Snowed in at Heathcote Community

Yep, the ice age has arrived at my little homestead, Hina Hanta. I’m due at yoga in the Heathcote Mill in seven minutes. The Mill is four hundred feet down a steep hill and I’m surrounded by…wait, I’ll measure it with a broom…sixteen inches of snow and counting. It’s supposed to stop around midnight. I might skip yoga.

But I can’t stay snowbound all day. I need to slide down that hill for Heathcote’s quarterly retreat. I know the folks back at the Cabin and our new strawbale group house, Polaris, have longer treks to the Mill. But they don’t have my steep hill.

Ahh, that new pellet stove is cranking out the heat and my Milkbone pajamas are toasty warm. I’ll nurse my Earl Grey tea a while and pack a bag for spending the day at the Mill:

• house shoes
• a change of socks
• A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn
• my candida cleanse herbs
• my phone, fully charged
• my peg solitaire game

That should do it. Heathcoter Gloria is bringing her dog Rochelle to my place for doggie daycare during the retreat. Rochelle and Tuatha can figure out together how to walk in snow that’s shoulder high.

Yesterday I went to Goodwill to finally buy a winter coat. Yes, mark the date. In the first week of February I have decided to accept the inevitability of winter generally, and that it has in fact come this year. While at Goodwill, I bought three plush toys with no hard plastic eyes or buttons. So Tuatha has new toys over which to resent Rochelle.

Here’s a picture of Tuatha last night, snuggled up and warm in the firelight  with one new toy, a teddy bear that had some battery compartment inside that said, “DEX Products.” So we’ve named this one Dex. Being the biggest of the new toys, it’s his favorite of the moment. Tuatha is a patriotic American in that way, and in wanting whatever the other doggie has.

I can certainly marvel at the majesty of nature during events like this snowstorm or a flood in our valley, even as I grumble pettily over my inconvenience. I notice how part of me is really a small, insignificant animal, who just wants every day to be predictable and containable. And then there’s some other part that can connect to the whole, pause in wonder, completely present in the moment of some event, grand or granular, and be aware of the energy flowing through all things.

When I get to the bottom of the hill, I am so going to have bootfulls of snow sending chill to my bones.

–WT

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