Announcement!
First, an announcement. If you are a food-minded reader, please take a look at the new online magazine 'Eighty Percent Raw:' it's going to be packed with interesting articles, recipes, exercise advice and other discussions from a balanced perspective, and I'm going to be writing for it too! I'll be writing an article each month and I also have a blog over there that's just getting started. It has a discussion forum attached too, and I'll try to look in there as I'm able.
For this week, I'm going to continue with my series on the no-sugar treats and I anticipate that I'll still talk about food and food issues a fair bit here, but since my other blog will be mostly about food, it will give me more space here to talk about everything else as well! (Well, that's the theory - amazing how there's always more to write about and not always the time to write it.) I will post a link here when I blog over there and vice versa.
I want to talk about food issues and eating-disorder-recovery a bit here this week too, because I haven't much and because right now it feels relevant. There will also definitely be another 'wordstalk' this week, and I also have a post mostly written in the back of my head about making do when you have less-than-ideal equipment.
The View From Here
Starting from this post, I'd like to start each week with a 'view from here' post. (Unfortunately and super-ironically, the day after I finally learned to post pictures here, our camera stopped working! But we'll see if we can remedy that so that there will be more photos.) I remember saying last summer, when we were looking ahead to what it would be like to live here in the winter, that living in a place with this kind of climate is like traveling without going anywhere: the same places look so very different in the different seasons. As the days lengthen apace and the snow and ice inexorably melt and people have their seeds started indoors and there is even some green grass beginning to poke up amid all the brown, snow-bruised leftovers from last time, it feels like we're moving a little faster right now.
And the view from my writing spot - from our whole cabin, perched as it is 30ft from the bluff - is perhaps incomparable as a vantage point for seeing transformation in action. All that said, I wrote my sister-in-law a couple days ago that we were definitely in 'Break-Up' now, as opposed to winter (a between-season that isn't quite Spring) and that very night it snowed 5 inches up the hill from us, and has been snowing and sleeting at our lower elevation. This morning our heater has quit working so I sit here in down coat, hat, down booties bigger than my head - and am quite happy. [update: Phil fixed the heater! He is so awesome in every way.]
We'll probably have some sunshine today: it just stopped snowing and you can at least see where the sun is through the clouds. These days of sun and cloud remind me of the constant imperative to pay attention to the gradations of light that is one of the most enduringly fascinating aspects of being here.
It's mating season for ravens, eagles, squirrels and it's lively out there! We didn't know that juvenile eagles bred, but we've seen two juveniles who definitely seem to be at least playing at it together. Yesterday they swooped out in wonderful, synchronous unison far out over the ocean, then parted and came back together in amazing symmetry, and twice we saw one flip all the way over! I see ravens do that all the time, but I'd never seen an eagle flip over before and nor had Phil.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, last week Phil and I were hiking the beach one evening and there were two mature eagles mating on the beach, who got interrupted by a flock of maybe 40 crows flying right over them - buzzing them, very deliberately - cawing in full voice! How rude…
