the sky light window i slept under exposed a naked sky...

I just finished Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth... so millions of people read the book... it was promoted by Oprah, and can easily be found at a wal-mart near you... but the reason i am even talking about it... there is a chapter/section on parenting that resignated with me... not because I am a parent... or can even pretend to know what it is to be one... but because of a concept he talked about... about being present... he refered to us... us human-beings... and said there is the human side of life... it is the side that gets things done... the mundane stuff... like scrubbing toilets... stuff that has to happen... but the being side is the other side... it is the side that equals being present/alive... being as real as it is possible for us to be here (i also just finished The Great Divorce)...

for christmas i usually want to run away and go camping ... me think it is to escape the human side of the holiday... and i just want to be in a beautiful, quiet, peaceful place where i can feel, and be grateful... where i know everything around me is real... i have a hard time feeling gratitude when bombarded with the wal-mart side of the season... but this christmas... this chirstmas i was a stranger/guest... an onlooker... and what i looked upon was so real...it was good... wholesome... peaceful... kind... beautiful and simple...

i spent christmas with my friend marsha's friends in boulder, utah... most of the people i met reside in cabin type houses they have built... or yurts... i fed horses, read books, made cookies, sang silent night, unstuck a car from the snow, and went cross country sking with the neighbors two girls... who are being raised in a yurt... there life is so little house on the prarie cool...

the younger of the two, willow, recited Noye's Highway Man and Longfellow's Ride of Paul Revere on the way home from the snow/ice covered pond... and while standing in the sun light willow's sister asked where we should go next?... i joked... where ever the wind takes us... (when i worked with angry teens in the desert i loved saying things like... how can you be lost in the wilderness... or... this is like a metaphor for life... they usually hated it...)... but willow's sister kayenta laughed, and said... we might be here a long time... the wind has never really taken me anywhere... we stood longer in the sun and made impressions of our faces in the snow...

i liked it!

here... a few photo or two...


this is the view from w&k's back porch

and marsha took this photo... it is my vanity that loves this photo... i think she managed to make me look like a betty crocker super model...

i even got a gift or two... kristen gave me some homemade jelly and apple juice... marsha gave me an apple cozy and some felted soap... willow and kyanta gave me a homemade lotion bar...

oh christmas tree... the little charlie brown tree, lit by the angles with real candles... the tree will be planted after christmas...

and cookies.

peace be unto you!