Walking in the Rain
Capricorn 2 // collaboration & community
Happy mid-week! Hope you’re finding this in-between time to be peaceful and not just grind-as-usual. Things feel slower here somehow, and I’m glad for it. And two of our chickens have laid eggs this week which means the Sun is on it’s way!
Yesterday morning my kids had an unexpected 2-hour delay. It is the best feeling to jump back into your warm bed after receiving that 6am text. Knowing it is cold and windy outside while you are cozy inside is delicious. We have had very little snow in Ohio this season, much to my kids’ chagrin, but the morning started off with sleet and drizzly rain so I’m glad the school opted for a late start.
Of course this was the morning I had planned to take a walk right after everyone was off to school. But I’m reading Do/Walk/ so I knew I couldn’t stay home just because of a little chilly rain. After extricating myself from the warm heap of blankets, scrambling to make lunches and getting the crew off to school, I threw on an extra pair of pants, a not-so-water-resistant jacket, and my thickest hat.
Rain has a way of changing the landscape. In the same way a fresh coat of snow makes everything seem new, the rain changes the atmosphere. I opted to not listen to any podcasts because I didn’t want to risk my technology getting wet, so the sounds of quiet rainfall and creaking tree branches and birds calling were the only soundtrack. My cheeks were very cold and my fingers were a little numb, but the cold was the good kind of exhilarating.
The card for this second decan of Capricorn is the 3 of Pentacles. Most decks portray three people working together inside of a cathedral. In some versions a stone mason1 is working intently while his collaborators look on in support. In others the three are intently studying a parchment - maybe the design plans for some great invention, or the cathedral itself?
As I was walking, I realized immediately that I did not have the proper footwear for rain so I had to be mindful of puddles. The water flowing down the edge of the road to the storm drains reminded me of how much I loved playing in the rain as a kid. My brother and I would find the places where the water collected in our yard and have leaf-races or build small dams with sticks in the little streams. Or on one particularly epic day we rode our rope swing straight through a gigantic puddle, dragging our feet through the water and making ferocious waves.
I saw my crow friends - 3 of them in flight and the other 2 jabbering in a far-off tree. Birds seem to absolutely love light rain. I stopped to watch rain fall into large reflective puddles, making overlapping, dancing rings. Each drop of water making a little ping drop of rippling joy. Nature writers love to write about mountains2, but just give me a crow and a puddle!
Coincidentally, I never noticed how many storm drains were on my street! Each one I passed made a joyful, burbling sound like a small river or creek does in the forest. I’ve been thinking about rivers a lot lately. Last year I found myself often relying on the image of a Mountain for support. There was a lot of upheaval and stress with one of my kids and I would often use Sturdy Mountain as a sort of mantra or incantation in moments of conflict with them. Elementally I have always been drawn to Earth. Rocks. Winter. Bones. (I am virgo, after all). But more recently,3 I am being drawn to Rivers. The image of flow and flexibility and fluidity feel very supportive, especially heading into this new year.
Where do the storm drains go in my city? I want to see a map of all the underground pathways meeting and diverting under our feet, carrying water and leaves and snow melt out to the river. So many small channels coming together into one beautiful, great whole.
The three people working together in this card often encourage us to ask questions like: What is my sacred work? Who are my collaborators in that work? Where are my support systems? I like these questions, but I think the medicine for me today is Remember you are a part of the sacred whole.
In this season of my life I have two areas of sacred work: my home and my creativity. Last year I was working on making my home a safe space for my family. One of my kids was in crisis and every day felt like we were just barely hanging on. I built rhythms and routines, I made our physical space more peaceful, I read so many books and listened to so many podcasts and processed with loved ones and my therapist. I had bucketfuls of collaborators. And as we walk into a new year I feel like the weight has shifted. I see growth and connection! And I know that I am one drop in a river of people who are shifting and healing and working so goddamn hard to make a gentler world for their kids. It’s hard and sacred work.
I think my other sacred work to do is feed my creativity. I’ve spent a lot of my life resisting, or making excuses, or just generally feeling like writer/maker is illegitimate work. But writing in this space and taking just a few online courses has opened me to a community of collaborators that I didn’t know I needed. It’s like looking at the stone mason in the cathedral and marveling, “We’re allowed to do this?” I’m working on making a more intentional writing calendar this year and making my sketchbook a priority. In a world as fraught and divided as ours, with a planet literally on fire, we need a raging flood of artists and poets! I love how
refers to her Substack as an altar. I am going to continue to tend this sacred space with walks, creative practices, community and armfuls of good books!I live in the Western Lake Erie Basin, which is roughly 6 million acres in size and stretches from Indiana through Northwest Ohio and into Lake Erie4. Tiny tributaries flow through farmland, cities, neighborhoods like mine and eventually lead to rivers and then the Lake. This Lake, whom the Erie people called erielhonan for “long tail” and the French named the “sweet water sea.”
When I got home from my walk my cheeks were red, my nose was running, and my feet were soaked. But I was smiling. And instead of 3 coins, I was imagining 3 tiny raindrops, coalescing, and flowing together into the Sweet Sea.
In other news, I will be joining my youngest for swim lessons this week which means I will be WEARING A SWIMSUIT IN JANUARY and putting the bigger-butt nonsense I wrote about last week to the test!
For those of you here for the bookish half of BiblioArcana, I’m hoping to post an incomplete list of some of the books I hope to read this year sometime in the next week. I reserve the right to read additional books, but this will be a start!
Did you know that many of the most intricate and stunning cathedrals in the world took half a century to build and were constructed by highly skilled but mostly illiterate laborers. Stone-masons, cutters, porters, mortar-makers, and carpenters to name a few. It boggles my mind.
I am listening to Nan Shepherd’s Living Mountain right now and her writing is STUNNING. The book is a series of reflections on her long walks through the Cairngorm mountains in Scotland. Just listened to a beautiful section where she describes the different ways moving water freezes and frosts and my heart is singing. “In short, there is no end to the lovely things that frost and the running of water can create between them.”
Love that too about Substack as an altar!
Your altar is beautiful. I love the purples with the oranges.
Also...I so agree with you about burbling creek sounds. I came across a creek during my retreat and just stood there listening for like 5 minutes. 💜