One Year In

A year of reading, a year of writing, thinking of trees; and thinking of exercise.

Read

This is the spot where a good newsletter writer would compile a list of all the best books to buy for your friends and family for Christmas. Except I feel that others do that job far better than I do. I generally just stumble on books or look for books by my favorite authors when I wander through second-hand or independent bookstores. I have no focused plan for my reading. Often, friends will loan me books that they think I would like. I cannot tell you the best books published in a certain genre in 2025, because I haven’t read them. Yet.

I do track the books I read, and have done that for several years, mainly so that I don’t buy books that I have already read. My Dad, an avid and fast reader, used to complain about that; he would find a new book, bring it home, and then one chapter into the book he would remember that he had read it before. I have become my dad. Except, my dad didn’t have google drive to track his books. I love that I can access my list of already-read-books or my list of want-to-read-books from my phone while in a bookstore.

I have read 31 books so far this year, in the genres of humor, mystery, cookbooks, literary fiction, thriller, memoir, poetry, fantasy, nonfiction, historical fiction, fiction with magical realism, romance, humor, and satire. I tend to read a hodgepodge of books and claim no expertise on any of the genres. My favorite book that I read this year was Carl Hiassan’s Squeeze Me.

If you want something short to read, here’s a blog I wrote about eggbeaters, and doing things by hand.

Write

Hey, I just looked back on all of my substack newsletters, and it turns out that I started this in December, 2024. It’s been a year! It’s been quite a year, really, in all the ways. I had planned to write this newsletter at least monthly… but I missed two months. Woops. Now I’m at a decision point. Should I keep on writing this substack for my very large follower base of 20-30 readers? Sure. Why not. Because we writers write as much for ourselves as for our readers.

On another topic, I’ve been thinking about trees a lot lately. We had to take down five dead or dying pine trees this fall. They were potentially dangerous trees between my mom’s house and my neighbors’ shed. We wanted to take them down carefully, falling them in a safe direction, rather than allowing the winds to choose the direction. We love our 100-year-old pines. Luckily, the four pines in my favorite grove out in the pasture are still doing well. Here’s a piece I’ve been working on. I don’t know if it’s finished yet, but this is the current version.

Aunties

My Native Alaskan cousins call every aged woman “Aunty” even if they aren’t related. If not Aunty, they call their woman friends “Sister”. They just call me “Cuz”, and I can’t decide if I’m being left out; when do I earn my Aunty stripes?

As we all know, women hold the world in their arms. We are wise and we get stuff done. We should honor the elders, the aunties, and the grandmothers. A friend of mine in Olympia lives near a green space that has an exceptionally large big-leaf maple tree. It is a grandmother tree, big around, with a large canopy. She is very regal. You feel protected when you stand under her; like you are being hugged. In another park in Olympia there is an old rotary dial telephone below a large cedar tree. The “wind telephone” is to call and talk to your dead relatives. People regularly use that phone, casting their words up through the trunk and the branches to be shared with the birds and the sky. My friend has used it to talk to her mom, then to her dad. She says it helped.

I think I will call my four favorite ponderosa pine trees clustered together out in the pasture “The Aunties.” The grove is made up of a big crooked tree, a smaller crooked tree, a double-topped tree, and a large tall straight tree. The Aunties in my family can argue about who is represented by which pine, but all of their roots are entangled, and they hold each other up during storms. When I stand between them, I feel calm.

Ride

It’s the off-season. I decided to take December and January off from horseback riding. Technically I could ride Vali on the nicer days, but I’m focusing on crafts and writing and reading over the winter. Most winters we have ice and snow by now, but this is a strangely mild winter so far. We are deep into mud-season.

My goal this time of year is to keep up with the manure. But as the mud gets deep the loaded wheelbarrow becomes difficult to pull. I do what I can, including just tossing the manure into the tree row that buffers the neighbor’s yard. Or I pile the manure within the large paddock to move it later, when I can. I count it all as weight-bearing exercise, though. Hobby farms are great for getting outdoor exercise. On the nicer days I try to add in a walk, too. I also have the best intentions of doing Yoga and Pilates-type exercises, too. I will start tomorrow. Or perhaps the day after tomorrow.

Most days I turn the horses out together, so they can push each other around a bit and get some exercise, too. Otherwise, Oly The Elder would just stand in his stall and eat. He and I have a lot in common. Winter, and especially during the holidays, is the time to eat.

[Photo credits to C. Scafidi and D. Frederick]