Held Potential

The leaves for spring already exist but they must first handle winter to open

The snow has fallen over the landscape, and more will come in over the next few days. The cold air has descended for at least a while, and even in this weird winter, where my chickens pulled the garlic up after Christmas because the ground was still unfrozen, I am finding that my brain can finally find a space to rest on the work of the land and garden.

I don’t like these weird, warm Decembers we have had lately. I sat on a call with other land caretakers, and they all described the same angst with it and how we have to rethink how we tend to the soil because of it—shifting with the landscape in more ways than one. In these moments when I hold that angst a little too tightly, I find I need to do only one thing: head into the woods.

The promise of photosynthesis sits just waiting for it’s time in May to begin again.

It is a daily routine to find myself meandering the paths of the hills we have the opportunity to call home. I wander a path amongst a small aspen grove that, in the last few years, now feels towering. The trees in fall have these gorgeous yellow leaves that shake in the wind. Then I wander past the Beech and the Oaks. Then the pines that are tucked in like a gradient of growth coming from one side of the land to the other. Indicating the subtly different soil structures that are not evident to the untrained eye, but for me, I can put words, grades, and more to them now, even in just a short time spent deep in learning the land in new ways.