Spring Is Coming and It’s Time to Move On
As sunny days return, we rejoice at being able to be outside, let go of making fire wood and focus full time on writing and publishing.
STILL MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES # 2 Thursday March 16, 202
Photo Credit: Chinmayan At Our Mountain Harvest Site
As sunny days return, we rejoice in being able to be outside , let go of making firewood and focus full time on writing and publishing.
This morning, when I got up it was to a completely different world than last night.
The intense storm that sent so much rain has disappeared while I slept and I rejoice to see brilliant blue sky and sunshine.
Yesterday, we were sheltering all day in this tiny house as the latest storm raged outside.
We are both ragged from this long period of storm after storm, and talked about the mental, physical and spiritual effects on us of having lived in the grey for the past few weeks.
It is a strain mentally to have to stay indoors day after day.
When we saw this ray of sunshine coming in today’s weather forecast, it lifted our spirits. We haven’t been able to do anything outside for so long that we got excited as we talked about the best use of this sunny day.
We decided to suit up in work clothes, pull on our heavy boots, load our Four by Four and spend the day in the mountains at our oak harvest site, cutting up the long dead tree trunks and loading them into the cargo bay.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
We know that Spring will eventually arrive, even though it may come later than usual.
When it does, there will come a day when the weather has warmed up so much that there will be no more desperate calls for fire wood.
This has happened every spring for all the years we have been producing firewood professionally.
When that shift happens, then the chainsaws get stored away and the firewood yard will be silent and dormant as our focus moves on to other things.
The tractor, which is so important now for moving rounds to the splitter and then buckets full of finished firewood out to be dumped into our customers pick up truck beds, will be parked, covered and left to slumber, untouched for months.
Photo Credit: Chinmayan
It is a natural shift in tune with the seasons.
We welcome it, and after all these years of firewood production, when the calls stop coming, we will be closing our little firewood stand.
We will be saying goodbye to this era of our lives and moving on.
This spring will be a time for letting go of everything else so we can focus 100 % on continuing to build out our writing and publications, with the intention of expanding and improving “The Dawning Light”.
Later…mid afternoon
I am at our oak harvest site in the mountains above the valley Still Mountain is in. The sun light streaming into the cab of the truck is so clear and bright and warm that I take it as a blessing bestowed between the storms.
I am here alone because Ani sprained her back this morning and stayed back to rest. Both of us are realizing how important it is to our mental health to get exercise and keep moving.
Last night, we treated ourselves to walking down the country road that runs by our place, just long enough to be still enjoying the rain and wind and biting cold before retreating to the warm sanctuary of my tiny house.
After being inside for so many days, we both hunger to be to be using these bodies and getting work done.
There is great satisfaction for us when we keep on doing things that move us towards the fulfillment of our goals…and it’s flubberating (which means frustrating and irritating all at once) when we are prevented by outside reasons, such as these back to back storms.
But even those few days inside means that I am struggling a bit here to get limbered up and moving onto the high state of focus and flow that turns work into meditation.
The work is a lot harder after the pause because this body is not used to be used.
Photo Credit: Nicola Smith
I also can see the kind of thoughts running through my mind, the “I don’t want to”, “its too hard” and others that try to convince me to pack up and go home.
But I won’t of course, because I am here with a mission and I know that being in that high state of flow is much more satisfying than giving into internal resistance.
I will push through, I will get this body limbered up and sweating, I will get this work done from a high state because that is one of the main reasons I love coming into the mountains to harvest…
the chance to confront hard physical labor in a way that I enables me to raise my own consciousness, free myself from the negative thoughts and feel victorious when I head home with a truck load of wood.
I know that I will probably always be coming to the woods in winter to make firewood for our own hearth, and to practice using this heavy work as a kind of meditation in action, that gives me the opportunity to overcome my mundane mind’s resistance, get into a high state of flow, where joy, clarity and consciousness constantly rise as I work.
As Kalu Rinpoche often encouraged us, “Having a clear purpose that serves other as well as yourself, and pushing through all the internal resistance and obstacles as they arise, creates the space for high achievement and enlightenment.”
Photo Credit: Nicola Smith
God has a plan for the highest good for our lives—the more we align with it, The more amazing our lives become.
God’s will is always for our highest good and the advancement and provision of all of us.
There is absolutely no limit upon what we can achieve, as long as we are following the inner guidance in alignment with God’s will for our highest good.
—Chinmayan
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Feeling gratitude for the sunshine!!! 💜