I am a big believer in the way the seasons teach us the way to be. We had a hard winter here. Or maybe I should say it was hard on me. In the way we match our environment, I grew misty and gray over the winter. It was then that I birthed this blog and also when I decided to leave my job behind.

Now in May, here in the San Juan Islands, all the world is green and alive with birdsong and light. The season is saying this is past time for dreaming. Take those melancholy and wistful dreams of winter and put them into action. I have started working with soul collages. I see the Elemental as the

key component of my nature. Whenever I have been stressed, I have held onto the most basic features of the landscape around me, the way the winter cottonwoods of New Mexico soothed my visits with my mother, the clouds and freeway trees of California helped me through fast moving Sacramento traffic, the dandelions and other bright weeds bursting up through the sidewalks of the cities.

When I have been demoralized by inhuman work, I have gone to Mexico and been healed by its elemental energies, the purity of air and sound and food and sea and palm tree. Thus, over and over I see in every collage I make, the elemental—stars and sky, rock and tree, ocean and wild. The movement of the human body. Reminders of real food. Here in the cold northwest, fire grounds me and the night sky uplifts me.

And you, who live in the city. You have it too. In spades.Here is my recent walk through the Japanese Garden in Seattle.

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