Beginnings of a Homesteading Apprenticeship

This is a post I wrote when I first started visiting the Anima Center located in the Gila Wilderness. Water was cold when I traversed the 7 river crossings. And when I entered the warm wood stove kitchen hearth I could hear the water gurgling  a boil and Loba busy cutting up potatoes for stew. The windows were steamy and Rhiannon had grown since I last saw her. I chopped wood and wondered about the dormant seeds that would sprout up again in spring. For now, I mused by my own woodstove on loved wooden planks at the Gaia lodge, a womb of comfort for an awakening soul. I walked in the snow and traverse the ice cold river barefoot. My body awoke and my feet numbed as I gazed at the most marvelous ice crystals framing elk eaten willow shrubs...

2/2012

Winter homesteading requires that you pay attention to the ponderosa pine needle bed tucking in the forest floor seeds for their impermanent slumber. It also requires that I gently gaze at the flower china tea cup with the four legs at its base in plain soft sunlight. I notice its fragility and gold paint lining its periphery.

The ginger turned golden in the skillet.  And that gold tints our noses as we smell ginger steaming into the air.  Its scent wafting in the warm kitchen air makes me think about the longing for gold minerals in the wild heydays of the Southwest. Perhaps, I think about how the longing for gold minerals created an exasperation to become rich and prosperous. But right at this moment, the golden ginger scent is the prosperity.