January: The month of Re- (Reflect, Reset, Redesign, Reduce, Recover, Reinvent…)

An invitation to be gentle with yourself because it isn’t just you

January is a complicated month. We are relieved that things are back to normal after the holidays and, at the same time, hell-bent on change. We come out of December exhausted but dive into January with verve and conviction. In the Northern Hemisphere we are gaining but minutes of extra sunlight, still feeble and distant, yet we ask our bodies for so much. But I am jumping ahead of myself here. There are some things to catch you up on.

On the recent black moon, a rare second new moon in a month, December 30, 2024, I pulled the first “all-nighter” since I-don’t-know-when. While this was a college procrastination study technique that included a high degree of socialization and 2 am grand slam breakfasts at Denny’s, these days, even pushing against a big deadline doesn’t keep me up. That night, I’d gone to bed. I hadn’t looked at the sky because there have only been clouds covering the stars for a few weeks. And we had to wake up around 2:30 am to drive our youngest son and his girlfriend to the airport.

We live under a dark sky, where the Milky Way can still be seen, so a winter new moon and a clear sky is spectacular. I can’t call myself a stargazer. I can only recognize and name a few constellations, but I am in awe of a midnight blue-black sky that is pin-pricked with billions of twinkling lights. I can get lost in the big thoughts with no answers when gazing at the light that left its star in most cases long before I was born. But there was none of that. Remember, I’d gone to bed.

I had barely drifted off when our oldest son peaked his head in our room to say their baby was coming. I got out of bed, got dressed, and found the camera. I helped the midwife unload and carry her supplies to the woodfire-warmed and candle-lit sanctuary of their cabin, which was transformed into a birthing room. In this space, in a mere hour, a small boy with big questioning eyes would slip quickly into our lives.

By the time I could have gone back to bed, it was close to the time I needed to get up. That is when I saw the deep, clear sky. Taurus grazed on the black triangular silhouetted tips of the conifers growing along the ridge. Saturn shinned like a diamond bindi between the starry bull’s horns. His hunter, Orion, was stalking him, slinking through the outline of the forest. And the rest of the firmament was aglow with stars small and large. I took a picture, grainy as it is, it will be something to show this boy someday to tell him it was a beautiful night to be born.

As I write now, in the afternoon, the sky is darker than it should be this hour. The sun, still low in aspect, its light still winter-thin, feels hardly a match for the thick rain clouds that shroud these mountains. There will be no stars tonight. We are somewhere near the end of the fifth atmospheric river, if I haven’t lost count, to flow over our area in the last couple of weeks. The first came with furious wind. The second with wind, lightning, and rumbling thunder. The third just drifted in, no dramatic entrance, quiet compared to its predecessors. But it was the incessant one. The rain just kept streaming down. We slept lulled by the constant dripping of water falling on tin and gurgling gutters.

We woke to a watery world. The dam of our beaver pond breached, scouring out garden beds and leaving the earthen dam unstable. We hope that sandbags keep the damage at bay until it is dry enough to call our favorite heavy equipment operator. Meanwhile, I will try to move what is left of the native flower garden that survived the flood but will be devastated in the fix.

Those of you who have been here with me for a while know that a creek runs through our property. In 1964, the creek was straightened and diked. We have spent the last decade trying to help the creek reconnect with its floodplain and find the water's sinuous path. On satellite images, we can see the ghost of a luxurious lazy bend that was once there. The creek has been trying to find that path for the last few years. I’ve been cheering it on.

At some point early in the cycles of rain, we got a call from the local fish biologist who was on his way home from a tributary that feeds into Thompson Creek about a mile upstream. He’d been there to see if there were any Coho salmon. He wanted to share the good news—he’d counted nine active salmon. They were building nests in the gravel called redds. We haven’t seen salmon run in a decade. Most years, there hasn’t been enough water for them to swim here. To me this represents hope, even though a week later, likely most of these redds were flushed out. As the creek has become multifaceted during these big flushes the water is now both fast and slow. Slowing it down not only deposits sediment and recharges the groundwater but these side channels in the floodplains are where salmon and other stream dwellers can take refuge in high water. A healthy system is complex and it is messy getting there. This waterway has a long way to go but I’d like to think after all this rain we are a little closer.

The same morning, after processing the damage and replanting a small pine that had been uprooted, I went to see what was happening along the “big creek.” I was shocked by the changes overnight. One log from upstream blocked the normal extra flow channel from one day to the next—changing the flow and the main channel significantly. Water instead backed up lower on this stretch of stream, filling the entire floodplain (once our goat field). We have never seen that. I like to think some of the stream’s residents found this a safe place.

The tree circled in this photo is on the bank of the creek—all water to the front of that is in the floodplain—it is also the tree in the photos below.

For now, I think this is it on the change; we are only a few hours away from seeing no rain in the ten-day forecast. While I love all this rain, and I am continually fascinated and humbled by watching this rewilding of a small part of a watershed, I look forward to seeing a little sun.

On the left is the bank pictured after the first night of significant rain this winter. On the left, the same tree after the third atmospheric river receded, showing a log jam that changed the bank.

Rewilding, restoration, two more re- words. I’d like to say that I’d planned that but didn’t even see it coming. The prefix re- means “back,” “again,” or even “again and again,” which when I think about it is exactly the course wild water takes—swirling and turning on itself.

Maybe that is what we are doing as the year turns, we turn back on ourselves, spiraling around and around as we grow. We move forward always, even when it is in ways we want to change.

The culture I grew up in demands that we reflect on and redesign ourselves. It is the time of year, we think, to better ourselves, change, reinvent, and resolve to be a better, thinner, happier (and the list goes on) person. If I looked back through my journals (there are nearly five decades of them), I would see that most years contain melancholy reflections on what has passed, followed by overambitious declarations, lists, and schedules of a reformed self. Then, by the middle of January most of these “new me” ideas have slipped.

I think we give our big brains more credit than they deserve. Our minds are not something we can just set, like changing a dial, and they will do what we ask—like exercise more or eat less. When we feel we have failed, we blame ourselves, our will, or our minds for not being strong enough. I want to offer up that research is increasingly pointing to the complexity that is us. We cannot just change course because we want to, instead we need to coax the whole of us along this new path, right down to our microbes.

Our emotions, cravings, mental health, and physical health are linked to so much more than what we perceive. It is in many ways no different than the creek, with its boulders and gravel beds, its tributaries and side channels, its downed logs, shading trees or bare dirt, its fish, bugs, and mammals, or lack of, that is so much more than what we see when we watch it burbling along.

When I thought about this New Year letter, I wanted it to be something that doesn’t demand energy—even a recipe is an invitation to do something. I began with the notion that our cravings (and addictions) are related to the members of microbiota. Five years ago (how is that possible), Christopher wrote a post about cravings. At the time, he was looking at the latest research. I thought I would head back into the papers and see where things were at, again to say, be easy on yourself. Soon I was both fascinated and overwhelmed by the most recent papers about just this—including a study that is looking at crime and nourishment. It was then that I realized, no these studies can wait, we have a whole year ahead of us.

Instead, I invite you to lean into the restorative aspect of this time of year, lean into this cool dark time of rest, or in the Southern Hemisphere, the high sun, its heat and long lazy days. Happy New Year!

A few announcements

Local So. Oregon and Nor. Cal friends. We have a new fermentation festival FERMENTOPIA that will be in Talent on January 25 and 26. I will be there, not teaching, just attending. Looks fun. Tickets and information here.

Substacker

Jeannette Hyde

will be joining me over at The Fermentation School on January 14 for a webinar on Why food (not pills) is the key to gut health.