Bonus Post from Yesterday

In case you missed it on the new blog--sorry I didn't cross-post, but I did put up a post non-HAWMC-driven yesterday, as promised.

Today's coming up pronto.

Please see yesterday's:
http://ulteriorharmony.org/blog/2013/04/18/106/

Thanks for coming with me.

Moving Out of a Dry Spell--Month of Posts Coming up!

Today's is the last of the scraggly, infrequent posts. Like many other scraggly, infrequent posts this month, it is also rich in visuals.
Scraggly infrequency is about to be replaced by abundance, and the move to self-hosting and a new platform I've been talking about for over a year may be imminent. I beg compassion for my limited programming skills and pray I lose not one fellow traveler along the way.

April is a huge month for blogging and for writing in general. It's National Poetry Month, including the NaPoWriMo option--write a poem every single day. It's also Wego Health's Health Activist Writer's Month Challenge, a series of prompts for a blog post every single day of April. Not too late to join in on that one, actually. April is also the month of the Healthy Weight Summit (I like that it's not called the "Healthy Weight Loss Summit," btw; I'm starting to get so tired of the obsession with that in self-improvement circles). A different speaker every day of the month, promising some interesting discussions and take-aways.

So. Am I crazy? As I did last year, I signed up for the HAWMC. I'll be sharing a blog every day for the month of April with not just a health but a health activism focus. This will include (if I am able) writing frankly about what my diagnoses are and what they mean. About common misconceptions. About what caregivers should know and do.
I've never thought of myself as an activist.
On the other hand, simply being open is activism. I haven't even been all the way open about events in my life on here lately, whereas my preference is normally toward almost blatant transparency. 
So, instead of hiding in the snow cave...

I'll overcome my claustrophobia and birth myself out into the light: head first would have been better.

And if this flurry of blogging regularity and health- and poetry-centered writing involves a migration, I will leave good signposts.
My trip to Anchorage last week was only an overnight, and when I returned to Homer a disproportionate amount of snow had run away. And so begins the migration (as I've said before, seasonal changes in AK are experienced like travel). Fair-weather person though I am, I've come to love the snow and in many ways prefer winters to summers here, so I feel glad to be staying so far up the hill. Snow will be on the ground awhile yet here. 
Loving the woods and snow, often when we're hiking around up here I have lain on my back, snowshoes and all, just looking, feeling the snow down the length of my body. Yes, and my little friend is right there between my snowshod feet.

Oh, how I love those trees.
Even up here, though, the snow is softening. This fissure runs along the trunk of a fallen spruce where a moose had punched through and broken the snow layer. I'd have walked right over it a week ago; this time required caution.

This is steeply downhill, and the little snowballs my snowshoes knocked loose as I crossed the draw patterned the snow as they ran.

Still, the huge low tides where the beach extends practically across the bay say "Spring" loud and clear.

Roxy's paw with clam worm. That's more congruent with the color scheme to come.

I confess, I'm nervous on the eve of a month public as health activist (the poetry part I am happy with). I'm nervous to talk about my diagnoses when I know some of the readers closest to me don't believe in that kind of thing and perhaps feel threatened by it. I'm cautious of elaborating on some of the crazy behavior and where it's ended me up. But I remember how encouraging my workshop was at residency last year about a section of an essay displaying a psychotic episode.
I offer these revelations as a humble gift, and am always ready to take correction on the appropriateness of the gift.