october 2020: what I’m learning and loving

I’ve been trying to keep up with a weekly newsletter rhythm over here, so check those out if you’re into this kind of thing.

Join me for this monthly practice of reflecting what I’m learning and loving…

What I’m loving

October. I’m with Anne Shirley on many things, but especially that “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” With our near drought conditions toward the end of summer and beginning of fall, I thought the colors would be kind of a bummer this year, but they were as glorious as ever. Or perhaps I was just seeking out the beauty more than usual. Regardless, the fall colors and blue skies were a glorious respite from the rest of things.

Grant’s birthday massager. This was one of Grant’s birthday gifts because I heard it raved about from Gee Thanks Just Bought It. He drives for work all day, and I thought it would be nice for him to keep in his car for longer drive days. But now I’ve sorta stolen it, and we keep it on the couch where we all take turns using it. Oops. But it is such a nice treat and well worth the price tag. We even took it with us to Black Mountain to use after our backpacking trip.

Streaming concerts. I might be in the minority here, but one thing I am loving about #covidseason is that all of our favorite bands are streaming concerts because they can’t tour. I would happily watch streaming concerts in my jammies on my porch for the rest of my life, I think. But I won’t because my husband loves live music and can’t wait to get back to it.

Here are some of our recent favs:

• Old Crow’s Hootenannies have brought me more joy in 2020 than I can count. We’ve also caught some of their livestream concerts, so stay tuned to their Instagram for deets.
• The Ryman has had some great shows (as usual) and has some great ones coming up.
• We can’t stop (won’t stop) listening to the entire Bahamas catalog, so we’ve been watching lots of old live stuff of his: Half Your Love, SXSW, Paste, Earth Tones. I dare you not to love the guy and his music.
• We’ve basically been making our way through the entire backlog of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts too, which is one of those things where we’re like, “why weren’t we doing this before?!”

Seasonal simple syrups. I wrote about one of my favorite 2020 purchases back in August – the DrinkMate. I am loving making different simple syrups based on what’s in season to make my drinks seasonal too (!). This month, I made a SUPER gingery one and an elderflower and honey one – both of which taste delicious carbonated. I use about 95 percent water to 5 percent simple syrup, so it’s still very much sparkly water with a hint of flavor – and a little bit of the simple syrups go a long way.

Here are my formulas if you want to try…

Fiery ginger

Grant loves Devil’s Foot Fuego, a ginger beer that we get every time we go to North Carolina but that they don’t carry up here. It’s super gingery, so I used a whole ginger root (about a two-inch piece), sliced really thinly. Add the ginger to about 4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer for around 45 minutes. After that, I typically have about a cup of ginger-water left after evaporation, but strain out the ginger to see how much you have. Play around with it, but typically simple syrups have a 1:1 ratio of sugar to water. I typically start with a half cup of sugar or honey, and sprinkle in a bit more to taste. It will store for about 3ish weeks in the fridge.

Elderflower lemon honey

4-5 elder blossoms or 1/4 cup dried elderberries
2 lemons, zested and juice
1/2 cup of honey
3 cups of water

I used some dried elderflower blossoms that I had from earlier in the season, but you could easily use berries instead. Add all of the ingredients except for the honey to a pot and bring to a boil, then simmer for about 30 minutes. Strain the lemon zest, berries/blossoms, and then add the honey. This drink is practically medicine and doesn’t last long around here, but it should last about 3ish weeks in the fridge too.

What I’m learning

Solastalgia. A developer has been building a neighborhood across the street for the last year or so. I went to the city council meetings to try to fight the thing years ago (to no avail, obviously), but we did get the developer to agree to minimize the number of trees they planned to cut down and to add more replacement trees than they had planned. But earlier this year, they went ahead and cut down the 200-year old (at least) forest that they had promised to leave intact.

This year has been a domino of griefs for all of us, around the world, in varying degrees. For our little family, the year began with the loss of Roxy, and then Kim right at the beginning of quarantine, and then the cavalcade of grief that came with the racial reckoning we’re all still waking up to, not to mention the grief we’re all facing as we live through the loss of trust in our institutions and leadership that Covid has brought. On top of all of that, honestly, the four of us have been sad nearly every day we arrive home or walk by that forest that was destroyed for the sake of making a little bit more money.

There is a word for this sadness at the destruction of the natural world around us: solastalgia. This article describes solastagia more in detail, but defines it as:

[Solastalgia] is the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault (physical desolation). It is manifest in an attack on one’s sense of place, in the erosion of the sense of belonging (identity) to a particular place and a feeling of distress (psychological desolation) about its transformation.

Glenn Albrecht

I was aware of this word in connection with climate change, but I’ve been realizing lately how much this next-door-destruction has been like a low-grade fever of sadness running beneath the surface. I’m not sure what to do about it at the moment, but I know that, when I told Grant and the kids about this solastalgia I had been reading about, they immediately felt a little more understood. And that’s worth something at least.

Medicine stock. I signed up for the medicine woman membership earlier this year, and I’ve been learning some fun new things. One thing she does is add medicine to her existing recipes, so I’ve been stealing that too. I harvested goldenrod at its peak a several weeks ago, and in addition to drying a whole bunch of it for tea, I added some into my soup stock for lentil soup. It brightened up the look and flavor of the stock, but no one else but me even noticed a difference from our normal lentil soup. I made black bean soup this week (Maeve’s favorite), and I added a heaping tablespoon of turmeric (benefits here) and a few teaspoons of dried mushroom mix (benefits here). Again, no one even noticed the flavor difference, but I was able to sneak in some extra medicine into one of our favorite meals. I like dulse flakes (seaweed, basically – benefits here) to add to our ferments, but I’ve been sprinkling in a handful in my normal stock “formula.”

None of this plant medicine is a ton, especially across a big batch of soup, but I figure every little bit helps, especially during #covidseason. It makes it a little fun too to find something that you’re already making – and add some plant medicine to it.

We’re all just doing the best we can. I was Voxing with a friend yesterday that I haven’t seen since August – because trying to go through the flowchart of decisions necessary to plan anything right now is just about more than I can take. She asked for an update with us, and I told her that September was rough, but October was better, but also that I feel like everything is just blurring together at this point. It feels like I’ve been writing some variation of this reminder to self under “lastly” at the end over in my newsletters every week, but I just keep forgetting and relearning the same thing: none of us have ever lived through a global pandemic before, and we’re all just doing the best we can. It’s counter-cultural in our American mindset, but we have to first find kindness and grace for ourselves before we can offer it to anyone else. We think we have to beat ourselves into submission – whether its our bodies, our mindsets, or our motivation, but the truth is, that way only works for so long – and does tremendous damage along the way.

When the kids come across someone mean or super critical, I try to challenge them to imagine how judgmentally that person must speak to themselves if they’re so rude to other people. I am desperate to come out on the other side of all of this softer, gentler, and more open-hearted (even though, honestly, that feels next to impossible right now in these last few days before November 3rd). But I know from personal experience and from all of our best collective wisdom that the way to get there is by starting with myself – practicing softness, gentleness, open-heartedness in the ways I talk to myself, and then letting that bubble over into and onto my family, and then, hopefully, outward from there.

I’d love to hear what YOU are learning and loving lately…drop me a note in the comments!