Prairie Stuart-Wolff

A Wet World

The rain has ceased but it will begin again soon.  It falls endlessly these days, at times in drops and at times in droves.  Whether a patter or thrum, the steady rhythm of falling water muffles the sounds of summer.  Birds do not sing and crickets do not chirp.  In the first moments after the rain ends the world is still and deeply silent.  It lingers until a few songbirds dare to call out and the chatter begins.  They sing to each other in the space between the showers.  The sky lifts and the air brightens.  Wet foliage glows green.  Mist rises from the sodden earth as the freshly fallen water begins its climb back up to the heavens.  But quick moving clouds roll in heavy and low and the light of the day dims.  The songbirds’ voices fall distant and timid.  Rain will fall again soon.  

 

Taking it Outside

To be close to the amenities of a house and out in the elements is what I consider the perfect living arrangement. Too many people live closed up in artificial environments. We get excited if the weekend affords us time for outdoor activities. Experiencing life outside our homes and offices has become an effort, something we do, an event. So, when designing my perfect home, I have always imagined an outdoor living space. In an urban area, it would be a rooftop oasis where well-placed foliage and a deck chair would accommodate sunny afternoons spent reading. In the desert it would be a house of glass with an uninterrupted view from inside out. In the New England countryside it would be a renovated barn with the barn doors on either end thrown open to invite inside and outside air to mingle. In California, a ring of rooms would surround a courtyard and movement from one space to the next would require a jaunt down an exposed corridor. And though more modest than a rooftop terrace or barn doors, this dream has been finally realized.

Turning up the Volume

Summer is getting louder. Temperate mornings awake with the trill of songbirds and the doves’ quiet coos, punctuated by the crows’ loud complaints. Each day it seems a new instrument is added to the orchestra.

Eating from the Earth

Donning rubber boots and gathering supplies, buckets, rubber gloves, a hoe, and the dog, we prepare to gather April’s bounty.

Stilling the Mind

If patience is a virtue than I am an un-virtuous woman. I’m generally in the red when it comes to patience. I don’t know why. But, regardless of the cause, I know the symptoms well and they make me, at times, an unbearable person to be around. My impatience tests the patience of those around me. And though I lack patience for tolerating many of the things around me, perhaps first and foremost, I lack patience for myself. I am always thinking of things to come. The future constantly occupies my thoughts. I rarely give consideration or value to the present moment, and generally live in the potential of the future. My goals always far exceed my accomplishments and the only way to escape the frustration of constantly failing myself is to look forward to a long list of new goals that I can strive towards achieving.

A Reason To Love My Country

A recent trip to revisit the American Southwest gave me a reason to love my country at a time when I sorely needed it. When I moved to Japan, I intended to leave the States for only a year. But as time passes, I find myself with fewer and fewer reasons or desires to return. In the last few years, I’ve felt the ugliness of my nation and shame about being one of a group of people who consistently bully our way into blind comfort. I believe that the United States is full of good, kind, and tolerant if not always progressive people. I have always found communities of such people to live among. But we are not the face of our nation and it has been hard to look into the mirror of the world and see the face that it looking back.

The Things We Miss

I was born wanting more than I can have. It has been in my nature, from the time I can remember, to set seemingly impossible goals and then navigate the toughest route towards them. Recently, it was my desire to observe every passing day and experience every seasonal event here in Japan this year, but my travel schedule already has me out of the country nearly three months. How to experience a full year in only three quarters of it…? So I am learning to appreciate the things I miss, to give the things I don’t experience equal weight to the things I do.

Death's Heavenly Hues

Death is a lovely color. Gazing across the way, the subdued green hillside of cedar and black pines are punctuated by amber clusters. These trees have succumbed to disease and though they still stand, their sap no longer flows. The needles’ green has faded leaving a bleached shell. But the color is marvelous.

Waking

Last night we heard spring’s battle cry. Our home sits high on a hill, the front lines of combat when spring wages war around this time every year. The ground trembles as spring storms forth, tearing at the sky to gauge the flesh of winter.

A Taste of Spring

The weather is just as it should be. I sit at the large oak dining table of our house, warmed by a small constant fire in the woodstove nearby. Looking out on the bare branched landscape basking in the clear day brightness, it is easy to believe that spring has drawn back winter’s curtain in preparation for an entrance. But as I step out the door, lured by a sunny landscape that looks as tasty to me as a worm on a hook looks to a trout, I am re-taught that timeless lesson that appearances are deceiving. The first inhale of cold crisp air wakes me from my dream of a fully sprung spring.

Embarking

This is the year of observation, a year for looking at the world that surrounds me and looking into my place and part in it. I will note the changes, the seasons, the moments that mark the passing of time, the natural clock that we have forgotten how to read in our fascination with chasing a slender black line around and around the numbered face of a circle. It is no longer the dawning of a day that summons us from sleep, but the jarring clang of the noise of our choice that rudely rips us out of night and into light. And where better to embark upon this task than here, in Japan, where the culture is rooted in a tradition of sensing the seasons. Now, in my second year here, the time is ripe. The first year was filled with finding my way in an unfamiliar world. Every waking hour was a challenge. My emotions ran like a brakeless train, derailing at every curve in the track.