All posts tagged: nature

Look Up …

December 29, 2025
by Nancy Emeral
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Dogs / Farm Life / Living Authentically / perspective / The Human Condition

Outside it’s drizzling that ‘just above freezing’ damp, bone-chilling cold that I find particularly horrible. My dreams of a white Christmas went unanswered this year and maybe that’s a perfect ending to a particularly difficult year for both our country and for the world. I’ve tried reminding myself how badly we need rain here in Eastern Washington. Nice try, but the truth is, its yucky outside and no amount of pasted-on optimism is going to […]

Feeding Wolves …

December 18, 2025
by Nancy Emeral
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Family & Legacy / Living Authentically / The Human Condition

My freshly cut Christmas tree is sparkling with tiny white lights. Every short needled branch boasts feathery birds, crystalline balls, handmade bird houses, and an odd assortment of miniature teddy bears, bells, and shiny stars collected over a lifetime. It’s gorgeous.  Candles and strings of lights illuminate a shelf in our great room and a felted wreath hangs in between winter coats and hats on a clothes rack by the door. In the center of […]

The Presence …

November 24, 2025
by Nancy Emeral
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Follow Your Heart / Mystical Connection

A few miles from our home is a highway that leads to a retail area with practically everything we need. It’s easy. It’s also frenetic. I’ve yet to drive on that road without cars and big-ass trucks cutting me off and tail-gating so closely they could easily connect to my bumper with a zip tie. Taking that route I’d be agitated by the time I arrived in town. Thankfully there is another way. Running parallel […]

I Choose the Blues …

August 19, 2025
by Nancy Emeral
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Farm Life / The Human Condition

I like blueberries. No, I actually love blueberries. If I were forced to have only one fruit for the duration of my life I would ‘choose the blues.’  Everywhere I have lived I have planted blueberry bushes, and sought out u-pick farms to satisfy my craving while waiting for my own plants to mature. That takes years. If you’re fortunate enough to move into a home with an existing mature patch, which I did many […]

Like a Boomerang …

June 30, 2025
by Nancy Emeral
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Farm Life / Follow Your Heart / Living Authentically

5:35 am and already I feel like I might be running late. The forecast is an unseasonably hot day, could reach 100 degrees. In Spokane where we live, this is expected in July or August, certainly not in June. I have 2 choices as I look to the day ahead; grumble, complain and feel sorry for myself, or just get to work doing whatever I can to keep all living things in my care as hydrated […]

A Moment …

October 29, 2024
by Nancy Emeral
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Mystical Connection

Everything about the morning had been ordinary. As usual I was walking my dog Zoe down a well worn path through the woods when unexpectedly, on a small rise next to a sturdy ponderosa pines we were met with a gusty breeze. I stopped. It was as if Mickey Mouse, the sorcerer’s apprentice in Fantasia, his long sleeves falling down around him, frantically waving his master’s magic wand, was conjuring up a whirlwind of the […]

The Geography of the Soul …

July 18, 2024
by Nancy Emeral
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Awareness / Follow Your Heart

I have moved 18 times in my life. Some of those were fairly inconsequential, such as several from dorm to apartments in college years. Others were significant: leaving my large extended family firmly planted in the midwest to seek the forested Pacific Northwest and on to the high desert country of the Inland Northwest where I now live. Where, if I have my way, I will live to my end. Packing up and re-locating is […]

Raspberry Hairs …

February 28, 2024
by Nancy Emeral
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Family & Legacy / Overworking

I have tried to start this blog for an embarrassingly long time. This attempt will most likely wither on the vine like all the others. While this is not a terribly auspicious beginning I press on in spite of myself. For someone who can’t seem to stop writing, and can’t seem to do anything with it, the guilt adds up over the years along with binders and file folders. I like hard copy. Self reproach […]