The last couple weeks I have felt very emotional and the last few days I have found it extremely difficult to roust myself out of bed.  A friend of mine called this morning and while I couldn’t get myself up to answer the phone, the message she left me made me smile and even laugh out loud, and that was enough to move me to get up.  I am so glad she called when she did and left such a funny message.  She also has serious struggles with depression and anxiety, and I often with her find a shared sense of both compassion and humor about our struggles in these areas which can help shift both my mood and perspective.  Sometimes just getting up out of bed can feel like a major accomplishment, so I try not to judge my worth largely by what I do or produce, in stark contrast to other periods in my life when I have been more “functional”.

Once I was up I went outside to find another beautiful sunny day filled with glorious birdsong and a gentle breeze, and I felt relieved and grateful to be up and out in the fresh air.  This was a day when just getting up felt like a major accomplishment.  I felt really weak and tired even though I had slept long enough, but I decided to try doing some woodcutting and splitting.  I gradually began to feel stronger and better.  I find proprioceptive activities like splitting and stacking wood, backpacking, swimming, scuba diving, jumping on a trampoline, are often are soothing and grounding for me as well as satisfying or pleasant.  It seems counterintuitive to me to be feeling so logy and without motivation this time of year with the coming of spring’s new life, but I am told that there are often an increase in hospitalizations for depression in the springtime.

I am enjoying watching the progress of the season, and in the last few days have found the first wildflowers of spring coming into bloom – the dogtooth violet or trout lily, Erythronium albidum.  This plant has a variety of medicinal applications.  I took some pictures of these flowers and include a couple of them here.  These two are shots of the same flower, in the second I held the bloom so its face can be seen.

I have been taking a beginning watercolor class which is focused on landscapes, but haven’t really been very happy with any of those paintings yet.  I know I’m just learning so am trying to keep my expectations low, but I find it very frustrating and disappointing when they don’t come out looking like what I have pictured in my mind.  So, I decided to do an exercise from a watercolor book I borrowed from the library where they suggested dividing a sheet of paper in half and drawing random triangles on one side and random rectangles on the other, and using warm and cool tones on one side only.  I felt really freed by the randomness of the image and found myself just enjoying the process without thinking much about how it was turning out.  This was the first painting I’ve done so far that I have been really pleased with how it came out, so I wanted to share it here:

Signs of spring are in the air at last!  The spring peepers have begun singing in the evenings, their cheerful song filling the night.  I saw my first butterfly of the season.  The green leaves of the daffodils have made their way up through the soil and leaf litter on the forest floor, and the bright yellow flowers have begun to come out.  Buds on the trees are beginning their new growth, preparing the new leaves sure to follow! 

One of my favorite parts of living here at the cabin in the woods is getting to witness the miraculous developments of spring each day along my trail.  Once spring gets into full swing I can see changes even from morning to afternoon, in addition to the changes I have seen day by day and week by week.  I feel especially grateful to be here witnessing spring in the forest this year, because last year at this time I was in the hospital trying to get my rampaging depression and anxiety under control – needing the resources at that facility, yet achingly missing the magic of the forest.

What bliss it is to feel pain free today and once again experience the miracle of spring here in the forest, in such stark contrast to being cooped up in a sterile building for a couple weeks.  I am extremely grateful.

Here are a few photos I took along my trail…

Yellow Buckeye Leaf Buds                                           Bitternut Hickory Leaf Buds

Catkins of the American Hazelnut

Flower buds (round) and
leaf buds (angular) of the
Common Spicebush

Daffodils at my cabin

Trees in the city of Springfield suffered massive damage and destruction in the ice storm last month, and residents and city workers there are still in the process of cutting, clearing, and piling up the vegetative debris for pick up.  I mean, downed trees and limbs everywhere, like having to be bulldozed out of the way in places.  So much that the city/county mulching operation was overrun and they started hauling dumptrucks full to a remote rural area to burn.  Such a waste of good firewood!

It was quite a shock to me to see the extent of the tree damage there in the city because here in the forest, just an hour away, there was surprisingly little tree damage given the extent of the storm.  I do know that the ice was thicker there in Springfield, but I wonder whether the conformation of trees growing closely together in a forest is also inherently more stable than that of trees which are more widely spaced with wider crowns in urban areas?

I drive in to the city twice a week for my watercolor class and DBT class, and with each trip lately I have been loading up my car with ‘waste’ wood produced by the storm to stockpile at the cabin for use in my woodstove the following year.  Many people have cut up their fallen trees and limbs into firewood length pieces, but most lack woodburners to use them for home heat fuel, and just pile them up by the curb for disposal. 

I would drive around town until I spotted a particularly nice pile and knock on the door to make sure they weren’t saving the wood for someone else.  People told me how thrilled they would be to give me that good solid wood to use as firewood so it wouldn’t be hauled off and go to waste, and I in turn was thrilled to get for free already cut logs to keep my cabin warm next winter!  Here I am with some of it after stacking it at the cabin:

The only down side to all of this was that my left thumb took quite a beating from this wonderful bounty of wood.  Twice when I was rather fatigued from loading up the car, unloading the car, stacking the wood, and sawing off a few stray branches and splitting some of the larger logs I got sloppy and slipped up. 

Once, while hand-sawing a stray branch I lost my grip and before I realized what was happening I sawed right into my own thumb.  It was such a startlingly unexpected feeling, quite unlike any I’ve experienced before.  Hopefully, it will also be the last time for that one!

Thankfully, I was wearing thick work gloves which lessened the saw’s velocity by the time it hit me so the saw only nicked my nail bed. 

Another time, while splitting a log I swung wide and struck my thumb with the short sledge instead of the splitting wedge itself.  Fortunately, I am not terribly strong so I did not crush any bones with my misguided blow, phew!

I know they make steel toed boots, but do you know if anyone makes small sized, steel fingered gloves???

Last weekend we had a major ice storm here, and the ice has yet to melt.  So beautiful, so magical, it motivated me to get out and take pictures again.  Here are a few photos I took in my yard:


Frozen grapevine tendril.

Frozen pods of a redbud tree on a branch bent perpendicularly
by the accumulating ice which tipped the whole tree over.

Frozen pine cone.

Frozen pine.

Frozen dogwood.

Frozen forest.

Out here we only lost power for 2 days, while some folks in the city still don’t have power back almost a week later.  I was very grateful that my primary heat source is the woodstove as the cabin stayed nice and cozy warm even while it was 10 degrees outside.  Rumor has it may be warm enough tomorrow to melt the ice, and then Saturday we may get a significant snowstorm.  Serious winter weather here in the Ozarks!

Okay, for the record, I realize that in the Grand Scheme what follows is a very petty thing to complain about.  But, at least it gives my mind a welcome break from its many weightier concerns such as poverty, pollution, oppression, world hunger, war, and ecological destruction.  Earlier this evening I was having a pleasant slow paced Instant Messaging session jointly with my Mom and A., my best friend from high school; that part I enjoyed, that’s not the complaint.  I kept the IM window open on one side of my screen while doing some internet surfing on the other side of the screen, occupying my thoughts in between IM comments.  That is what triggered the problem I am complaining about.  When a window other than IM was activated (i.e. I was perusing some website) and my Mom or A. posted an IM comment, I would hear a three toned chime followed by a disembodied digital voice announcing: “Excuse me, Microsoft Messenger needs your attention!” 

I find that auditory alert feature very handy when I am away from the machine and some program really does need to reel me back in from afar, but wow, after hearing it for about the 5th time in 10 minutes while sitting there smack dab in front of the machine (attentively, no less) it really grates on my nerves!  Back when I first activated that auditory alert system I hadn’t conceived of this sort of eventuality, and regardless felt sure that anytime I could just go back and turn it off at will.  I distinctly remember listening to several different digital voices before selecting the one I found most tolerable.  But, ever since that fateful dark and rainy night I have been unsuccessful in re-locating the source of the alert to change it!  I keep wondering, how did I ever find it in the first place?  During the seemingly endless activations of the system tonight, while I sat there cringing at each one I decided some sort of change was called for.  I am happy to report that it was while composing this blog entry that it finally occurred to me that one simple solution which does not require figuring out wherever I activated it in the first place would be to simply mute the volume during times I don’t want to experience the auditory alerting system!  Ah, if only all problems had such simple solutions…

Well, after a much longer than expected absence from blogging, I am trying the waters once again.  Shortly after my last entry I went up to my Dad’s family farm to spend Thanksgiving with lots of relatives.  It was really nice to see them, and also really nice that I had a private hotel room to retreat to when I needed quiet.  I am glad my aunt and uncle live there in the old farmhouse, so nice that that piece of family history lives on.  Then I proceeded eastward on to my parents house and passed a very nice December there with them.  My dog and cat were with me and they seemed to enjoy their visit as well.   The time with them went by too quickly!

I had my first class of beginning watercolor at the art gallery this week.  I think I am really going to like watercolor.  While in the city that day I went to the Y and had a long swim which felt wonderful.  The setting, aesthetics, and chlorine there makes the experience fall far short of swims in the relatively pristine river near the cabin, but in the winter the heated pool is the clear choice.  It has felt really good to be back walking my trail to the spring, and being nestled in the woods in the cabin.  It has been wonderful to be able to reconnect with the natural world that surrounds me here and spend time outside in these woods again.

Meanwhile, I have found my concentration and mental energy levels especially low this week, and have been finding it really difficult to even keep up with basic email correspondence.  I seem to have periods in the day where my mood feels pretty level, and other periods where it tends to fall.  I have ideas of things I would really like to do, like work on my photography, practice with watercolors, do laundry, clean this place up, make a home cooked meal, but can’t quite seem to manage any of it.  Right now I seem to have my hands full just walking in the woods, tending to the critters, microwaving tv dinners, and trying to keep up a positive outlook.  I am feeling rather discouraged, it seems I am accomplishing so little in this phase of my life.  Yet I am also very grateful I am not experiencing the weighty sense of hopelessness and despair I have felt so often before.  I guess I am still in the process of revamping my standards for evaluating the worth of my life while impaired by mental illness, especially since I am not able to “work” at all at this point in my life.  I have much greater compassion for others than I do for me.  I need to stop judging myself by my concept of society’s expectations of me, particularly since I have much gentler expectations for others.

The American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) tree’s genus name (Diospyros) means “Fruit of the Gods” which I think is very cool, and the fruit is quite beautiful I think.  There are three fruit-bearing American persimmon trees right by the cabin here, providing a great delicacy for resident deer, turkey, squirrels, opossums, armadillos, and my fruit loving dog May.  Another of nature’s wonders!  

When I first moved here I tried a few too early in the season and have been unable to forget the incredibly astringent, mouth numbing effect the un-ripe fruit had on me (even AFTER spitting them out) and the involuntary puckering contortions of my face (for quite some time, too)!  I’ve tried riper ones since without much more success, but I do know several people who find them delicious – perhaps they are more god-like than I!

Much to my unceasing amazement, May eats all she can find even in that puckery pre-ripe stage!  I get great enjoyment watching May eating them with relish, and all the opossums and armadillos I’ve seen rooting around the fallen leaves seeking those she missed.  I particularly enjoy watching May as I shake the tree so the loosened ones fall, scattered about in the deep leaves.  I have to rely on my eyes to find them, but she finds them easily with her keen nose.  I like looking at them, their round peachy orange plumpness, they sure look like they would taste good!  Oh well, all the more left for the critters then!

I have found both comfort and inspiration in many passages in The Wisdom of Depression by Jonathan Zuess, MD.  Here are a few of them:

p.46 “There is a way to make your life work.  No matter what circumstances you’re facing, you can find a path that will help you grow, and ultimately enhance your life’s journey in ways you may never have thought of.”

p. 47 “The main way creativity is stifled, I think, is by not listening to what your soul is trying to tell you… Another way that your creativity can be limited is by allowing your life to be run solely according to the expectations of others…”

p. 63 “Sometimes when we reach an impasse in life, the depressed response is a necessity… It can help us to dive deep into ourselves, to restructure our inner being, and come to a new way of understanding and living in the world.”   

When I first read those passages, particularly the first and third, I was overcome by deep despair, and I had little to no hope that such miracles as these would come to be true for me.  I feel very fortunate to have gotten to, and to continue to, experience a very wide variety of approaches to healing and learning to live with depression and anxiety.  I am extremely grateful to be able to report that, much to my delighted surprise, I re-read these passages today and realized with amazement that these miracles are actually unfolding in my life!  I will try hard to remember this when the tough times come.  For anyone else who might need to borrow a bit more hope, I hereby share mine with you now!

I am cozy in the cabin here enjoying the sounds of the wind in the many trees outside and the much needed rain beating rhythmically on the metal roof.  I am feeling the soothing heat radiating from the woodstove, warming my cat and dog and I as they sleep and I type.  Right now my heart feels full and I am so very glad to be here!

Anyone else ever have days like this???