Wishing you unexpected joy in the New Year...

One of the gifts of the October fire: the elk people, usually in the hills to the west, came down to the unburned valley floor to graze. On the solstice I counted 81 in view from the kitchen window, and I couldn't see them all. Even inside the house, we could hear their squeaky-door conversations and guttural coughs.

On a seedy note, another gift: the 20 lbs of Valley Oak acorns that had been sitting in the basement month after month while I didn't get around to turning them into breakfast mush found a higher-frequency transformation: planted into the ashy burned woodlands at Frey vineyards in Redwood Valley by a volunteer crew of gathered community members. 

May your New Year be full of such unexpected transformations -- new life, more conscious interweavings with the animal and plant people, and opportunities to help create the future we want for our communities. Yes!