guard here by ways of being that are not what I expect. I am sure I put my foot in my mouth often, unknowingly, because of not being able to read the unspoken codes that everyone else has grown up with. One of those is the casual way of interacting with the body in doctor’s offices and other medical settings. For a culture that is famous for its devotion to romance and sexual prowess, it is unexpected that there is very little embarrassment about or care taken to cover up one’s naked body in medical settings. Of course, it could be my age that makes me so entirely uninteresting but, I think, it is more generalized than that. A visit to have x-rays went like this: I was called into the x-ray chamber by two handsome, young men who casually instructed me to remove my clothing. Just right there in the room. Me alone with two young men. I could, thankfully, leave on my underwear and bralette, but everything else had to come off. Then, I stood there, nearly naked, to have images made of my front, back and sides. All done in 5 minutes and I, rather unceremoniously, got to put my clothes back on and leave. Then, a visit to the surgeon who received me in his office alone with no nurse. Just us. Again, off with my pants and then he sat behind me and had me bend forward, right in front of him, in my underwear. I would love to say I was unruffled but it isn’t true. I thought I would burst out giggling at any moment. I wanted to hide in a cupboard or broom closet. It definitely is making me reconsider my underclothing choices! A visit to the physical therapist had me, again, in my underwear doing all sorts of revealing exercises to stretch out my inner thighs and legs. I have now purchased boxer shorts for the next round of visits. At least I will feel a bit less exposed. A bit less vulnerable in my skin.

I recounted this story to a friend in the village. She burst out laughing and then told me that “Americans are prudes!” I suppose she is right. In the US, we are coddled, covered up, given personal physical space that just doesn’t exist here. On the other hand, people here allow others a large amount of emotional space. Sharing personal details, feelings, intimacies is not done in polite company. Opening your heart up to others is expected to take time. Stepping out of that rhythm will quickly get you labeled as a bit “bizarre”.

Today I went for a bone density scan to see what shape my bones are in these days. I felt like I really won the lottery by not seriously breaking anything in the fall and I wanted to know if it was really luck or if I have good bones. During the question period where I was once again in my underwear, the technician asked the normal questions and then asked if I drink more than 3 glasses of wine a day. I think I snorted a bit in surprise because she scolded me that many people respond, “yes”. As I reflected on the question, I realized that I had stumbled, again, upon a cultural assumption. In the US, if you drink more than 3 glasses of wine a day then you are probably going to keep that fact to yourself or get labeled an alcoholic. It is surprisingly easy to drink at least 3 glasses of wine a day here. Very few people think twice about drinking that much. It is common to have at least one glass of wine at lunch, then an apero of perhaps a Kir or a glass of champagne around 5 or 6 to get your appetite ready for dinner. Then, at dinner, you will certainly have a glass of red or white wine. Your host will refill it as often as necessary but it is still only a glass of wine. Yes, people can be drunks here as much as anywhere else, but really it is a cultural norm to have wine with pretty much every meal and no one judges you for it. Woo hoo!

In between all of the doctor visits, I have been learning how to draw. I am taking a class in Surface Pattern Design and learning so much every day. (@bonniechristine) The weather has been amazing and all of the early spring flowers are starting to open so there is inspiration everywhere. A neighbor left several branches of blooming wild cherry on my windowsill this evening. The daffodils mom gave us a housewarming gift are in full bloom. Wild primrose is scattered through the fields in drifts of pink, yellow and white. Mornings and evenings are cool but the days, when it isn’t pouring rain, have been spectacularly beautiful. Every day is filled to the brim.

I sometimes doubt the decision to move here, but there are strange coincidences almost every day that make me feel that I am on the right path, at the right time, in the right place. A neighbor gave me an antique rug some months ago and a few days ago I was moving it to a new spot. When I turned it over, the tag was the family name of my general practitioner: Flipo. Not a common name, but a familiar name to me now. Today, mom and I were at the garden store and I had just started to tell her about a plant they had that a friend is obsessed with, called Ail d’ours (a type of wild garlic that grows in the forests). I had just said her name when my phone rang and it was her. Even more strange was that she had been talking to another friend in the village and he, also, was in a store looking at the same plants. Mom and I bought one another the same set of inspirational cards. There are so many moments like this that it gives me confidence that I am right where I am meant to be. Even though I miss my best friend, my sister, my in-laws, my sweetheart, my son, my life that felt so familiar and comfortable. To grow is to outgrow. Like a hermit crab who has to exchange shells to accommodate his changing form, we have to risk being exposed and vulnerable in order to expand into new dimensions. To allow space for new people, experiences, feelings in our lives, we often have to let go of something that we cherish. It is tempting to stay the same. Comfortable. Reassuring. Yet, so much then goes unexperienced. I don’t think it is obligatory to live life like that but, being a seeker, I don’t seem to have a choice. Everything in me longs to grow and learn. That has meant leaving behind people, situations, environments that I have deeply loved. I carry the grief of those partings, and the richness of having experienced them. They inform and deepen every other experience I have.

I think of Nature. How she releases summer in an outpouring of letting go. How she retreats into root and racine. How she sleeps through the long snowy winter. Gathers her resources. Dreams spring back into life with an ecstatic rush of longing and memory. All that was gets folded back into all that will be. I don’t know what it is all about, or what it is all for, but I feel fortunate to be in this moment of time. I feel lucky to be able to walk still, to have not broken my back, to have the privilege of waking up to each unknown, and new, day.

This body suit that I wear

is wearing thin.

Fraying at the edges.

Torn and faded

at the friction points.

It hangs heavily

upon the light

being inside.

There are days

when the pain

of gravity

and time

feel too

burdensome to carry.

Days when iron bars

sear hot upon

the ivory cage

where a feathered

and fluttering

is trapped

longing

for flight.

Longing for light ness.

Pain crushing joy

like flowers under

logging truck tires.

There are days

when I resist

the dog pleading

for me to

get out of bed.

To go outside

where birds demand

their breakfast.

To go to the woods,

the water,

the wind

and the weather.

I drag

this incarnate weight

with irritation & sighs.

I follow

into birdsong

and mist rising

off of the rigole.

Sunlight forming patterns

through the ancient arching

limbs of Beech and Oak.

Calling to the limitless light

hidden under layers

of bone and tissue.

I find,

finally,

that there is

still reason

to live.

To curl myself

Into the brilliant arch

Of your foot.

Form myself into

The parabola

Of thigh knee calf.

Your body beloved

As prayer.

A golden sunset

Setting the firs afire.

Your body

Beloved as God.

To come to you

As to a temple to worship.

To let love lead me into

Generosity and courage.

Gratitude

For water in a desert.

Rest at the end of weariness.

Food that fills

Emptiness.

To come to you

Without forgetfulness.

Aware God moves within

Your dancing feet,

Your capable hands,

Your ready smile.

Angels dance within

The exquisite arch

Of your foot,

Your neck,

The corners of your eyelids.

Faithful to every detail

Of your being, the Creator’s handcraft.

You are beloved as the rainbow

Connecting ocean to hill

And hill to sky.

Without seeing

I have wandered.

Wandered with my eyes riveted

To a dark interior.

The Earth continues

To be faithful

Whether I am blind

Or not.

Continues to turn

On its axis,

Spinning stories for future

Ears and eyes

Open to miracles.

Unshaded by disappointment

Bitterness.

She continues

to be faithful

to the very

inescapability

of magic.

(Ice feathers on my windshield remind me of the ephemerality of each moment)

This week we had a tragedy in the village which reminded all of us of the importance of living fully each day. The 37-year-old daughter of one of the ladies who manages our tiny library and takes care of the church died suddenly of a brain aneurism. She leaves behind a 3-year-old son and her partner. Over 200 people packed into the ancient church, which on a good day may have 6 people inside, to mourn the sudden loss of a bright star from our constellation. The priest, who officiates at several churches in the small villages around here, spoke the service in a thick African accent and sang the hymns in a call and response style. He went straight to the heart of the matter when he spoke to the young woman’s mother by saying that there is really no way to survive such a loss, especially since this is her only child and she lost her husband to cancer just a few years ago. He told her she will struggle, certainly. It is too heavy a burden to bear. And, yet, he said…and, yet, we remain. We continue to live. We must cultivate faith in life. I thought, yeah..that’s right. Sometimes things in life are just too much to bear and yet, we have to cultivate faith in our lives. We have to trust that we can get through the pain to the other side. That has certainly been true in my life. I think back to so many times when I thought I just couldn’t continue and, yet, today I am living a life that is mostly free from stress and pain. It was so powerful to have this priest just call it out. To speak truth. To not sugar coat it. To acknowledge the immense weight of the loss. And, to offer strength and encouragement for all present to find something within that could sustain them. To find their faith in life.

The whole thing got me to thinking, again, about this human experience we are having here on our beautiful planet. I can’t say, with any real honesty, that I am not afraid of dying. But, I do have a deep faith in the durability of the soul. I have an abiding belief in continuation of consciousness. I don’t exactly understand how it works. I have ventured into the Akashic library (I believe I have anyway) and from these experiences it is clear to me that we are all working toward some sort of collective understanding of something. Something far greater than each of us. Far more profound than the daily grind of Groundhog Day. In my imagination, it is a lot like the holodeck on the Starship Enterprise. Each soul is on a path of discovery. We program in our next lesson (s) and who we will be working with in the upcoming incarnation. The doors open to the holodeck. We step through. We are born. Sometimes on this planet. Sometimes other planets. Sometimes this time period. Other times far into the future or far back into the past. We fully commit to the experience and fumble and feel our way through the fog of forgetting. There are moments when we experience a synchronicity or we meet someone who tickles our memory. We think, “Ah, this feels so familiar. I have been here before. I remember what I came here to do.” Death is just the ending of this particular experience. The doors open and we step out of the holodeck. We remember our entirety. We review and assess all we have done and what remains to be done. Perhaps we have guides with whom we process and learn. Then, we do it all again.

(Gregoire & Chardon share a moment of understanding)

With this belief firmly taking hold of my imagination, I feel less saddened by the passing of others. I know they are going on to their next adventure. I realize this idea may offend others or seem ridiculous, still it gives me comfort and that is my prerogative, I suppose. Much like religion or political beliefs. That is the beauty of a world where we are each free to believe what we wish, barring the injury of another. It is a freedom many of us have taken for granted. Like our lives. And, here comes the closing of the circle, that is what many of us took away from the death of our friend this week: life is short and precious. It can end at any moment. What shall we do with the time we have? What did we come here to do? Have we done it? What remains to be done? I feel like I have done pretty much everything I came into this life to do. I feel at peace with the challenges that arose and I know that I did my best to meet them. We never know when our time will be up but I hope I can enjoy what is left to me and make the most of every day. Having a dog, and knowing her time on the planet is short, has taught me to be as present as possible with her. To not sweat the small stuff, like muddy foot prints and barking at the vacuum. She is teaching me that none of us know how long we have and the most important thing is to not miss a minute.

Even though I know this, it is a constant practice to not let myself be distracted by the very bad news in the world. If I pull my attention back a bit, into a larger picture context, then I can apply a philosophy of personal life to the larger sphere of public life. I can keep myself from becoming lost in the negativity. I can see that there is more to life than meets the eye. We are each healing something. Together. Separately. An ocean of souls. Everything touches everything else eventually. As trivial as it may seem, I do believe that when we each do our work with loving intention, and when we bring beauty and awareness to the world, we are doing something to heal the collective. Of course, that is not everyone’s path. Some people are here to be warriors. Some are here to be triggers of change. Some are here as agents of destruction. Some are here to be heroes. But, for those who are more like me and not inclined toward grand public action, I think it is important to not minimize the value of also doing small things. Consistent kindness. Acts of service. Acts of beauty. Acts of friendship.

The daily practices that are sustaining me these days increasingly revolve around acts of friendship and acts of beauty. I am spending quality time with my mother. It is the first time in over 30 years that we have lived close to one another and there are many moments of joy that come with doing simple, daily things together. I have been showing up for my friend who lost his husband of 55 years last March. Along with my partner who was visiting for a few weeks, we went to a cabaret last week hosted by a young couple took on the only remaining livestock farm in the Garrigues. To help finance the project, they came up with the idea of making a cabaret and it has developed into a restaurant, cabaret, store and more. (https://lesfoliesfermieres.com/) The community center in Revel was packed to the gills on a Thursday night with over 300 people who came out in the rain to have dinner and watch the performance. We also went to see a Soul Revue in Toulouse. A bunch of us were packed inside of a red velvet room to enjoy music together. Strangers talked to the people squished in next to them. I really appreciate that, in France, community is alive and well. Folks are not too cool to talk to the stranger seated at a table next to them. People value community. Farmer’s markets are in almost every village. At least once a week you rub elbows in the streets with neighbors, friends, enemies. For me, as a recovering American introvert, all of this social interaction is a radical change in my life. I keep telling my partner I am exhausted most of the time. I don’t think he understood until he spent a few weeks participating in my daily routine. As he got ready to return to the US yesterday, he said to me: “Your life here is exhausting!” It is and, yet, it is also full and rich and I am growing and changing every day. I feel very grateful for this opportunity.

I have realized that beauty is one of the most important aspects of my life. Beauty feeds my soul. In that spirit, I am making a commitment to myself this year. Now that I am older and experiencing a great deal of physical pain, gardening is less of an option for work. I have been playing with Surface Pattern Design for a few years now since taking a class with Anne LaFollette (https://www.annelafolletteart.com/blog/2020/04/28/doodles-mini-course). I took her class 3 years ago and, much to my utter amazement, something clicked. Adobe Illustrator was easy for me; I totally lose track of time when I am making patterns. I opened a shop on Spoonflower where people can order my designs as fabric or wallpaper (https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/pollinatepanoply) and have been selling a few things every year. Now I am on a few European sites as well (https://www.loominate.eu/designer/pollinate-panoply & https://www.patterned.com/pollinatepanoply). However, I haven’t really gone the next step. I haven’t believed I could be successful or that I might be able to make a living off of my designs. This year I am making that commitment to myself. It is my goal to receive at least one licensing offer this year and to get my designs onto products in big stores like Anthropology or Target. My goal is to achieve this by May of this year. So, stay tuned. This is my self-accountability statement to the Universe. Now, fingers crossed!

What I believe, more than anything else, is that we each create our experience of life. That sounds so easy. As someone who has struggled all of my life with despair and depression, who has been desperately poor and felt alone much of the time, I know it is not easy to take charge of one’s emotional and mental experience. There are so many moving parts to mental health and it is not simple to change. Vipassana meditation has helped me learn how to breathe through the moments of pain and disconnect. That has been my survival method but I have recently started a practice where I consciously notice moments when I feel good. Moments where I am in less physical pain. Moments when I feel warm and loved with the dog curled up next to me. I stop and say to my body: “Hey, did you notice that we feel good right now? This is what feeling good feels like. Put it in the bank.” I am teaching my body to recognize that it isn’t always suffering. I am teaching myself to recognize moments of joy. Tallying them up and getting stronger each time. When my obsessive brain is mulling over some negativity, I gently bring it back from the precipice and focus on something good that is right in front of me. If nothing is in front of me, I go to my bank and bring out something good from the past. I am shifting the algorithm of the internet to show me inspiring things rather than hopeless things. I am choosing my experience and, I believe, shifting reality around me as I go. I do think we have the power to shift the matrix with our thoughts and actions. Physics in real time. What we focus on is what we grow. The seeds we sow are the crop we will harvest. May you harvest something of beauty. Something born out of your great love for the world. What a gift to be in this moment. To have the opportunity to effect positive change in a world reaching for joy.

The rain has continued for over a week, with brief moments of respite. Today, driving back up to the mountains after an intimate opera concert at the Musee de Goya, the rain turned to big flakes of snow. As we got higher, the road became completely covered in thick, slippery snow. My friend, Anne, was at the wheel and assured me she had taken a “formation” for driving in the snow, as her little Peugeot slipped and slithered around the hairpin turns with steep drop-offs on either side. I decided to lose myself in the beauty of the thickly falling snow in what remains of the forest. Everywhere I look lately, the hills are raped and pillaged. Carcasses of 100-year-old trees lie scattered awkwardly where they have fallen across the hillsides, looking like victims of a genocide. I know it is our fault for using wood, but I still feel anger well up in my chest. Humans must surely be the most destructive of all species on this planet.

Breathe. Focus on the hypnotic waves of white falling from a grey sky.

We are at least halfway through winter. My first full winter alone here. I could complain about keeping the house warm. Or about the mice who chewed holes in the wasabi seaweed packages in the pantry and, oddly, all of the silicone seals on the glass storage containers. I imagine the little mouse family nibbling the neon green silicone seals and I think back to eating green Jello as a kid. Nobody I know eats Jello now but it was definitely a thing growing up in the south. When I was 19 years old, I spent a few months living with my mother’s Aunt Lydia in Richmond, Virginia. Uncle Judge had long since passed over and she was living alone in her spotless brick home on the Avenue. She taught me how to make Jello pear salad and how to iron my future husband’s shirts. She was bubbly and sweet with sparkling eyes magnified behind her thick glasses. Funny what can trigger memories. I have set up humane traps, baited with wasabi seaweed, since that seemed to interest the mice. I am trying not to obsess about whether or not I might contract the plague from the mice.

I just need to breathe and focus on the vintage French music playing. Don’t worry about the mice, I tell myself. Or about the mud constantly tracked in by the puppy and on my boots as I bring wood in. My mother recently reminded me that, at about the same age that I am now, she lived through 4 winters alone in her house which is not as dry as this one and is more isolated than I am here. I think of her trudging through several feet of snow to feed her horse, Amour, and her sheep, Pivoine. Of her pushing heavy wheelbarrows full of firewood through mud and snow to keep her house warm. And, walking and cleaning up after her dog. There is nothing I am doing that she hasn’t already done under harder conditions. I would say that I am not as hardy as she is but, as is true for so many of us who are strong because we have to be, that diminishes the fact that it has taken an enormous amount of energy for her to be as durable as she has been all of her life. Day after day, every strong person you know probably wants to give up and go to bed, but they continue to show up because life demands it. Giving up is not an option, for most of us. One of the most powerful things anyone ever said to me was to not measure my insides by other people’s outsides. We have no idea what others are carrying or dealing with. Hence, the importance of being kind to every single person we meet. Hence, the importance of being kind to ourselves. Life is not a cake walk.

And, so, I breathe. I focus on the warmth radiating out from the woodstove. The smell of chicken soup on the stove. The comfort of the dog and the beautiful music on speakers my partner so thoughtfully brought with him last visit. There is much to be grateful for.

We have had a few beautiful snowfalls this winter. The already breathtaking landscape is transformed into a sparkling wonderland. The swollen ruisseau is framed by white fringed hazelnut and alder branches. The budding Snowdrops are almost lost against the white background. The sky glows in response to all the reflected light. The dog has a new neon green vest to keep her visible to hunters as she happily bounds through her favorite weather pattern. The things that are normally invisible to my eyes, like the passage of birds in the fields or the shape of spiderwebs, are now suddenly everywhere: a secret world revealed. Nature is a constant consolation for me.

Last week we went to see a gorgeous film called Le Chant Des Forêts. Every second of it found me holding my breath with awe. Beautifully filmed and flawlessly timed, it was like a ballad to the beloved. The beloved, in this case, being the nature of Le Vosges, an area in the northern part of France. It is also a love story. A family love story. The love shared by 3 generations: grandfather, father and son. I recommend seeing it. The trailer is here:

With the news out of the US getting only worse, I find myself returning again and again to the one thing that makes any sense to me: Nature. Only in nature do I find a world of reason, logic, sensibility. These days it is the thing that keeps me strong. Even in the pouring rain and mud. Even in the long, foggy days. Nature is always there for us, waiting for us to be there for her.

The sky deepens

to indigo,

slipping into the timeless

dark of night,

yet holding still

all the colors of the day.

In the red clay hills echoes

the mournful cry of one lone coyote.

I pause, waiting

for a response,

but no cries return.

Silence wraps herself around me,

chilled as snow thickened air.

A shudder shakes my bones,

freezing the bird who flutters

inside its ribbed cage.

All this loss.

Each day a series of letting-go’s.

Ticking the hands of the clock

toward the final dusk,

the final beloved

moment of beauty.

The illusion of ending.

How do I exist

within time

framed?

Inside this bodily incarnation

that moves only

from point A to B

with no hope

of return or renewal.

How do I,

timeless soul that I am,

whirling bundle of vibrating particles,

luminous lantern of light,

how do I

not lose faith?

Lose heart -

the sacred bloody vessel,

charred and scarified in holy fire,

wrapped and pierced

by the unbearable tenderness

of each day?

How do I bear

the almost

unmanageable weight

of all that I love,

all that I have lost,

all that I have

not yet realized?

How do I,

brief butterfly being that I am,

exist within this hourglass?

Drawn inexorably through the funnel of spent moments.

Drawn into the stream from whence I came.

Naked and unresisting

on my back suspended

in the swift current I float,

a packet of skin and bone.

Holding space.

Holding time.

Holding multiple universes of potentiality.

Carried to the sea,

all that I need,

held within me.

A pebble

in the great ocean

of all that has ever been

or ever will be.

What ripples shall I cast

on this vast body of souls?

The question

with which I grapple.

Awed,

gasping gratitude

for all this beauty

expanding out in waves.

This gift of time.

The timeless,

unmapped

unbounded

power of love

that grows wild

and rampant

inside of me.

I have been treading emotional water for several weeks now, my nose just above the surface. Finally, the heaviness that sometimes threatens to sink me has given way and I am once again floating.

There are moments when a small thing is said but that small thing is like a fishing bobber attached to a long line of hooks and sinkers. I am snagged like an ancient, slow sturgeon, unable to escape the pain that tears at my mouth. As I carefully work the barbs free, one by one, each deeper in, each hooked to some part of my heart, my stomach, my lungs, my sex, my soul, I realize what a gift it is to have this opportunity to disentangle myself. What a gift it is to have it said out loud, finally, where it has shape and breath. Finally where I can see it and name it, this feeling that has hooked me time and time again until I became snarled and weighted down. A small thing was said and it took me way back to a time when I decided that the best way to stay safe was to stay small. To be barely noticeable. To not do too well. To not have too much. To hide away like a small mouse. I am a bit scared and timid, like that little mouse, but the world needs each of us to show up in the biggest, best version of ourselves. Perhaps I am just about done with hiding away. But, perhaps not quite ready to stand out. I am somewhere in the processing phase…still thinking about it all. Deciding. Untangling. Healing. Gathering my courage. Finding the place inside where I feel safe with myself.

In the meantime, I have been walking a lot. I took care of my neighbor’s dog for a few days which meant staying up late to put him in the house at 11 pm and getting up early to let him out again. I did a lot of walking under the moonlight at both ends of the day. It has been bitterly cold here and the air is clear and crisp. The moon was full during that time and it could not have been more beautiful. We have also had a few snowfalls and days of thick hoarfrost (called givre here). It feels like walking through the Land of Narnia. The trees are thickly frosted with crystalline water and the air is hazed with freezing fog. Everywhere there are ephemeral works of art. Spiderwebs made visible in their intricate beauty. Hazelnut catkins encased in glistening cocoons of frozen water, sparkling like precious stones in the air. Halos around the moon that look like angels. It is a wonderland.

The downside is the constant influx of muddy pawprints that dance over every square inch of the floor and furniture. Keeping the house warm is a full-time job that entails bringing the wood in, cleaning up the mud and bits of ash and wood that come in with the wood, keeping the stove just hot enough but not too hot, waking up in the early hours to coax the coals back into life. There is a kind of rhythm to it that sometimes feels comforting and sometimes feels like just too much work. Sometimes, the days feel like endless re-runs of Groundhog Day where all that gets done is eating and walking the dog. I have moments when it is challenging to find the meaning or reason behind life. It is especially hard, now, when there is a sense of needing to do something to counteract the frenzied madness growing in the world. I feel like I am not doing enough. But, when I stop and think about it, perhaps for now it is enough to not lose my humanity. Perhaps it is enough to bring beauty to the world. To be kind. To open my doors and arms to neighbors and friends. To spend time with my mother. To walk in the forests and tell them how much I love them. To heal what I can and to give solace and company where it is needed.

There are also the many small projects around the house. Trips into Castres with mom. Weekly drawing days. Helping the neighbor move her horses from pasture to pasture. I have finally finished painting all of the shutters and they are installed. When they are closed, the house feels like a cottony, muffled cocoon with sky blue eyes. Now I am starting to paint the attic rooms to create a bit more living space in the house. I have been sewing and making jewelry and watching The Great…which inspired new jewelry and ideas for clothing designs. It is always a fun puzzle to recreate something I see in a movie, but I find that I don’t enjoy wearing the things I make as much as I once did. Nothing looks the same on me now that I have rounded the age corner. I am coming to grips with losing my youth, my strength, and the confidence I didn’t even know I had. I never felt like much of a beauty but I took my strength for granted and I feel its absence keenly. I am looking for something else of value within myself. Something a bit more durable. Something to carry me through whatever years, months, weeks or days are left to me.

In the face of everything that is changing in the world right now, I am finding that there are things that I can do that help me to feel that I am, in some small way, making a positive impact. Some of those things are possible because of my age, and because I am no longer needing to work all of the time. Daily acts of balancing out destructive forces running amok on the planet that I am undertaking are to:

1. Buy local. This seems like a small thing but it has a ripple effect. When we buy local, we build community and we help support our neighbors. Buying local is a way to meet neighbors and create friendships and bonds of interdependency. This is more important than it sounds. In times of crisis and upheaval, knowing your neighbors and having strong connections could mean the difference between surviving or not. Also, buying local takes dollars out of the hands of large corporations and, so, out of the machinery that finances wars and government dominance. It takes a little more time, but it has a big impact. This holiday season, I bought honey spice cakes from the daughter of one of mom’s best friends, apple juice from a neighbor who bottles the harvest from his trees, and some hand-crafted items that I found in the small Christmas market in our village. It was so satisfying!

2. Drive less. Oil, and the money that goes along with it, is fueling much of the destruction of the planet and also the aggression against countries with oil reserves. I have a new game where I see how long a tank of gas can last me. It helps to have a car that uses very little fuel but the big piece is to really think about whether or not I need to drive somewhere. Usually I drive to buy something and, since I am also cutting down on consumption outside of my small village radius, if I reflect upon that impulse I almost always can do without. I am thrilled when 3 days go by without getting into a car!

3. Consume less. This is critical. Our consumption-based cultures are driving environmental collapse and also global unrest. Cheap clothing, made by subjugated peoples who are working in intolerable conditions, that is then shipped across oceans and airspace costs a fortune in pollution and misery. Discarded cheap clothing is polluting marine ecosystems as well as clogging landfills. Petroleum-based synthetic fabrics are harmful on every level and at every stage of production. Natural fibers are not exempt from impact. Water use, land degradation and poor working conditions go along with cotton, silk and linen fabrics. We just need to use less stuff! Buy used. Save or donate usable items. I am tempering my craving for new and more. Practicing counting my blessings. I look around the house and admire the things that surround me. I am picking up books that have sat on the shelf unread. Taking out art supplies and finally using them. Wearing clothes that have sat at the back of the closet, or giving away things I haven’t worn and probably won’t wear.

The thing I struggle the most with is to not lose hope. To not give in to despair. To be resolutely determined to find meaning in each day, even if it is just in the daily practice of feeding the birds or walking the dog. My trauma brain fights me on this. It wants to go to bed and pull the covers over my head and just give up. The work of staying positive is my final frontier. But, it is probably the most important of my acts of resistance. Every day, I find something of beauty in my home, or the forest, or the sky. Every day, I thank the planet and I ask for her help in knowing how I can best serve her. How can I best protect and advocate for this miracle of earth, sky, water?

This weekend I joined a group of locals who are building a coalition of artists, scientists, farmers and other nature lovers to celebrate the Black Mountains. Led by a man who spent a year living in the forests around our village, we are sharing ideas for how to best protect our small corner of the globe. This summer will be the 5^th year of the Eau, Pierre, Foret festival (https://ora-fontium.org/festival2025.html). My mother and I have signed up to volunteer. Perhaps I will be brave enough to help launch a pollinator tracking project similar to what we did in Los Alamos (beecitylosalamos.org) One of our neighboring villages holds a plant festival each year (https://www.tourisme-montagnenoire.com/experiences/le-festival-des-plantes/) and we are looking at ways to partner with their efforts.

If we look, we can find ways to be of use to the planet, and to our neighbors. The forces of destruction want us to give up hope. I don’t really understand why but I can see that is the goal. The media is full of bad news, scary news, nauseating news, hopeless news. But, the world is full of good news, hopeful news, nourishing news, healthy news. We just have to open our minds, our hearts, our front doors and go into the world seeking one another. I believe there is goodness all around us. Closer than we imagine. And, if you find it is not there, perhaps it is your role to create some good news. To build some goodness. To construct new dialogues of friendship and solidarity. We all have something to offer. We all have healing in our bones. It is never too late to begin.

A few weeks ago, I packed the dog up and headed south toward Argeles-Sur-Mer to stay a day or two with friends who have an apartment by the sea. Since the dog gets a bit carsick on the very curvy, bumpy roads, I decided to stop at the veterinarian in the village next to ours for carsickness tablets. The office is a hole-in-the-wall tucked into the shadows of the ruins of a Cathar castle that clings to the steep sides of the mountain. Every time I drive around the bend and see the crumbling turrets and the village stacked like stone dominos against the terraces the narrow streets make, it literally takes my breath away. At night, the ruins are lit up with golden lights and it is truly magical.

The waiting room in the vet’s office is about the size of a restaurant bathroom and resembles a sheep stall. The secretary called me into the office to buy the pills. I happened to glance over at the table and saw a small dog on its back, legs in the air and its belly wide open as a wild-haired man with rubber gloves that had long since lost all the fingers swabbing blood with a gauze pad. I stood, transfixed, as I watched him operate on the dog while the secretary got my bill ready. Never in a million years would we see such a thing in the US. And, as startling as it was to me, it is one of the things that I love about being here: life has not been sterilized or sanitized or idiot-proofed. France expects you to know better than to step off of the edge of a cliff or drive off a mountainside. It expects you to know better than to drink bleach or to fall off of ancient castle walls. However, the cigarette packages have the most appalling graphic of mouth cancer imaginable so they are pretty sure that people are not smart enough to stop smoking without some serious encouragement!

Argeles was lovely. It is very close to Collioure and Port Vendres and just under an hour drive from Spain. We spent the day walking around all 3 towns, playing ball with the dogs on the beach and doing some hiking in the Pyrenees-Orientales. Hoku had a wonderful time with her little friend, Pina. Pina, when we first met her, was terrified of everything and everybody. She has latched onto Hoku like unto a big sister. Everywhere Hoku goes, Pina follows.

Collioure is a fairy tale kind of town with winding streets bedecked in flowering vines and brightly painted facades and shutters. Port Vendres has a beautiful bay and an enormous chateau/garrison that extends into the clear, blue water. The mountains come right down to the beaches. It is an extraordinary spot, but by lunchtime the following day I was ready to go home.

I find that I enjoy being in our little house the most of all. As much as I miss my partner, my sister and my friends, I am also coming to love the village we have landed in. My life has done a 180 turn from being almost completely solitary in New Mexico to being a bit too socially active here. People stop by for coffee in the morning or a glass of wine at night, usually unannounced and often at the worst possible time for me. But, I always smile and invite them in. These moments are precious and not to be wasted. I remind myself that it is not a burden, but a gift, to be cared for. To have people want to spend time with me.

Today I received a call from the elderly, blind gentleman who sometimes comes to stay in his apartment in the town next to us. This summer I rode my bike to his house each morning to deliver his daily baguette to him since he can’t drive. We picnicked together and I took him to the glass museum where he had me describe each piece, as he corrected my French pronunciation every other word. He is a tease and so very dear. He was here the past weekend with the young man who drives him to his little apartment and I discussed my concern over whether or not I will be able to get permission to stay in France another year. They jokingly suggested I get married to a French man, and I said I didn’t think my partner would appreciate that very much. We all laughed and agreed that probably wasn’t the best solution. So, tonight when Alain called to offer to write a letter to the government of France to tell them what a nice person I am and how he would really appreciate it if they would let me stay so he can get his baguettes delivered, I felt truly welcomed. In nine short months I have been taken in by this small mountain village. People smile and wave at me as we pass on the road. The grumpiest lady in town sometimes gives me a smile. The dogs all know me and come begging for treats. It is really quite amazing. A gift from the Universe. I have the feeling that there will be no problem staying because it feels like France, herself, has already accepted me.

That is not to say that life is easy here. It is hard, for me, a lot of the time. The language is a constant hurdle, even though I am learning more every day. There is still so much that I am missing and my brain gets so tired. Now that I am working on the one-year residence permit, that fatigue has only grown. All of the paperwork has to be done on the internet. Where you used to be able to go into a Prefecture or Subprefecture and talk to someone in order to get your driver’s license or residence permit, it is now all done online. Which would be okay, if the online interface functioned smoothly. It doesn’t. Like today, I received a notification that my dossier is missing 4 documents and would I, please, attach them to the notification. However, the form would only allow me to attach 2 documents. So, now I have to wait for another notification that I am missing 2 documents. Although, by the time I receive the next notification, it is likely I will be missing 4 documents again. I do a lot of deep knee bends and calming breathwork. This is the price of being here. At least someone is working on my request. This is progress!

One of the most exciting things happening is that, finally, after months of trying to find someone to work on the many little, irritating projects in the house, I have found a great handyman. He actually shows up and works! I made a list, translated it into French, and he is happily checking things off. He patched the windows that had raw, orange, foam insulation showing through and is now building new shutters. The brothers next door are almost done with the big shutters for the upstairs windows. I have been painting them as they go along, working quietly in their atelier. They keep an eye on me and give me helpful hints when they see me making mistakes. This weekend I will borrow a long ladder and paint the window frames and next week the new shutters will go up! Yippee. Michel built a little shelf for me in a nook that has been begging for just such a thing. Next, he will build a storm board to go in front of the front door so that, hopefully, this winter I won’t have another river flooding in like last year.

The sunsets have been breathtaking this week and the full moon had the entire village on edge. The dog was afraid to go for her evening pee walk and I am almost certain we heard wolves howling one night. Mornings have been foggy and dreamlike.

Mom and I spent the day in Toulouse where she treated me to lunch at Le Pyrénéen. It has been a Toulousean staple since 1925 and doesn’t look like it has changed a bit. Quite a few of the other diners looked as if they might have been coming for lunch since they were children. On Sundays, we have a drawing/painting group with a few neighbors. Although I am uncomfortable with visual arts, being much more at ease “painting” with plants, I find myself enjoying the process more than I had thought I would. It is frustrating to imagine something in my mind and then to not be able to translate that image onto a piece of paper. But, this week I drew a poppy pod with pastel pencils and I am pretty pleased with the outcome. There is progress.

Tonight, when returning back through town after our evening walk, the pup and I ran into a family that lives next to the church. Hoku heard the kids playing and dragged me around the corner so she could say hello. I could see the flashing Christmas lights inside and asked if we could go in. This church has stood since 1684.It has seen the town burned to the ground, bombed, and rebuilt again. It is a symbol of how resilient the French people are. Every day I am here, I am reminded of how much France has suffered. Between WWI and WWII, most of the men were killed. People starved. There are still people alive today, in our village, who remember being children in Paris as it was being bombed and occupied by the Germans. Resistance fighters hid out in these mountains. Smiles come slowly, if at all, from the older generation. Trust is not given easily. I have so much respect for them and, in some ways, I envy the ever-present history of this place. An ever-present reminder of how easily freedoms can be stolen. How easily a peoples can be subjugated and repressed. And, yet, how hard it is to break the human spirit. How, even when it seems all hope is lost, everything can change. It is good to move on from the past, but to not forget it’s hard-won lessons. To let the past guide us into a better version of the future. To let the past remind us not to become complacent in our comforts. To not lose our humanity in the pleasures of the moment. To not forget to be grateful for all the goodness around us.

Winter has settled in for the long haul. The Beech trees, whom I so adore, have dropped all of their flame red and golden leaves. The paths through the forest are soft and muffled underfoot. I build a fire in the stove every morning. There is a thin rim of ice on the puddled rain on the patio and at the edges of the streams that crisscross the landscape. I am in the habit of putting long johns on under my jeans and have added an extra duvet to the bed. Life is all about snuggling down inside the soft edges of anything warm: my winter coat, the cashmere sweater, the nook next to the fireplace, the soft haunches of the dog next to me on the sofa. I am a heat seeking creature.

In the mornings, the dog and I head out to the forest. She in her thick fur coat and me in my layers and Wellies. We kick through the fallen leaves, examine every corner of the fields and forest edges. She sniffs the wind for the scent of the chevreuil (tiny mountain deer). Several times she has caught wind of one and taken off in hot pursuit. I don’t think it is her intention to kill and the chase is such a burst of joy for her that I don’t have the heart to stop her right away.

One day, as we were playing in the big field near our house, the deer that our neighbor rescued, which is a little bit tame, wandered into the field. The dog caught sight of it and stood frozen. The deer caught sight of her and similarly froze. The dog approached slowly, holding her breath. The deer stayed still and watched her approach. I could just imagine the dog thinking, “I can’t believe this! I am going to get to catch one. Finally!” As she got closer, she could no longer control her excitement and she started running. The deer did that thing they do where they pick up all of their hooves at the same time and bounce. It sprung into action, bouncing as the dog ran after, squeaking out a sound that contained all the excitement of a child on a roller coaster. I watched, held in place by the scene unfolding before me. I knew the dog would never be able to catch up to the deer and I wanted to let her enjoy the moment before calling her back. Finally, as she followed into the forest, I started calling her to return. She is such a good girl that she did, after a few minutes, circle back around. Following her were the two, tiny, miniature Yorkies of a neighbor. They, too, had taken off after the deer. Their owner was laughing. We were all laughing. Thankfully, it was not a hunting day and everything had turned out just fine. But, I am more careful now as we pass through these fields. The deer are coming closer to the village as it gets colder and there is less to eat. The birds are noisy and active. Singing to keep themselves warm, perhaps. Building their winter nests to stay warm, like me.

After having many handymen stop by to look at the long list of projects in the house never to return again, I have finally found a neighbor who is happy to do all the little, and big, things that need to be done to make the house feel more finished, and to keep the house warm and dry. The previous owners primarily used it as a vacation house, so they probably didn’t notice the current of cold air that comes in through the unshuttered downstairs windows and the double glass doors. I am sure they didn’t notice that the wood stove burned so fiercely that the wooden mantle smoked. They obviously didn’t care that the window frames were left raw with orange foam insulation showing. They left the rotten timbers and baseboards and stained carpet in the attic where there must have been a sizable leak for at least one whole winter. Little by little, these blemishes are being repaired. It is a relief, and a gift, to have someone help me. My skills do not lie in the bricolage department. Repairing houses and building things is a skill I never gained.

Today Michel, the handyman, came by to mount the frames for the folding shutters that we are installing on the two downstairs windows. Once those are installed, we will take out the rusted bars that are currently in the windows which feel like prison bars. He is plastering over the raw insulation showing through the edges of the window frames. Everything is in stone here which, I think, will eventually translate into easier repairs. I know of people who have just taken sledgehammers to their walls to create doors and windows. These houses have stood here for hundreds of years, through fierce winters, wars and invasions, and it is not that easy to knock them down. We have found the source of a big leak that creates a cold, wet corner in the downstairs living room/dining room. Where our outside wall meets the neighboring outside wall, there is a huge crack. Though the houses don’t easily fall down, they are all slowly sinking and this creates huge cracks and fissures and odd angles. Today we measured a nook for putting in some shelves and from one side to the other there was a 4 cm difference in size. One of the windows no longer opens because either the bottom mantle has risen by a few centimeters or the doors have descended by a few centimeters. Luckily, it is all stone so I can just sand it down a bit for now. Michel has promised to show me how to do the work, as he does it, and that will help me to feel much more empowered to repair things.

Our new shutters for the upstairs windows are just about ready to be measured and installed. I have chosen a French blue for them and the carpenters next door set me up in their atelier so that I could paint. I am hoping the blue will brighten the façade of the house a bit. It is cozy and sweet inside but ugly from the outside. The plaster is a dirty off-white with a rather bizarre finish that looks like a choppy sea. This summer I will have Gregoire help me redo the outer walls in something smoother and of a warmer color. It is really not so very different from the adobe of Santa Fe, only a bit colder and more jagged.

There are a million rough edges to smooth, cracks to fill, doors to refinish, leaks to patch, falling walls to shore up, painting to be done. It is so much like the work of life, isn’t it? These heavy bodies with their constant fluctuations and aging. We shore them up, patch the holes, endeavor to keep them warm and dry, decorate and renovate them. It never ends, this work of becoming. The tension that keeps us upright. The balance of inclination against decline. The dreams that are required to pull us forward into the next moment and the next. The pauses where we can stop to appreciate and admire all that we have built and maintained. The distance we have come. The quiet moments by the fire with a friend nearby. The backpedaling against the inexorable pull of time. The splash of blue to brighten an otherwise dreary wall. The sag and crack. The lack of straight lines and angles. It requires creativity and patience. It requires faith and hope. It requires acceptance of what is and what has been; the understanding that we can never go back, only forward. It requires, perhaps most of all, the ability to find the beauty in all of it. The ability to see it all, the good the bad and the ugly, as a gift. The ultimate gift. Life.

It’s crazy when I think about all of the new things I have learned in the past 9 months. Forget that everything is in another language that most of the time sounds like utter gibberish in high speed to me. That is just the bass line to a complicated melody that I am trying my best to memorize. The dryer works differently. Everything is measured differently. The cars work differently. You can’t turn right on a red light. A lot of the time you can’t even find the red light until after you’ve run it because it isn’t in the same place that you might expect it to be. The food is different. In most houses the gas for the stove comes in a bottle and isn’t piped in. Figuring out how to get the bottle hooked up requires a degree in engineering. The money is different. Numbers are different. 80 is 4x20 or quatre vingt. 90 is 4x20+10 or quatre vingt dix and so on. Math has never been my strong suit so you can imagine how that is working out for me! For the first 5 months I had to take a nap each day. I have never taken a nap in my life and I absolutely had to lie down each day or fall down from exhaustion. My brain is on overload quatre vingt dix % of the time.

I recently read a post from someone who moved to France, also as a little- bit-older-than-middle-aged woman. She was realizing, after months of suffering the feeling of failing miserably, all that she had actually accomplished. That really spoke to me and reminded me to take inventory. I have been here 9 months and, although most days I feel like I should be doing better, I am starting to reflect on all I have accomplished. It is quite a thing to insist upon making such a huge change in one’s life, and there are many days when I question my sanity in doing so, but I don’t want to change a thing.

Although one might say, “Well, you can always change your mind and go back to the US” it isn’t that simple. We bought a house here and shipped a lot of our things here. We want to be here. And, we brought our dog with us. There are, of course, those who think that it is no big deal to take her back, but it is actually not that easy. I was able to bring her here in the cabin of the plane with us because I spent hundreds of hours training her to be a service dog (#1 on my list of accomplishments for this year). Americans are more accepting of the idea of service dogs for conditions like extreme anxiety than the French who are having none of that so she would most likely have to go in the belly of the plane and, being as I have extreme anxiety, that is not going to work for me. We are here to stay for at least 10 years, unless France kicks us out. Although that is starting to look increasingly possible, we are still hopeful that there won’t be any real problems with staying. My application for a carte de sejour, to stay another year, has been sent and my fingers are crossed as I wait to hear what further documentation they will require. Anything but a no will be a move in the right direction.

#2 of the accomplishments for this year is that we found a house within 15 minutes of where my mother lives. This was no easy task since she lives at the ends of the earth but, after 2 years of scouring the French realty sites, we found a nice house, in a nice village, at a price we could afford, close to my mother. And, we bought it. Which is connected to #3 of the accomplishments: 3 years ago, we bought a house in NM that was a bit of a pit and we totally remodeled it to the point that it nearly doubled in value. That house gave us the possibility to buy our house in France. For once, we were in the right place at the right time, and together we made the most of that opportunity. Together we turned a rather ugly, uninteresting tract home into a place of beauty and comfort. So much so that I actually really miss it, even though I had serious doubts when I first saw it. I miss the garden more than anything. I miss watching the bees come out of hibernation in the Spring, and the caterpillars turning into Swallowtails and Monarchs. The flowers budding up and blooming. I miss sleeping out under the stars in the hammock with the dog while the first snow of winter silently fell around us. Now, to create something like that here!

The easiest thing is for me to be negative. It is very old wiring in my brain. Wiring that sparks and smokes and doesn’t always get the signal straight. It is hard to repair because it is imbedded in the thick, stone walls of my skull. It takes a monumental effort to redirect the firing neurons to positivity. Like our ancient house, I wonder if my “terre” is connected as I often shock myself. When we first moved into the house, each time I touched the stove I got a nasty zap. As it turns out, the grounding wire was not connected for the house and the whole thing could have burned to the ground from old wires that were also not well-insulated. There are days when I feel my old wiring could start a fire in the walls of my brain that I might not notice until the roof collapses. My faulty wiring often shocks me into a kind of paralysis; a state of uncertainty and shame.

I remembered, after a very long, low week, that a gratitude practice once shifted my entire way of thinking. It often takes me time to remember the things that make me feel better when I am alone in the dark room of depression, when the main circuit panel of my psyche gets tripped. It makes me think of a story that an amazing therapist once told me about the process of recovery/healing from trauma. She said it is like this: you walk down a dark alley and there is a hole in the street. You fall in the hole and you lie at the bottom of the hole screaming and writhing…”I have fallen in a hole and I can’t get out. Poor me, I’ll just give up and die in here.” End of story. Next round: you fall in the hole and remember you have a ladder. You climb out and dust yourself off and continue on, a bit bruised but alive. End of story. Next round: you start down that dark alley but you remember there is a hole so you go down a different street. Maybe I am at the ladder stage. The ladder is a gratitude practice. And, so, I begin.

Yesterday my gratitudes were many. Winter arrived with a light sprinkling of snow. The dog and I woke up to a special kind of silence and I flung the shutters open like a child on Christmas morning. When I said, “It snowed!” the dog jumped up on the window sill to look out and then ran down the stairs and waited by the door. She loves the snow. We went for a walk on the rigole, which is always breathtakingly beautiful but something even more exceptional with all of the trees draped in sparkles. My closest friend in the village came by for lunch. I am so grateful to have a friend in this new life as I miss my best friend from home deeply. Then, I had a massage with the masseuse my mother introduced me to. I felt so nurtured and cared for. Later, around midnight, I chatted with my son.

This rather new access to his life, and our regular conversations, are such a gift in my life. I didn’t fully realize how much I missed him over the past 15 years. To have him back in my life, and to get to talk about the things we both deal with in our lives…the places we are working to heal and why…the things we are looking forward to…this is something I wasn’t sure I would ever get to experience again. I am so grateful for his trust in me and in my ability to hear him. To be able to take accountability for the ways I failed as a parent and the ways I succeeded. And, maybe more importantly, to be able to now honor his journey, his incredible intellect and insight, and to just love and appreciate him without having to make him a part of me…a reflection upon me. To let that, somehow, set us both free to be friends. To let that forgive and heal us both. The last thing he asked me, before hanging up, was what I am looking forward to.

At first I couldn’t think of anything I was looking forward to. I let that sink in. No wonder I have been feeling so low. I have to create things to look forward to. That is the work of life. When I asked him, he had a list and I thought, “what a wise young man this is.” As difficult as his life has been the past few years, he has remained in integrity with himself. He is finding his truth and the things that give him the strength to continue. He is taking responsibility for what he has done, and not done. I hope that he is finding the strength to appreciate how much he has grown and to really comprehend the strength it takes to continue to be loving and creative in the face of overwhelming difficulty. He continues to show up for his son and the people in his life, to give, to dream, to create. I am in awe of him, honestly. And, so grateful he is in my life. So grateful he wants to be in my life. I am looking forward to seeing him on the other side of these challenges. To seeing what he creates when he no longer has bowling balls chained to his wings.

I am reading a new book right now. Since I was a young girl, I have been obsessed with Henry VIII. One year, when I was 13, I read every book on him and his wives in two libraries. This new book, The Butcher’s Daughter by Victoria Glendinning, is from the perspective of a young nun in a prosperous abbey during Henry’s rule. I never realized he had demolished all of the abbeys and monasteries, which meant thousands of women and men living there were turned out into the world or murdered. Many of them had nowhere to go and no way to live. It is a really good story and the nun who we are following, Agnes Peppin, is extremely insightful. One of the things that really struck me is a discussion about a frame of mind she terms “accidie”. It is when our lives are basically so easy that we cannot find meaning to our days. The “lack of variety drives some sisters into foolishness and misbehaviour, and some into accidie.” Although I am so grateful to be in this stone house, in this small village, in this foreign country learning a new language, close to my mother, there are so many moments when I just don’t know what my purpose in life is any longer. I am no longer working. I am not raising a child. I am not sure what good I am in the world and that has a special kind of energy that can lead me into a heavy sort of negativity and apathy: into accidie. So, as well as finding the things to be grateful for, I also need to find meaning in my new life.

Tonight, I am thinking of Henry VIII. The brutality, the beheadings, the inflated ego that drove him to destroy so many people. I think of our current despots and their disregard for anything beautiful or meaningful. They will, as do all despots as well as saints, grow old, fat, ill and soon enough die. These greedy billionaires, bloated on their own decadence and deviousness are trying to buy their way out of their own mortality, and the fear that mortality evokes in them. Their acts of cruelty and destruction, their rotten legacies, will take on lives of their own and endure like ripples in a pond. Hundreds of years later someone like me will read about who they were, what they did, who they destroyed and, although that person might be able to imagine the pain and suffering of those who, like the people destroyed by Henry, have lived through atrocities and losses, it will just be stories. These disappointing times will simply be history, toothless and faded. This gives me some small comfort as I watch my own history pass out of memory like the swiftly scudding clouds across the waxing moon here in the dark mountains. It comforts me to think that the planet will gather the torn and desecrated pieces of herself around her deforested shoulders. She will hunker down in her grief and loss and she will sing herself back to wholeness. Once we are gone.

But, what is it all for? This is what I want to ask of the clerks who may check me into Purgatory or whatever administrative office it is that I might find myself when I leave this body self behind. What was it all about? Did I ever get it? Was there anything to be gotten? Or, will it just be one long sleep. One long returning to the soil, the clouds, the rain that birthed me. One great recycling. The only purpose being flowers in Spring. The only purpose being the burst of birdsong as the sun rises up out of its downy bed. The only purpose being the effort to be the best version of myself I can manage to be at any given time. In the face of disappointment and fear. In the gaps between the good days. To have been kind when it would have been easier to be selfish. To have chosen love over indifference. To have given all I had, even when all I had was singed and smoking. To have looked at the possibility of giving up and to have said, “Maybe tomorrow but not today bitch!” To have sung back the beauty of the day through the hollow reeds of my bones.

The forest is in her full autumnal regalia. The other day, driving back from the Rigole, I had to stop and catch my breath. I felt as if I had just fallen madly, deeply in love. My heart was beating quickly and I had tears in my eyes. I began to compose a love poem. Not to a person but to the Beech trees that are native in these mountains. Their sinuous forms and pendulous leaves are a joy in every season but they really outdo themselves in the Fall. I have always been a big fan of oak trees, yet these dancing beeches have stolen my affections.

My neighbor and I took a trail ride a few days ago on her horses through the wind tossed forests. We rode in silence… in awe of the arching expanse of ancient trees. Trees who have witnessed wars, fugitives, bandits, knights in armor, and Romans with iron-laden wagons. Trees who are now beginning to die off because of drought and rising temperatures. As the dog and I walk on paths aflame with an ankle deep blanket of oranges and reds, I send my love out to these trees, and to the planet, as a kind of prayer to balance the violence being done to her. Each day I read about another undoing of the protections we all worked so hard to effect. I can’t help but wonder what is wrong with people. I can’t help but wonder why we are so stupid. So short-sighted. Why we don’t realize that we are destroying the very ground upon which we depend. But, enough of that. I promised myself this would be a positive blog post today. A simple, light hearted travel log. A counter balance to other days when my soul is heavy.

My partner was recently here for 3 weeks. He built a wood shed during his first week here and now we have a full supply of wood for the winter. I moved the first cord and a half (about 5 stere) 3 times. In my excitement to get everything done, I had wood delivered early in the summer and it had to be moved so I could close the gate, so I stacked it once. Then, a crazy wind storm knocked the whole pile down by whipping the tarp cover so viciously that it finally flew off, taking the whole pile off of its foundations so I stacked it again. Then, when I hired a friend to build the wood shed, I unstacked it to make room for him to work. Then, many months later, once the shed was finished-thanks to my partner- I stacked that pile again in the new shed, plus another 4 stere of not very good wood. Then, another 3 stere of better wood that I had to order to make up for the not very good wood. I am living proof that firewood warms us at least 3 times before we even burn it. The first fire I built roared like an inferno and I couldn’t get it to dampen down. I realized there is gasket missing and now a neighbor is getting the parts to fix it so that I can burn a fire without burning down the house. Each day brings a new discovery and a new thing to fix. Slowly, slowly the house is coming into shape.

One of the smaller piles going into the new shed. Almost there!

The last time he visited, my partner worked pretty much the entire visit; this time I wanted to have fun together and to show him more of the country. My mother had taken me to the Lot Valley some years back and I have very fond memories of the prehistoric caves of Pech Merle and the gorgeous village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie so we set off to explore, with our pup snuggled in between us. We have rigged up a system where she has the entire back seat to herself and is securely fastened in from two sides so she can’t be thrown around on the very curvy roads but she can still get her nose in between us. She likes to be the co-pilot, in all things. We reserved a gite close to a village named Montcuq. I had never been to that village so it was an adventure for both of us. The drive from our house to the Lot is about 3 hours so we set off after breakfast. The GPS is still set for avoiding highways so we ended up on tiny backroads, just wide enough for the tractors they were made for. We drove through forests of rust and gold and long long expanses of farmland. Here in the mountains pasture is used mostly for grazing sheep and cattle and not so much for growing crops, but the areas we drove through bore traces of recently plowed under sunflowers and newly sprouting winter rye and wheat. It must be very picturesque in the summer.

We got to our gite just as the sun was setting. It belongs to a young Dutch couple who bought an old farm next to a monastery and remodeled the sheep barn (bergerie) into a small gite called Le Nid des Chênes. You can reserve directly with the hosts, Marie and Jean: +33 641325293. We were surprised to find the Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostelle trail right next to the gite. I have long dreamed of hiking that trail. The monastery next door is run by nuns and is open all summer long to serve the pilgrims and hikers. Once settled, we headed out on the small, farm road into Montcuq for dinner at Café de France (https://www.cafedefrance-montcuq.com/). We were happily surprised to find an Asian themed menu, and our pup was welcome. The walls held an exhibit by well-known photographer, Dudley Reed (@dudleyreedphotographer on IG), who lives in the village. I fell in love with this photograph of a pair of scissors.

When we headed back to the gite, somehow we got on the wrong road. As the road got smaller and narrower, I began to worry a bit. Clearly this was not the road we came in on. In the pitch black dark of a rural night, we had no idea where we were headed. When I turned into the dead end of a farm driveway, to be greeted by several very large dogs, I knew we were totally lost. The GPS signal was gone and we had no idea where we were. Carefully backing out to avoid the deep ditches on both sides of the driveway, and to not run over one of the several barking dogs, we turned around and started driving in, hopefully, the direction we came from. The roads in the countryside are a maze of what were once cow paths and field boundaries. Eventually all roads lead back to a village, but it is not a given that we were going to find the most direct one. One of my favorite road signs here is “Toute Direction”, which literally means “All Directions”. Many of the villages are circular and the roads feel like wagon wheels with hundreds of spokes that radiate out from the central village into the countryside. It can be very disorienting. Eventually, we did make it back to Montcuq and realized we had taken a right instead of going straight. Back on track, we spent a quiet evening in our gite.

The next morning we set off for coffee and warm chocolatines at the Montcuq bakery, and a quick browse of the Sunday market. Then we went to Pech Merle which is one of the many caves in France that contain prehistoric art, but one of the few that you are permitted to go down into the actual cave. The caverns cover over 2 km of area, but only a small portion of that is open to the public. The murals of animals and handprints are dated to the Gravettian culture (approximately 25,000 years BC) and the Magdalenian era (16,000 years BC). The cave art was discovered by two teenagers in 1922 as they explored the caves with the curate of Cabrerets, who was an amateur archaeologist and had discovered other cave paintings in the area. My favorite painting in the cave is of the “dappled horses”. To visit Pech Merle, you need to make a reservation because they limit the number of people who can enter the caves each day in order to preserve the paintings (https://www.pechmerle.com/). Be sure to eat at the small restaurant on the site. It is surprisingly good and run by a very nice couple. They also stock local wines and products. (Le Jardin du Pech Merle) Side note: Dogs are not allowed in the caves.

After Pech Merle we set off to visit Saint Cirq Lapopie. One of the most breathtaking villages in the Lot, Saint Cirq clings to the steep rocks at a height of over 100 meters above the beautiful Lot river. It could not be more picturesque, in my opinion. Although it feels a bit like entering a theme park, with huge parking lots at the perimeter, once you are inside the village it is like stepping back in time a few hundred years. I recommend going, as we did, in the off season in order to guard this feeling of authenticity. The views from the viewpoints are just stunning. We were lucky enough to be there when all of the cottonwoods along the river were turning orange, red and gold. It is truly worth seeing. We passed through the village of Cabrarets on the way and vowed to return to do some fishing the next time my partner is here. The river and its chateau are stunning.

It was a joy to share at least a small portion of the beauty of this part of France with my partner. Next visit we will head to the Dordogne Valley to visit the gorgeous village of Beynac-et-Cazenac with its amazing chateau.

Stay tuned for the next travel log. Destination: Peyriac de mer, Port Vendre and Collioure.

I am starting a new habit to rewire my brain; it has an annoying tendency to loop worry like anxious hamsters on motorized wheels that won’t slow down and won’t stop turning. My thoughts can grab onto any negative phrase or event and repeat, endlessly, keeping me awake far into the early morning hours. I don’t feel stressed or worried about anything in particular. This is a nervous system glitch.

Each night, before going to bed, I am going to look back over the day and pick one really good moment. I am going to turn it this way and that to see how it catches the light and where it has facets that turn the light into rainbows. I am going to look at it as if I were going to paint it later. Last evening, as I was sitting in the field with the puppy at dusk, the setting sun was lighting up the burgundy, bronze and orange leaves on the Maples in the campground. The sky was cerulean blue with impossibly white, puffy clouds behind the big-handed leaves. I looked at the trees from several angles, in order to understand how the light moved through them. I studied them and thought to myself how I would layer the paint if I were to try to paint the scene later. I admired and appreciated the way the leaves soaked up the sunlight and how the branches stood out, black in contrast. It is more than likely that I am not capable of capturing the beauty of those trees on paper, but the process of deeply regarding them is of value in and of itself. When another person regards me with care and attention, it is nourishing and validating. I believe that when we regard anyone and anything with care and attention, we shift the dynamic to one of love and respect. It is much harder to destroy something we have taken the time to know intimately, not as a possession or an object but as something that has inherent value in its being-ness. When we look for beauty and value in others, we increasingly find it. The same is true for our lives, and for ourselves. The more we focus on the moments that feel good, the more we focus on the aspects of ourselves that we love, the more of those moments and aspects we experience. It is a kind of magic.

To study the goodness in one’s life in this way leads us to understand more deeply the things that bring us joy. I have gone through much of my life just responding to what is asked or required of me, or what I thought would make others happy. I haven’t thought too much about what makes me happy. Not really. I have looked everywhere outside of myself for something that would make me feel complete. Something that would make me feel worthy of life. I realize now that, although it can feel like wasted time and energy, it was a vital step in my journey. We do what we can and what we know how to do at the time and everything we do leads us to the next thing we can do. And, the next. Until one day we are being and doing in ways we never imagined possible.

I may be hard for me to choose just one good thing each day. So many wonderful things happen every day; I don’t take the time to fully recognize and note them and, as a result, I often forget them soon after they happen. Perhaps this practice will help me record and remember.

Today I woke up to the dog’s warm body stretched out next to mine. The bed was soft and a cool breeze drifted in through the open window. The sound of rain pattered against the shutters. I watched as the light came up and the air turned from a cobalt blue to a golden haze. Every morning I open my eyes to life in France. Each object in this small, ancient bedroom delights me. The buttercream yellow walls. The pine cone finials on the bed. The ancient mirror with its deteriorating finish that looks like a seahorse. The painting given to me by my uncle. The painting of the Immortal Soul that was given to me when I was 9 years old and has hung by every bedside of my life since then. The armoire and the blue velvet curtains in the tall windows. The enormous ancient beams above the bed. The vase filled with incredible dahlias from my garden. This room feels like a refuge of beauty and history.

The dog and I walked to the small stream in the rain and sat out in the wet field listening to the rooster crowing and the hens scolding each other in the neighbor’s pasture. We examined intricate spiderwebs dripping with crystal-like droplets. We startled a blue heron on the river. Magic.

Later we went to see my mother. It is no small miracle to be able to get in the car and in 10 minutes be at my mother’s house. For 30 years I have made a pilgrimage across the world to visit her and now I can just pop by for tea and a walk. No matter what happens after today, at least I have had these months to spend time with her. It is such a joy to stop and admire the autumn crocus and the trees and all the beauty she taught my sister and I to see in the world.

Driving back into town, I stopped to chat with a new friend to plan my latest idea: an English apero for those friends who want to learn to speak English. This is my winter sanity plan. One evening a week we will get together and have wine and snacks and speak English and French together. I am borrowing the idea from my best friend, Coca, who has offered free Spanish classes for the last 10 years. I am pretty sure it is mostly an excuse to go out with friends and drink beer and laugh and chat. But, she also shares with others her ability to speak two languages and to help them learn another language as well. What a great idea, right?

Then Coca and I had a chat, from across the world. Talking to her reminds me of all of the amazing moments we spent together. Our friendship was the one of the few times in my life that I felt like I belonged somewhere, and to someone. For the first time in my life I felt like I was cool. I was popular. I was fun. Because I was all of that, finally, when I was with her. We gardened together, hiked together, taught together, danced together, drank together, and never once argued or got tired of one another. Like all moments in life, that moment changed. I had to stop gardening because of pain. Then I met my partner and moved an hour away and then a state away and now a country away. But, the friendship that I have with Coca is like a light inside of me that never dims. I am changed by our time together and the experience of being so much more than I ever thought I could be, when I was with her. She used to say, at the end of a long day of planting or weeding or hiking, “Danita, we are amaaaazing!” and I believe her. We are amazing.

That is the thought I will take to bed with me tonight. Even though we are now separated by countries and oceans, we are still stronger and better because of one another. We always say that, in gardens, the plants need to be in the right soil and right exposure with just the right amount or lack of water in order to thrive. But, it is also true that who they are planted with makes a huge difference in whether or not they are stunning or overlooked. Whether they have the room to shine or to be totally smothered by other plants that take up all available space. It is important to place it next to a plant the plant that makes its color pop and sizzle, or that harmonizes softly. Coca is the plant that gives me the right amount of space and makes all my colors pop and sizzle in ways I never imagined possible. Having experienced that kind of perfect compatibility, I will never be the same. I am so lucky.

I feel so grateful to have found someone with whom I got to be my best, biggest, brightest, boldest, most beautiful self. The joy and light that I carry with me from that experience has sustained me through some difficult times, and makes me feel less alone in the world. To discover oneself as beautiful as the autumn crocus, as necessary as the mushrooms in the forest, and as vast as the sky is to find a freedom from the expectations imposed on us by society to be something that perhaps we are not in order to feel accepted. We belong. We belong because we are part of this beautiful planet. We are made up of raindrops and dahlias and falling stars. We are amazing and we are love. Like the leaves on Maples we absorb light and it fills us up with color. I am sure that with each bright moment, each moment of joy, we change. Like one drop in an ocean. Like the one raindrop that becomes a flood. Like the one step that begins the journey of a lifetime. Moment by moment we can change ourselves, and thereby the world.