my hermitage

see you soon

hermitage: 1. The habitation of a hermit; a secluded residence.

Last autumn, I made a pact with the Canada Geese. I sat on my favourite boulder beside my favourite rushing creek and stared up at them, wave after wave, as they announced their departure. “When you return, I will have have my book,” I decided. Then declared. And that was that, a pact was formed.

These last few months I’ve felt an incessant urge to withdraw. The siren song of seclusion plays ever louder in my heart. I hear it when I wake in the middle of the night and the whole world is still. I hear it in the moonbeams on my face as I stare out my darken windows feeling so separated from a great love. I hear it in the song of the chickadees and the laughing ravens. I hear it rising from the dreamy murmurs of sleeping trees.

The whole of all is calling me away.

And away is where I am going. Not on vacation. Not to a different place. I’m going here, to my place, to the place deeper and more still. Where I can hear clearly the voice of God. Where the unencumbered truths can bloom in fields without the competition of invasive species. 

I’ve made good progress on my book over the last good while, but it’s time for it to be done. And in these last months, the way I want that “done” to materialize feels inaccessible to me in the way I want to so fully experience it. There are things I see but cannot touch and to touch them and roll them around and taste them is what I want to do. I need to shed the buffers and structures of this world for a time. I need to not be any of the things I’m expected to be.

We’ve been living in the woods lately. Winter camping of sorts. Only we’ve set up this little canvas tent, complete with wood stove and furs and wool, to stay. It remains deep in our forest waiting. We’ve spent some time now testing and refining. How does one sleep on frozen snow and ground themselves to the vibration of the earth without plastic sheets and sleeping bags? How do we stay warm? How can I write comfortably without computer or frozen fingers? 

It’s been such a joy, this wonderful little home of ours. Today we had errands in the city. I came home with a headache from the EMF radiation raining down on me from the top of every building, from every buzzy wifi signal, one building on top of the other, in the walls of every business I entered. The traffic and filthy snow and the endless parade of signs my mind reads before I can stop it are all so exhausting. We came home and ate steaks and lit fires to keep the house from freezing. Then we bundled up, filled up our lantern, and headed out.

There’s something to trudging through cold snow, cold enough to squeak, under the light of the moon. A wolf moon now. And what better to escort one into the woods in the dark of night? The drowsy deer are confused by our presence in their world when the sun has left. They sit up from their snow beds and quickly scamper away. The only sound is the crunching of our footsteps, one after another.

When we arrive at our tent, we shake its outside walls free of snow. We’re warm now, from our walk in deep snow, but we know we will chill again soon. We go inside and load the little wood stove with good dried firewood of maple, oak, and ash. It’s good firewood and we are soon warm enough to take off our jackets and boots. The cold metal of the stove pops and snaps as the heat forces its walls to thaw.

We light our candle lanterns and sit together in silence, bums on layers of wool and fur. All that we have seen that day, the niceties and politeness, the must-do errands, the conversation with accountants and businesses, the news that squeaked in through shared emails and links, the flat, lifeless, blue-skinned body of the digital, is gone. There’s only us being reminded of us by the absence of anything other.

We lie down, side by side, in our wooly long underwear and we read for awhile. The coyote calls find us and we smile together. It’s good to be here, a part of this. A far away train whistles, a rare sound that only finds us on low air pressure days. It sounds exotic and mysterious while we lie here on our snow floored tent. 

When the coyotes have finished their roll-call and the train has moved on, there is nothing but silence. Silence so intense the sound of my lover’s heartbeat fills my cheeks. We are here alone and we are so utterly small. The snow and the cold has absorbed us all.

Sleep comes thick and strong. And even waking to feed fires cannot disrupt the soundness of our rest. A rest beyond the quantity of hours slept. Rest into a world that has been calling and we have been craving. 

In the morning, the whole tent is illuminated with the umber glow of the rising sun. Ravens are flying their patrols. Chickadees dash in small clouds, from shrub to shrub around us, eating infinitesimally small seeds and chattering all the while. Their good spirits sprinkle us with the same. We put a kettle of water on and fill our bowls and cups with the dried foods I’ve been preparing for years. I no longer know which cow this bone broth comes from, but it is ours. We eat a hearty meat stew with our mug of broth. And we pack up to go home. 

There are farm chores to do. Dogs to walk. Muscles to exercise. And then, we will return to our tent and we will stay. For every day, until snow transforms into water, we will live here. And I will write. And when the geese return, they will find me on my boulder with my side of the bargain complete.

A note to my wonderful readers:

And with that, I hope you’ll understand why I’ll be absent from this place for a few months. I can’t ignore the strong callings of the wilds. Well, I suppose I could, but I choose not to. I’ve learned that ignoring such things never turns out well.

I have unshakable faith in whatever comes when we do listen to those whispers from beyond our logical minds. But in outcomes I hold no stock. Those forever remain the domain of a loving brilliance beyond me. And I’m happy to leave it that way. My imagination is much too puny to tackle such things.

I will be suspending my Substack account. What that means is that anyone that’s a paid member will immediately have all payments stopped. If you’re a year long subscriber, your subscription will be paused and will start back up when I return. All payments cease and are held in suspension until I return. They will resume then. If you would like to cancel your subscription entirely, to avoid it restarting upon my return, you can do so directly through Substack.

And when will that return be? Well, you’re going to have to ask the geese. But spring, yes, most definitely spring. I will return more dedicated, with stories to share. I will return free of conflicting duties. I will return, I hope, so in love with a bed made of wool and snow that I will hardly know how to sleep on a mattress. More accustomed to falling asleep with coyote howling than the sound of a furnace humming. More wild, less domesticated. I will return with parts of me excavated and others laid to rest.

I will miss this place. I will miss so many of you. Our conversations and interactions are a continuous source of joy and inspiration to me. It’s deeply encouraging to know you’re all out there - you young women and men leaving behind what’s on offer and looking to build authentic, sovereign lives, the mamas so dedicated and devoted to your blossoming families, you men working so diligently to provide for, protect, and love your women and children, and the older men and women here, grandparents or not, crafting living lives of intentionality and conviction. All of you. I will miss all of you. We may be a gaggle of odds and sods and strange humans but it’s just the kind of gaggle I want to be a part of. If being connected to such a fine lot of humans is wrong, I don’t wanna’ be right.

But for now, a burgeoning book with talons that have clamped onto my heart demands me. I can’t shake it. I don’t want to. To that, I go.

With love,

Tara❤️