two months has passed since last I blogged.  Over three weeks spent touring the midwest with my family, friend, loves.  I spectated two marathons (Chicago and Grand Rapids), and both I found awe-ing and exciting.  Last night, I had a dream that my brother was running the New York City Marathon (curiously enough the NYC Marathon is this morning), and my dad was running a 4-mile race during the marathon, and my mom and I were touring the city on foot with a marathon map seeking my bro at the start, mile 15 and mile 26.  Also someone else was with us who made barbecue pork and was carrying around about 10 chops of pork on a big white towel.  My oldest brother was wandering the marathon on his own.

ay yi yi.

What journeys I had!  How refreshing it is to reunite with my friends, family, loves!  I rode the trains and buses and walked the streets of Chicago.  I visited Evanston and Bensenville.  I visited with, shared meals with, and passed hours with, so many of my friends.  I took the amtrak to and from Michigan and saw the streets of Zeeland and Holland and Grand Rapids, and the faces of my family all together!  I rode in the big market truck back to Henry’s farm and slept in my twice trailer home.  so peaceful it was to sit in the lazyboy in the living room of the trailer and talk with my dear Val and cook and eat and rest, and hear the sounds of central Illinois, tucked away in Herman’s woods. and I visited Andy’s farm in El Paso, and I visited Bloomington-Normal, and then I rode an amtrak back to Chicago few a few more days with my favorite urban area, and then I took an amtrak to Carbondale in southern Illinois, where my sweet friendloves, Adriane and Kris, introduced me to their farm!  Where we worked and rested and visited and ate.  and to market to market in Ferguson, Missouri, and to the megabus to the megabus in St. Louis.  and the megabus to Kansas City, and the amtrak to Las Vegas, New Mexico!  What an incredible journey, to see the country on train and bus, and watch the scenery pass by and the landscapes flow into each other.    What an incredible journey– it could have gone on forever.  There is so much in the midwest for me.  There is my community, and there is quiet beauty, open fields and open fields over and over again, and yet I like the rhythm, I like the flatness, I like the big sky.  And I sometimes imagine the corn and soy fields are full of tall prairie grasses, and I sigh.

And how happy I am to be home.  How grounded I feel.  How I appreciate my quiet life, and my vegetables and my daniel and doggies.  How I appreciate the responsibilities I have at home as well.  How in my first couple days home, I dug 30 gallons of potatoes (oh! how we will eat potatoes!), and how the cold cold cold has come.  15 degree nights and occasional snow.  and how I am fermenting the cabbages (sauerkraut, kimchi, curtido).  I think I went to the midwest and came back with some brightness, confidence, trust, openness, inspiration, and it enlivens me.  I feel excited to greet the new day and I am hopeful for the future.  I’m not sure how Daniel and I are going to make our lives work within the system, and right now I am feel hopeful.  so we shall see.

This morning we moved the clock back an hour–  and last night the power went out and there was an incredible wind storm that rattled the house and whooshed over the roof and penetrated all the unsealed areas of our home.

ps-photos of ‘our farm’ coming soon.