Field Notes Archive - November 2023
Looking at the Loops of Life
Passages Through Stacks of Circles
Negative space is taking over.
Bare branches and empty seed pods sway naked in the wind. Fig leaves fall like torn magazine pages into crumpled heaps at their own feet. Birds are more easily observed across the emptying landscape while most other fauna are now impossible to find. Every October day is on the books.
A surprise snow brought November in with a frozen flourish. In less than 30 minutes the pre-dawn world was washed in a layer of white, glowing as the sun finally shot up. It was an unexpected arrival that announced a whole new world, a whole new month. Only one flip of the calendar remains.
The paths we’ve taken this year have been the product of a commitment to say yes. Yes to opportunities, partnerships, travel and more. After years of isolated living (by our own choices and world circumstances), it’s become overwhelming just how wide life can get with one simple decision.
The domino effect of deciding to lean in has resulted in a testing of the elasticity of our energy, creativity, and individual thresholds. There have been obvious benefits to our year of yes, but foggier consequences too. Cycles have emerged, perspectives shifted. Bandwidths have been stretched, at times to a breaking point, requiring better boundaries to be built.
For years we looked forward to the void that winter provided. We’d digitally “hibernate,” pausing all social media posts and newsletters. Before willow our voice in the world was easily erased for months on end. Back then we weren’t teaching, selling or leaving the house to collaborate with people or places.
Back then we weren’t quite sure what Foggy Blossom was, or was destined to become. The withdrawal was, perhaps, a necessary pause in order to create space for the answers to arise.
As we reach the end of 2023 and approach the gateway of a new year, I visualize the passage as a circular loop coming to a close. These loops layer on top of one another year after year, a stack of closed circles that symbolize life, lived. The older we get the more familiar the path is, though each time we transcend the loop it’s clearer how impossible it is to duplicate any one we’ve journeyed before.
That infinite, spiralic void always hovering ahead of us is not exactly negative space, but space nonetheless. Every future loop is empty and inaccessible at the moment, but full of room for change. Every year we haven’t yet stepped into is steeped in the potential to shift, grow, and make decisions that will fork our path in new directions.
Negative space is all around us all the time, but in November our senses can more readily perceive it thanks to the bare vulnerability that nature reflects back. As the leaves fall and rot, we can clearly see what has come to pass in our own spent days. Traversed time is full of tales.
November has already brought equal parts sameness and surprise. One can only adapt to the circumstances of each day, but my hope is that within the widening emptiness we’ll embrace the opportunity to forge anew, weathered and wiser.
Originally published on November 5, 2023
Full of Familiarity
Forward Pointing Perspectives
This week I’ve been returning from my daily photo walks in a mood that can only be described as harumph.
“It’s so boring out there,” I say. “All brown. A mess.”
I’m right, but wrong too.
I watch a character on TV talk about how she’s a seed, a tree seed, in the game of growth for the long haul. I read a quote on Instagram about how when the landscape looks most dead it’s because all the energy has plummeted deep down underground where it will someday return, triumphant. I remember that first impressions which illicit a yawn (at best) always reveal much more dimension upon observation.
Thoughts I so often communicate here return to me and re-attune me. I find fascinating things to photograph.
The snow that punctuated November’s arrival has felt like a fever dream through the recent stretch of spring-like days. Warm temperatures have allowed ticks to flourish, feeling their way through our dog’s coats in great numbers as they search for something to suckle. Thousands of willow aphids attach themselves to young rods in one dense group of grey. Long gone are beautiful butterfly wings and the happy hum of honeybees under a truly hot sun.
Among the brown there are still pockets of color, and a greater surge of green is growing underfoot. The lawnmower won’t be laid to rest just yet, and I wonder if I’ll be wearing a tank top to cut turkey. It wouldn’t be the first time. Our sheet selection continues to do-si-do as I feel unable to fully commit to flannel. These forecasts are a sweet spot for so many fauna, but as we move through our days no layer seems to strike the right tone.
We taught our final basketry workshop for the year this past week, as well as participated in our last in-person market. In 2024 we have plans to travel far and wide in pursuit of work that revolves around our precious willow, bringing both familiarity and fear to the forefront. That duality was showcased several days ago when Dan was asked to appear on a local television broadcast. His role as ambassador and teacher is one that stretches the bounds of personal comfort, but his dedication to basketry has resulted in a relationship that proves to buoy any stressful situation. Partnership with plants keeps one rooted and resilient.
Our focus on grooming to get camera-ready has happily shifted to the ground, where shovels work without fanfare and fingernails collect filth. From studio lights to soil, Dan has turned his time and attention towards re-homing hazelnuts that have seemed unhappy in the nursery. I walk the soft and often sopping earth with my lens to look for life. We visit the mysterious death of a deer that was found fallen in our field with no signs of struggle. As winter rises nearer on the horizon the acreage continues to fracture.
Beyond willow we have an extensive lineup of perennials that demand our attention and infiltrate our life. Tiny containers of all sorts of seeds are appearing on shelves throughout the house. Fruits are sliced into pies and bowls of oatmeal. Faces of now familiar flora beam through photographs going back to 2018 when the farm began, reminding us that 5 years feels both fast and forever at the same time.
So instead of allowing myself to lazily declare that the scenery is “boring,” I’ll try to remember that even when the colors of each day are clouded, literally or through the lens of my own perspective, growth goes forward. The future is full of it.
Originally published on November 12, 2023
Expansion/Withdrawal
The Dichotomy of Growth
Willow, perhaps our most fervent grower, still seems to be in pursuit of sky.
Even as its leaves fall and pool into piles, the eye is pulled upward to the lanky limbs that dance with ecstatic elasticity in the wind. Farther down the final fullness of their forms is on display, revealing rods that are thick, thin, branchy, stick straight, and everything in between. We marvel at how mammoth they’ve become since spring.
As they grow more bare, the mixed palette of 100+ varieties shines vivid in the waning sunlight, but it seems they’d prefer to ascend, endlessly, rather than face the suspension of an off-season. Here, and all throughout the acreage, there is a clear dichotomy between expansion and withdrawal - opposing forces that together create a dependable cycle of growth.
The full scope of a thorn’s menace is now on display, along with the enchantment of swaying cattails who’ve shed their signature fuzzy coats. Each morning the sun burns lines through frost on fresh grass, revealing the subtleties of topography and shadows that are easily missed. A side view of our compost pile reveals layers of long forgotten waste, now drawn down into messy unity by the hands of gravity and time.
Those forces are also evident throughout the shriveled ghosts of unpicked raspberries, figs, currants and more. Plump cacti have begun to wrinkle, and milkweed’s cottony offspring have dwindled from pillowy clumps to imperceptible wisps. Everywhere energy is descending underground, but it’s the remaining armatures above that pull focus.
There is a sense of stoicism among those that still stand in the sun’s piercing light, a presence that feels more precious with every evening that arrives earlier.
It's that time of year when reflections are regularly discussed along with ambitious plans for the future. Wisdom of the known is measured against projected perceptions in an attempt to design a life. We walk the length of our field and dream of future footprints of buildings, roads and perhaps a pond. With our hands we draw designs in midair, juxtaposing the material reality against our imaginations.
We attempt to believe that anything is possible, despite knowing the current limitations.
Pretty soon winter’s grip will stop our willow from doing anything but stand still, fully bare and frozen. Only its roots will take action then - invisibly. We’ll begin coppicing them down to the stools, an act that will inflame their desire to grow. By spring they’ll burst forth with an unmatched vigor, beginning their race towards the heavens once again.
I trust that by spring we’ll have achieved our own reliable amount of growth, both imperceptible and noticeable. Surely some of the seeds that now only exist in our mind’s eye will be planted in reality, but only time will reveal what their rate of growth will be. In the dichotomy between the past and future is the present moment, untouched by either and shaped by the cycles of waxing and waning.
Here, I hope, anything is possible.
Originally published on November 19, 2023
Facing the Void
In All Its Manifestations
If spring is famous for its infinite shades of green, perhaps fall deserves an accolade for showcasing the best of brown.
The more I pay attention to the nuances of this notoriously drab hue the more enamored I become. Green is easy to love with its verdant vibrancy, but within brown is the necessary void from which all colors are born. No mud, no lotus.
From this fading palette a gallery of frameworks and fascinations is emerging. Scaffolds of all kind shine whether outlined by frost, buttressed against blue sky, or rising in distorted reflection. Perspectives shift across the stilling and chilling surfaces of our ponds. A six-foot snakeskin found under the shed safely haunts when hung. The husks of frozen seed heads silently release their fertility to the void, and the grass is split by sunlight each morning as the frost slowly lifts.
The natural world is tidying up another year as it gracefully recedes towards rest. In tandem with my typing on this topic, however, the busiest shopping day of the year is unfolding. My instinctive response to the indulgence and overstimulation of Thanksgiving has always been to hibernate, preferring the kind of buying that can be done via keyboard and clicks. But many choose to weave through literal aisles and endure the labyrinth of packed parking lots in pursuit of purchase.
My mind returns to last week’s thoughts on dichotomy and I marvel at the many realities that can simultaneously unfold in a single day. I wonder about the experiences I have not put on my path.
Here in the northern hemisphere as the beauty and comfort of the outside world dwindles, attention naturally turns indoors. We create festivity in opposition to the freezing landscape through things like twinkling trees, cozy candlelight, and revelry of all kind.
Perhaps our propensity to bedazzle the dreariest days with sparkle and cheer is a reflexive response to the loss of splendor we are so spoiled with throughout spring and summer. Life is simply better when illuminated, whether through earthly or manufactured magic.
Soon, even the buffet of brown will fade into the most neutral abyss, or be fully buried under snow (hopefully). Still, I’ll aim to stay as anchored to the acreage as much as possible - attuned to the nuances of winter’s “nothing.” In our 6+ years here I’ve gone through various periods of commitment to keeping this contact alive, but when I’m consistent I find a greater sense of peace and balance through the experiential extremes.
A warm bath is more restorative after extremities have endured the cold. A quiet walk alone through the field is a welcome respite from the joyful chaos of company.
In my writing I often feel as if I’m unintentionally making a case that nature is the superior place to be, but there is no hierarchy. It’s only through the pursuit of equanimity both inside and out that I can fully appreciate either space and find harmony in the whole.
There are so many aspects of human life that cannot be comprehended succinctly by the mind, but when I observe the multifaceted steadiness and assuredness of the land around me there is at least some semblance of being held by it. Out there I feel confident that from brown, green will return, and from darkness, radiance.
As we face the void, in all its manifestations, we can always count on that.
