Without Darkness, There Cannot Be Light

Winter has been in full effect recently. I have been reminding myself that the cycle will soon continue and spring is on it's way.

Our little slice of work in progress has been awfully desolate in the mid-west winter. However, I have managed to find beauty in the small things.

Time lately has been filled with organizing things and ideas. Creating this website being a major player in both of those factors. As we get closer and closer to being here on this property every day - We are diligently working to get our projects done.

One of the dreams moving forward is to turn this little plot of land out in the middle of nowhere, into something we can both relish in taking care of, and let it make a living for us as well. Part of that dream includes creating this business and expanding our knowledge and sharing that with the rest of the world. We've had much time to stand back and learn, grow, and create - and now it's time to come down from the mountain, and make our names known.

I've already added so much knowledge in the last few weeks with learning some basic videography skills, refining my website and photography skills, and even trying to learn how to blog (still a work in progress!). I'm hoping in the coming weeks as our forever home treads on her last leg home, that soon we will have a full time oasis to play around with.

With temperatures down in the 30s, it's been so cold lately that it's been impossible to go out and stay out long enough without sufficient shelter in order to get good shots and do some activities. I - like many others, have been suffering from some winter blues, and I am definitely ready for some warmer weather! I am gently reminding myself of a phrase I read somewhere in pagan literature, in reference to the changing seasons and their associated holidays - "without the darkness there cannot be light". This phrase seemed to be a focus of many countryside folk that depended on the cyclical mother nature in order to sustain their life. Winter was a time of darkness and struggle, however, their myths and ways of living encouraged them to make it through to the spring. They persevered through connecting with nature in the ways they still could in the wintertime. They lit many bonfires and gathered together and held many feasts. The fires were an important aspect to the tradition, as the thought was that the fires would bring the suns energy back into the air.

As we get ready to do a prescribed burn on the property in the near future, I thought this metaphor was a great thing to remember as I moaned about the next week of mid-40 degrees. The fire will allow the pasture to be reborn anew, and a new era will begin. However, everything had to go into a state of decay in order to get there - the grasses, the trees, the insects.. Without this seeming 'darkness' there could never BE a rebirth.

It also reminded me of a quote from recent book I am reading :

“No tree can grow to Heaven,” adds the ever-terrifying Carl Gustav Jung, psychoanalyst extraordinaire, “unless its roots reach down to Hell.”

― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

A good reminder that there is no pure "good" or pure "bad". There is balance. There is the eternal and ever present scale that will always tip in one direction and then the other. In other words, the darkness can't last forever.

Stay tuned to see more adventures on the parallel society soon-to-be-farmstead! In the meantime, check out our YouTube channel where you can have a glimpse into a quiet day at our current mid-western home.