Where do three days go? There were so many moments, in the three days of the Mindful Writing Challenge that I missed, when I did pay proper attention to something, and even did some writing of those small stones in my mind, but I never got any of them written outside my head. So have I failed the challenge? Does it count that I spent almost all of Friday working on poems, with so many files open I had to keep pulling them all up on my screen to figure out what poem to jump to next, and reading poems, and celebrating the online publication of two of my poems in the new issue of Petrichor Review? (Yes, please, do go check them out.)
Then yesterday David and I met our new New Year’s intention of hiking above tree line, or at least to a 180 degree view, at least once a month, by climbing Parker Mountain. Standing on the cliffs overlooking Bow Lake, with a wide view to the cloudy horizon of ocean to the east, was a moment that got lots of my proper attention. But then we got home and had phone calls to answer and food to prep for a dinner and wood to stack in the barn and then it was time to go out and then time to sleep.
This morning we skied to Flat Meadow Brook, which was running open and loud when I was there on Tuesday. After five days of mostly single digit temperatures, the brook is closing in, with only small pockets of water showing through some ruffle-edged holes in the layers of white, crusty ice.
Now it’s a quiet Sunday afternoon with sunshine streaming into my study and that low hum of stillness in the house again. Time to step back up to the Challenge.
Grace Mattern 