Solace

John let me sleep in this morning, getting up at 5:30 to feed the horses (usually my chore), and leaving me in bed under a pile of blankets and dogs cuddled close to me. It was nearly 8 by the time I rousted myself out, and wandered into the kitchen.

After breakfast (baked bacon with eggs from our hens and home made wheat toast; homemade ketchup and jam; black tea), I wandered out to the barn, and took my time cleaning stalls, prepping pony dinners, adding new bedding, as the drizzle came down, and the gusty wind brought willow leaves sleeting to the ground in bunches. Leaning on my pitchfork in the doorway, I watched the clouds slide around the mountain tops and away to the East through the canyon. The horses moved quietly about, picking through the fallen leaves for a tasty snack. Russell the rooster expressed his opinion of the cold and the wet. A red-tailed hawk perched in the Lombardy poplar at the far end of the property, shoulders hunched and head pulled down between them---like a city dweller in a trenchcoat, hat pulled down, hands in pockets, hurrying along the sidewalk, hunched against the wind, trying to keep his ears warm.

Back in the house, I wiped down the wet dogs, laughing at their laughing faces, and wriggling bodies, wrapped in towels. John had started a project, breaking into the pumpkins, to make them into purée for the freezer, and spicy pumpkin seeds for snacks. (T-day is coming!) I decided to make a pumpkin-corn chowder for lunch, and we spent a quiet couple of hours dancing in the kitchen---moving this way and that, circling the center island, sliding each other out of the way to get into a drawer, offering and receiving a taste on a spoon, passing in and out of the pantry, query and response about where to find the cumin seed or the dried peppers. The simple pleasure of a well-stocked home, filled with whatever you need, to make whatever you want, if you can find it. And someone to share it with.

Before the soup was done, the rain had turned to snow, and John decided to make cornbread to go with the chowder. As he stood in the door of the pantry, a number 10 can of cornmeal in his hands, I smiled, thinking 'three years ago, we would have had to go to the store before we could have made cornbread on a snowy Saturday. We're kind of nutty.'

This afternoon is for reading books and knitting and drinking chamomile tea by the quart as the snow comes down, and the wind blows. After chores, Saturday is candle-light game and pizza night, (the dough is rising, and I'm thinking about toppings for my side of the pizza...).

Our growing competence at all the things that are truly essential to living, our supply of food that means we will not starve, no matter what the weather does, our responsibilities to the crowd of beings that rely on us, our amusements and entertainments, and the quiet partnership of moving in the same space to separate ends; all these things act in my mind and my body so that I find myself comforted, so full of peace and security that sadness becomes a kind of sweetness. And the outrageous joys, that in their own way are so draining and fraught with the fear of a fall, become mellowed, warmer, not so glittery-hard. It's a hard year, this year, with highs that are so high and lows that are so low. Days like this one remind me that the buffeting waves are only temporary and there's ground down there somewhere just waiting for me to plant my feet on it.