Ruckle Farm, Salt Spring Island

This is Grandma's Bay, a quiet cove just a few minutes walk from the farm on Salt Spring Island, BC, where I currently find myself. It is just a little surreal, to wake up at sunrise and walk down here with my cup of tea before the day's work begins.

I walk past these fields of sheep and highland cattle with my tea as the sun touches the tops of the trees and the air smells sweet and cold.

And then the harvesting begins. Yesterday (can it be?), the other volunteer farmer (WWOOFER), Callie, and I harvested this whole row of beautiful pumpkins and squash, as the dill blew in the wind and the highland cows over the fence lowed for us to throw the squash vines over faster...

Our squash and pumpkin bounty, harvested and washed almost all yesterday! My arms are sore and scratched, and I slept heavily. A beautiful feeling, fresh air and sun and blackberries now and then, all day long.

I wanted to come up here, the farther northern coast of this western coast of pine forest and wild bluff that I love so much, to fill myself with fresh air, to make my whole body sore with work, to learn a few new things, before heading back into some writing projects in my wonderful, sweet home in Berkeley. This island is too beautiful for words-- pure lakes, stars thick and bright, sheep catching and bean picking by day...... But it also makes me appreciate my home so deeply, that bright calm nurturing center at the heart of my life, in the foggy hills of the East Bay, with my love and some carrot boxes and a leggy tangle of indigo plants, my family and his just across the wide and windy bay.

In the words of Rebecca Solnit, as found at Terri Windling's Drawing Board a few days back:

“The desire to go home is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love."

And perhaps, in the end, part of traveling somewhere new is to deepen all the star-lines in yourself that lead you back home. Last night, Callie and I walked to the sea and back as the stars came out thick and the Milky Way ran above us like a pale river. Inside each of us, perhaps there is a great web just like that, and home at the center, where the things and people you love are, and you go on little adventures out into the world to find your way back again to that great silver heart.

More photos soon! For now, I am weary in all my muscles from a long day outside.