I've been avoiding this blank screen for 10 years. Or at least that's as long as I can remember wanting to fill it with the stories swirling in my head in search of a clear spot to land. In the spirit of facing blank spaces with fear but persistence, I will officially type some words and invite you in.
For the last 2 1/2 years I've been living in this magical place we've called Foxglove Hollow. It sits nestled beneath an old growth patch of mighty cedar trees and doug firs, alongside a babbling brook that flows into a pond with turtles, bull frogs and wandering geese. A Victorian White farmhouse (debatable Victorian designation - the official record ages our white lady at 1930s, but we wonder if she's a bit older beneath the surface) rests alongside two weeping willows, whose weepy branches bow in the wind, giving any adventurous soul a joyful ride on its tire and wooden swings.
Watching over the farmhouse is our big, beautiful red barn, a place to house barn dances, movie nights, barn cats, & the beloved John Deere Tractor. Growing up as a little girl I imagined one day living in such a place as this. My Grandma Linda and Papa John had a farm in Silvana, Washington, that was the stuff of dreams. Cows on the loose, ducks to feed, pond fish to catch, sheep to shear, horses to ride, trees to read beneath, and carrots to pluck from the soil. These were the memories swirling in my head when my husband and I decided to take the plunge and master something new - living in the country. Turns out our roots, mobile as they are and always will be, thrive best in the open air, clean dirt, and clear waters that characterize the great "outside of the city" realm.
We arrived at our farmhouse with ideas swirling about how we could uncover the charm hiding beneath 1980s pine board walls, carpet, and blue kitchen cabinets to expose the timeless look we imagined it always had. Just 4 months into living here while crafting ideas on the renovation project we were determined to take on if we could muster up the time and money needed, we found out I'd be taking on three big projects. A new job as Vice President at a company based in CA, a vintage farmhouse reno and growing a tiny human.
Now nestled in Foxglove Hollow, beneath the mighty old growths, with toes in the babbling brook, climbing atop that beloved tractor, and sleeping with the wind in the willows blowing outside his window, lies our Auden Oak.
Thus, this is our story. We may weave back and forth, back to the start, and here again because that's how life works, right? It's never chronological, linear, or seamless. This may be a story I longed to tell earlier in our life along the way, but as such, the story will be told as it was lived - sometimes spontaneously, sometimes in perfect order, slightly planned, always hopeful, vigorously, and always with love.
If you've ever read Aldo Leopold's "A Sand County Almanac," (if you haven't do it now!) you will understand this story a little more clearly. I begin with the Foxglove Almanac of 2015 that houses the story of "Foxglove Hollow's" emergence in January and keeps flowing into each subsequent season that year. Afterwards, my intention is to capture a unique almanac of other years that follow and some years that precede. Here it becomes difficult to unspool the thread that connect it all. In some cases we may want to unspool the story of almanacs past where we forged our camps in other parts of the country. All that I know is, I want to thrive in every season, maintaining that green fire in my eyes that searches for disturbed ground to root in and establish Camp Foxglove.