Lughnasa Waning Summer Moon
Yesterday was a big day. Kate did an “…awesome job on the food.” I heard this from the Bailey Patchworkers lead, a woman with a great and commanding presence. (the IW breed standard). To do this she got there around 8 am and didn’t leave until 3 pm. She was still in good shape, considering the amount of time she’d spent on her feet and in charge of the kitchen. They sang happy birthday to her, too. She did take a 45 minute nap in the very car I binged on Friday.
Gabe went with us, helping to carry stuff. On the way back from Baily we stopped for “cow watch.” We try to see the cows feeding on the grass in a mountain meadow about half way down Shadow Mountain Drive. They were out and close to the fence so Gabe and I got out for a look. He wanted to go pet them, but wouldn’t brave the tall grass to get close enough to the fence.
Meanwhile, back on Black Mountain Drive, Rigel the wonder dog, was busy. Ever since she dug for, caught and ate a vole last year she has resumed her predator ways. I’ve found shallow holes, often more like trenches, in many spots in the yard. She spends a lot of time with her head under the shed. But yesterday she out did herself.
Her are a few pictures of her exciting adventures ruining our back deck.
Jon picked up Gabe at noon, after a 30-45 minute delay for a pro-bicycle race that had a leg along Hwy. 73. Gabe came up last Sunday. He starts school this Monday, so he’s gone down the hill. Ruth didn’t come up yesterday with Jon because she was with a friend, Eva, watching softball. The pulling away begins.
There’s a sort of sneaky self-satisfaction that comes from holding a business meeting on the boardwalk in Evergreen. Alan Rubin and I met at the Muddy Buck in the morning, sitting outside on its veranda, really a wide spot on the couple of blocks long board walk that I mentioned a few posts ago. On a Monday morning discussing the religious school class we start teaching on September 5th, we saw the usual flow of cars on Hwy 74, the main street of this tourist destination portion of Evergreen. This is a place people come to visit for an afternoon or a weekend or a week. And we live here.
Discovering an odd phenomenon. My feelings bubble up with less filtering. I don’t feel depressed, not labile. Not really sure how to explain this, though it may be a third phase change? Or, maybe just me, for some reason.
In fact, there’s another example. Over the last few months I’ve been using the word sweet a lot. Our dogs are sweet. Ruth. The folks at Beth Evergreen. Minnesota friends. The loft. My life. I seem to see sweetness more now. I haven’t lost my political edge, my anger at injustice or a willingness to act, but the world has much, much more nuance now at an emotional level.
I see my own holy soul, now claiming more space, taking back some of the aspects of my life I had given over to achievement, to striving. This is strange because it comes as I’ve begun to reach for achievements I’ve blocked for decades. The work of submitting my writing feels both unimportant and necessary. I’m immersed in a community, Beth Evergreen, which encourages the growth and expansion of my holy soul. This is true religion, with the small r, the connecting and reconnecting of our inner life with the great vastness, our part in it highlighted, made clear at the same time as our limitedness.
