deep happiness

dear readers, i had not meant to be gone this long. life on the hill changed in one minute and my heart is so full. I am not able to explain just yet but i desperately want to share my happiness with you. It is the kind of happiness that comes with great risk, so everyday, many times a day i whisper little things to myself to keep me in the moment, not looking past today.

I leave for Europe in a couple of weeks, that did come so fast. Leaving the farm and all that it means is so very hard but now it seems unbearable but i also know that once i hot Italian soil, i will know how lucky i am to be in such a place.

I am thinking of you, i hope life allows me to share more of my happiness with you in a more open way, i hate keeping anything from you, so i will whisper it into the wind and you just might hear it.

waiting for snow

i am waiting, that is what i have been doing. minutes, hours and days slip through slowly, yet a feeling of things moving quickly are also being felt. I am waiting for snow to fall, there has been none in fact since i have moved to vermont and this being my second winter there has been no snow, the planet is changing it's layers putting on new clothing to adapt to the rising heat and i don't like it.

There is no sign of holiday's here in the house and i keep telling myself to go out there and forage and bring back some pine, but in a time when i  hope for new life- taking any kind of  life seems unkind and i can not seem to do it, in fact a huge grey birch tree fell inches from the coop and house and as i cut into it yesterday i was filled with sorrow, the hypocrisy i feel writing this down for i burn wood to heat my house daily, life a delicate entanglement of wants versus needs. There is a huge branch of evergreen that fell because of it, perhaps i will simply string that along in the house or on the barn doors. you must think i have no spirit, i have asked that myself to myself and the timing of the holidays is mixing in with something much more pressing in my life and i am consumed by it, yet i stay quiet and still not to fully grasp what is coming. as i write this i know i must go out there and get that piece of green, i must fill the house with good spirit for in turn it will fill me.

I did go for a beautiful walk this morning, hence the photographs above. warm rain and fog kept me company, i explored the pond, writers shack the walnut grove, apple orchard and then entered the forest. i love it here, in fact this just might be (is) my favorite place on earth and the happiness i feel here i have never felt elsewhere.

nature of me

i am good at it, good at staying quiet when my insides scream. i am good at letting things roll off me even though they somehow end up inside of me. I am good at not pretending to pretend. i am good and believing it is my fault when it is not. i am bad at speaking when my insides are screaming, i am bad as i  keep things in when i should let them roll off of me. i am bad for taking the blame when you are in the wrong.

somehow things work themselves out, somehow there is fog and rain, sun and snow in one day. sometimes i am four seasons, i grow and shed, change and bloom all in on hour that is the nature of me and i am finally realizing some of it i can not change and some of it i no longer feel the need to change. i am i, like wool is wool.

I like this song for in it i recognize the quietness behind the screams, the static between two feelings.

awoken

i decided i want to remember it the way it was when we were in it,  not how our over thinking minds and rationalization made them out to be. i guess what i am saying is that i do not feel the same but i am okay with not saying, me too anymore. i am putting away the armor now and i will greet you or him or them without it with the risk of being broken but also the possibility of being woken:)

*shots taken with iphone

three white horses

hello hope you are well. vermont just had the most beautiful three days of summer like weather. tonight as i was feeding the horses the wind blew in over the hill, a change was coming and could be felt and heard as the wind howled right through the house.

I have so many things to tell you like how after a year of having a heavy heart for things i had trouble telling to a dear friend but finally doing  as i curled up on the floor by the fire and put the reciever to my ear, tears fell in such a child like way.  we spoke both with our silences and our words, it went well and we made room for better things.  I have had some incredible amount of  things checked off from a very long to do list and i will share them soon and also some of the work i have been doing and project that are coming up i promise.

right now though i can not get passed my last two days of shooting. for about three weeks i have been listening to this song repeatedly even had a friend sing it live at the house but as i often do i listened to it too much and it's effects starting waring off,  that' s until i recieved in email late one night informing me of these incredible beast. shortly after i stood in the fields among them, in awe and in love, all of a sudden the lyrics of the song made sense to me that i had somehow through quiet inward work and much thinking i had finally let go of the part of me that believed i needed to be a certain way and that i gave it my all but instead excepted that a line of the  song  "when i have gone half way..."somehow as i stood among these white horses i realized that all this time in my life i thought i gave it my all but the truth is i had gone just half way, never giving my all for something i really wanted but instead to the version created by what others expected of me the version i saw in my head but not my heart and although i think the three white horses lyrics are about death, i took them to mean, leaving that old way of thinking and doing behind. i know that friends and family will say that i have given my all to everything i do, that is mostly true but i have never truly given it to what my heart has wanted. i do not know what that is but now i will not be afraid to find out.

* i was reminded of these giants
* also for those who emailed me regarding my instagram, here is my online one

* actually five incredibly beautiful and loving white horses, these are just out takes, more of this shoot in months to come.

when letters from readers remind you about the fog

i am sitting as a cool breeze brought in by pouring rain makes me put on the kettle, the fog comes in out and just like the emails in my inbox from you my readers, i am reminded what i have been missing. yes, as i mentioned i have embraced this summer more than previous ones, although how it is almost the middle of august i do not know. i mentioned emails and in the last few days i have received emails from readers who some have never commented but have been reading from the very beginning and in these letters they wrote how the photographs and words of la porte rouge are needed in their life, a sanctuary of sorts for the their soul and mind,  reading those words and now writing them here i have goosebumps for they are saying these things about something that has to do with me. yet what you do not know just like them i need it and when they talk about photographs of the hill, forest walks and the fog stirring them, i am reminded about how much these things stir in me, better yet how much they are part of what i need to exist. now i know that sounds dramatic but i assure you i had almost found myself on empty these past weeks, not because  summer has been miserable because like i stated above the contrary it has been full but feeling full can not replace the need for certain nutrients to feel healthy and at peace and for me those things mean the hill, it's landscape and the living things that like me inhabit this piece of land.

yesterday when in the middle of tears for some personal matter i received another one of these emails, as soon as i read it i knew what i had to do. i walked out to the forest, i stood among deep greens and trees that stood like protectors of what i treasure most. today waking up with a list of errands and things i wanted to do, my body shut me down and i found myself deeply under the weather. this was gift i recognized that and  i sat listening to the rain and watching the fog come in, i slipped into my boots went outside to feel the fogs soft mist turn into rain drops that fell upon me enough to help mend my aching bones. i walked to the garden and ate a few tomatoes and peas that had been washed by the mother nature herself, i held a butterfly with a broken wing and let her drink and eat the juice of a plum.

now i sit and my dinning table as a piano plays in the back round and the fog is coming in through the window, elle's twirling in it saying look auntie the fog is in the house, yes i say and whisper back in my soul too... and as all this, elle, fog, piano and the sound of the rain mixes and fills my senses i can feel my heart hurt in the way it lets you know you are living something special even magical.

so dear friends who share your thoughts and letters with me, i too need this in my life and i thank you for reminding me just like the the fog and rain has today.

a warm sky and the rainbow

i started writing this on the train from ny too home while enjoying the sunset on hudson river. I thought about these images while walking the hot pavement in the city, i had a nice time and hope to go back very soon to do a few things i just could not do this time around. i will be able to show images from this
trip only in the fall.

 i thought about how it seems as if the night before i leave the hill  the sky is even lovelier than all the days before as if letting me know that this is where my heart resides and why i must come home.  the evening before i left,  I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mother after chores, when i looked up i saw the warmest tones line the sky, a quick rain shower before had formed a rainbow, as all this was happening the sun began to set. i stood on the grass with my bare feet, this is where i live, i function & breathe. within minutes behind me the sky was the colour of wild fire, while the front was a mix of soft tones with a rainbow of vibrant colors ( not captured well).  the air was a mix of cool and warmth like a swim in lake on hot summer night, the leaves moved against the window making the sound of pouring rain without a drop, birds and fire flies flew about and the air played at the back of my neck.  i stood, i paused, i stared and inhaled and now four days later, i finally exhale.

I watched my mum and k drive down the driveway heading to montreal this morning, strange that i am not with them, but  knowing that one and half days of solitude i have craved will help me press reset and prepare for the arrival of my niece & nephew for their summer on the hill. i will weed the garden , listen to music as i am right now and maybe lay in the hammock at some point looking up at the sky through the trees while it grounds me. this evening i will welcome the sunset from the table in the barn while eating dinner made solely from my garden.

hope you guys are doing well, but even better than well.