There’s something about waking up to an unexpected snowstorm—like falling asleep in one world and waking up in another. Some primordial excitement rises up upon opening the curtains in the morning and seeing the whole town covered in a delicate icing of snow; maybe it’s the unshaken childhood excitement of the possibility of a snow day without school, or the promise of sledding and cocoa, or maybe it’s just all that reflected white light flooding our logy morning brains in one big startling blast.
Writing from the eco-snow-covered-village of Dancing Rabbit, this is Nik. I was beginning to think we’d never get snowed-in this winter, so when I opened Aubergine’s bus door early Sunday morning and was blown back by gusts of cold flakes, I had an unconscious smile on my face…before it got really cold…really fast.
Before the storm, New Year’s Eve was the highlight of the week in the Tri-Communities. A collage workshop was in full flurry in the Common House, magazines and photos being clipped and pasted to form intentions and wishes going into the new year.
Then a band of rough-around-the-edges minstrels took up their instruments and paraded: o’er the river and through the wood, to Red Earth Farms they went. Drums and bells sang over the hills until the processional arrived at the Dandelion homestead for games and drinks and merriment, all cozy warm in their greenhouse. How many people get to spend their December 31st gathered in a greenhouse?
Before darkness fell, the band marched back to DR, and some headed even further to neighbors in Rutledge. Ironweed Kitchen was where many folks ended up for the midnight ball drop. Although the Christmas-light-wrapped paper lantern may not have impressed Dick Clark, it made for a festive ringing-in of 2015.
The fact that there were not only so many celebrations to attend, but that they were all in walking distance, calmed so many worries about getting around on that wild night. I can’t help unfortunately remembering New Year’s Eve in the city—the slurred battles over taxis and sardine-can-packed train cars where there is no escape if someone has had too much to drink to hold everything together…
Walking from party to party became a festive part of the evening, as much as anything else. Wassailing might need to come back in style, methinks…
New Year’s wouldn’t quite be complete without a little over-indulgence here and there, and to remedy that Stephen and Erica held a get-together the next day in their relatively-newly-christened strawbale home “Casa Caterpillar.”
We broke Christmas crackers from Tereza’s mom, and wore tissue paper crowns, which some of us looked better in than others. And most wondrous of all, Erica’s mother had sent troves of foreign goodies from her native Italy, so we gingerly dined on tangy and rich salami, shards of sweet Parmesan cheese, amaretti cookies, chewy nut-filled nougats, and the olives…Oh, the olives…
People in a seasonal, local food economy can not get enough of far away grown things like olives. It was all a rare and special treat… but my favorite by far was the hunk of smelly, brilliantly orange-colored, cured Italian fish roe, called bottarga!
Usually served grated over pasta, bottarga is a bit like cilantro, in that people either immediately love it or immediately hate it. It’s not subtle, it tastes like the seashore in August—briny and salty and pungent. It’s the kind of thing Anthony Bourdain would gleefully rub over his body like sunscreen.
I probably left with breath that smelled like fish and candy, but it put the wind back in my sails, so to speak.
Looking at New Years of years’ past, I can’t even describe how my life has changed since before living at Dancing Rabbit. Before, a new year meant indulging in a short list of resolutions that, if achieved, would only reduce the stress in my life by finding a new job, or a new workout regimen, or perhaps consolidating the bills to better pay them off. A new year wasn’t something to be truly hopeful about.
Now, I look at this year ahead, and I am overwhelmed by what lies before me. And none of it is there to reduce stress in my life: building a house, growing a family, expanding businesses… I am actually inviting stress into my life, because that is part of living!
So, I am taking a bite of that intimidating cured-fish-roe called life, and not holding my nose. Take those leaps, work hard to make it happen, but still take time to enjoy every unexpected snow day that comes to derail your day of productivity. It may just be what you need to get through it all.
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Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage is an intentional community and nonprofit outside Rutledge, in northeast Missouri, focused on demonstrating sustainable living possibilities. Find out more about us by visiting our website, reading our blog, or emailing us.