This is a beautiful time of the year, turning season and shifting gears while Nature gives us a riot of colors and a cornucopia of Autumnal foods. Summer is definitely behind us as we look forward to more time indoors. Our homes get more attention and it’s a nice time to fluff our nest before settling and enjoying longer nights, shorter days and comfort inside… Rearranging artwork, displaying warm throws and scented candles… if you are like me, you feel a strong pull to ensconce oneself into coziness…
There is an absolute primal delight, in the fluffing of the nest. No matter how many decades we lived in urban places or been “civilized” and tamed into artificial schedules meant to keep the world go round (at least the world as we know it), there is still a large number of fireplaces that will soon be filled with kindling and logs while groups of friends and families will spend time roasting their cheeks and their soles in front of them… feeling happy. Feeling safe. Feeling home.
If you read this, chances are that you do have a nest, and that you are enjoying it, big or small, cabin or mansion, wood or stone, you know the feeling I am talking about. It is a powerful drive, a human need, to have appropriate shelter and some kind of comfort, somewhere to restore, to rest, to enjoy privacy, or to have company, to read alone or to snuggle up. As weeks pass and bring us to the shortest days of the year, it seems to me that my profound appreciation for my own nest is renewed, reasserted. I come home after a day of social interactions and shopping, working, driving, whatever the day brought up, and I close the door with a contented sigh… Home. The perfect luxury of reading a good book and have a bowl of soup in bed. The joy of creating a new recipe, late into the evening, playing with tastes and textures, oblivious of time and day. Preparing a new canvas, slowly setting up brushes and paints, linseed oil and clean palette… not rushing, not planning. Feeling at peace. Bubbles of gratitude rising inside.
Just being, unfolding, stretching, relishing the moment… entering the season of slower things, of savoring and releasing… and it feels right. In order with natural cycles… Somehow a primitive part of me wants to slow down, to lay low, to listen, to study… and then gratefully let ideas percolate, for new perspectives to open… later, next year… next spring.
Happy Thanksgiving to you…! May you be blessed with the most enjoyable nest…
More later…
