The empty white page is like the open new year — stretching out before me. I love how it waits; almost begging to get started; to be filled with words — or artwork… Maybe I should just watch, and be, as the page, or the day, fills, and defines itself.
Between the winter solstice, my birthday two days before, and the looming new year, these darkest winter weeks always mark a summit, the milestone for me to stop for a moment to take stock of it all. It’s time to witness the shift when the year behind sheds its mantle and hands off the baton to its neighbor — the year ahead, like a line dance the years do with each other, ringing — and breathing— in the newness, and potential, with the reality of what’s behind.
I love the classic holiday letters about the kids and now grandkids, the travels, and family reunions. I want to write one, but this last year is too big — mine doesn’t seem to want to fit on the page. So maybe there’s a different recap … How about:
Key Things I Learned in 2024:
— like how to make a mean venison chili, what field dressing is, and how to help drag the carcasses over meadows and through streams back to the boat.
— that bears like my chili too, and the importance of securing the cooler in a way bears won’t get into it.
I hope I learned to be “more okay” in bear country —which it all seems to be up there — and focus more on being prepared than afraid. — how to walk quieter and see more, how small my boot looks stepping into a fresh grizzly print,
— to talk to otters, how to spot whale “footprints” and how to steer a 100-ton boat around them.
— how not to panic when the humpbacks turn and swim just barely under the boat, so that you can look down and see the barnacle on their back as they glide right beneath me.
I learned Dall porpoises like the boat, will come up and dance and swim next to it in some …..version of ecstatic dance while harbor porpoises keep their distance.
-- how wonderful it feels to be needed, part of an effort, working with students again; that a boat mom, or whatever it is I’ve become, is a vital part of a boat crew’s makeup. Not sure who had this role in the boat days of yore, but everybody comes to me for bandaids, help with working the head, family issues, and love life questions. I re-learned how much we all seem to need that.
A big thing I learned was how much it helps, when there’s a glitch, whether that’s that’s wrangling a meal out of too meager a cupboard or dealing with a broken windlass, getting folks involved, together, works much better than trying to fix it alone, or pretending there isn’t a problem. Screw it…even the list doesn’t begin to convey the magnitude of the sea change that 2025 was for me.
Ironically, the most obscure, crazy but fundamentally most important thing I learned this entire year was way back in January. And that’s —- if you pay the extra $50 bucks for the upgrade on Tinder, you can go back and write a note to someone you saw and accidentally swiped without a word.
Without that lesson, I wouldn’t have learned any of this. And that fact blows my mind. Guess ya just never know…
Or maybe…this time I knew what I was doing.
Happy New Year friends. Here’s to the wild unknown year ahead. May 2025 be filled with learning and love.
What’s that first photo of? I second Arnie’s comment! 😄
Enjoyed your Recap!