Sandy was my first yoga teacher. Her home sat in the forests of Bayfield outside of Durango. We would make little ventures out to her house on the weekends, winding our way back through the winter roads which remained shrouded in ice from the thick shadows cast by the evergreen trees. I remember most the baskets of beautiful nature artifacts, the crystals that sat on the window sills, the petunia plants that she brought indoors to escape the killing frosts of winter. I remember the smell, it was earthy; like the woven mats that covered the wood floors. I remember sitting around her kitchen table, each one of us so young at the time, talking about life lists. "The beauty of a list is that you write on it what you want at that very moment. It can be anything" she told us. "When you accomplish that, you cross it off and move to another. If the time comes that you don't want it anymore, than you just take it off. It's that easy." Sandy was my introduction to lists. Now ten years later, I love them, they drive me. I think the best fulfillment of my lists happen when I can cross the items off and smile because I had forgotten that I had written that item there so long ago. I had forgotten that it was just an idea or adventure at one point and now it is reality. My lists today just keep growing but you know what? I find solitude in my list because it tells me that I have time. I have time to slow down and eventually I'll get to each of those items (if even I still want them there). Sometimes life gives you the opportunity to cross off pieces of the list at the best times, and had the opportunity come any earlier it just would not have been right. so what am I working on now? This is the precursor to the "I want a farm" item. I've been working on learning composting. I find myself suddenly introduced to individuals that I am amazed with, those that have tactful, beautiful ways to share that knowledge; I could not have asked for anything more. These particular pictures came from an afternoon of a compost workshop I arranged through the sustainability center. I was fortunate enough to have one of the best soils professors I have ever seen in action teach the down and dirty of outdoor composting. How did he do it? We dug through a horridly rancid smelling compost pile all the while he taught everyone about why it stunk (it had become waterlogged and anaerobic due to lack of oxygen.) He then showed everyone how to re-layer it into a healthy, well balanced C:N ratio lasagna style pile. Hands on work at it's finest. We ended the night by planting fava beans into the student cooperative housing garden beds. "If nothing else gets planted this year, at least they'll have fava beans."
