Cold Moon Meditations

From my window I can see the sloping mountains and watch the winter rise and fall on the wide sweeping fallow flanks. The sky takes on a deep grey intensity that is crisply met by the snow covered peaks. There are grey bluffs that cut the gentle yellows and browns of wintered vetch and grasses and every time the mist descends the fresh snowfall paints new outlines and patches. It is an ever-changing oil painting of Cold Moon on Bear Mountain.

I am learning to make bread.

I forage my flour from the co-op. The fluffy powder of summer's grain. I capture it with a wide shiny scoop and flump it into my sack with a puff. I do not know the field, I did not smell the fresh cut stems, I did not grind between stones or cultivate soil, yet there is a pleasure in the wooden bins, the organic brand, the earth-tone rainbow of choices, the quick scents of grains, and seeds and meals.

I am nursing along an old way of making bread. A new fermented sourdough with long slow rising that comes to life from breathing in the air of this home. I nurse it along through the day. Each loaf a 24 hour process of native chemistry and time. Each time I pass through the kitchen I will putter around the fleshy zesty batter; adjusting the towel, flipping the drawn out windowpane of dough, sniffing the level of life as it bubbles on the counter. Then I take a moment to observe the light on those mountains, take note of the fuzzy depth of clouds and yum to myself that I will soon be tasting the crumb of this day.

How bee-ish a thought! I send my mind to the hive and see:

Invisible Dance by Coriene Neumayer

Warm and cozy, fermenting pollen, the scent of snow wafting in the doorway, the patter of cold rain on the tin roof. The patient putter back and forth through the pantry. A pause to masticate the pollen of September, a quick mix of royal jelly/sister-milk, the sniff of ferment.

I feel...

The bees are remembering the pollen as it came through the door, the vibration of stamen, the pulses of pollen, the shower of flower-passion, the feeling of warm summer.

These fat winter bees, the sisters of long life sometimes surviving the entire winter singing the songs of summer as they slowy grow toward spring.

They sing the song of the Pollen to the wee ones in the cell as they feed them their own sourdough niblets. They sing "we gathered this by the river, go there sweet one, one day!"

They share a breath of perfume, the flavor of the field...

They dance the distance, shimmy the poetry with nimble feet and rainbow wings.

Each cell of bee bread opened and shared, tasting of the exact terroir, the precise day,

the perfect expression of flower.

They move and flow. In and out of time and season. The dark of winter has at it's heart the warm pulse of summer.

We eat of it,

remember

and sing. dance a slow, delicious expression of gratitude....