It pretty much didn’t stop snowing in Bend, Ore. for the past week. Frost is caked on my window sills like the inside of a freezer, long icicles dangle like Christmas lights along the hotel rooftop, and thick white snowflakes blown into 12” snowdrifts cover everything in sight that hasn’t been plowed outside my second-story picture window.
It just goes to show how much can change in a week.
From bare grey concrete to miles of fluffy white snow overnight. The blizzard has been so extreme—the worst in two decades according to resort operators—that two of my three shifts at Mt. Bachelor were canceled last week. For my REI shifts, I walked the 1.5 miles over to the Old Mill District on crisp -5 to 15-degree mornings. My Volkswagen Rabbit is front-wheel drive and doesn’t have snow tires, so it’s hibernating in the parking lot for the foreseeable future.
Just a couple of weeks after the solstice, we have plunged into the depths of winter. Instead of just darkness, there is so much light.
As I slowly walk through the neighborhoods blanketed in white, the cars, houses, patio furniture etc. no longer stand out. Instead, I notice how the icicles dripping down rooftops sparkle as they catch reflected light and the pine trees dusted like they’re dipped in powdered sugar sway gently in the breeze. Without cars or people or dogs around, the quiet indeed becomes white noise.
Working less and walking more this past week, it’s as if time has slowed down.
I’ve had a lot more time to reflect on the past year and set intentions—not resolutions—for the new year, inspired by writers, artists, and friends who’ve crossed my path or feed during the past few weeks.
Last January, I entered 2023 with a truly blank canvas of a new year. I had a long list of what didn’t work based on all of my experiments in 2022, but no new grand plan. Just a vague idea of where I might live, how I might earn money, what I might work on creatively, who I might spend time with, what mountains I might climb.
It wasn’t blank like a sparkling snow field but like a thick, white fog bank.
Like that one morning when I was road tripping, driving along the Oregon coast and passing through one of the places I know best in the world: Manzanita, Ore. A local friend and I had set out on her daily morning walk to the beach. The closer we got, the thicker the fog, until we passed through the dunes, and suddenly the world as we knew it was gone. I slowly turned 360 degrees while standing in the same spot and all I could see was the dark, wet sand under my bare feet. I could hear the distant roar of the waves over here and I knew Neahkahnie Mountain was just over there. But where was here, where was there?
Initially disorienting and uncomfortable, the longer we stood there listening and looking around, it actually became soothing. To have the world reduced to the right here and now. With all the noise and distractions removed, there was a deep simplicity of being. And a feeling of being protected within the center of something.
We knew the world wasn’t gone. It was just hidden.
I didn't have a plan for 2023, but somehow that metaphorical fog slowly lifted throughout the year, revealing places to live, income sources, ways to draw in nature, new friends, and actual mountains, like summiting Mount Hood which was one of the highlights of my year. Alas, many of those proved temporary, and constantly in flux, thus did and didn’t feel like progress relative to my overall life vision.
Initially, as the year wrapped up, I felt discouraged to be entering another blank canvas of a new year with an even longer list of what didn’t work based on all of my new experiments in 2023, and seemingly no closer to a clear vision about how to make a living as an artist and live in harmony with nature.
But, as I accounted for everything—first literally reconciling my accounting for 2023 taxes, then reviewing my workout logs, then scrolling through AllTrails, then looking at photos, then reading through my journals, then updating my bucket list—I noticed that it mattered less what I did, and more how I lived.
Little things like unsubscribing from almost everything so I could maintain a Zero Inbox and be much more responsive to the few emails I did receive,
Or bringing a travel mug so I consume fewer single-use containers and live more in harmony with nature.
And big things like making ends meet even without consistent income and staying cash flow positive for the whole year by juggling all kinds of resources.
Or the ways I showed up for my friends and family in their lives—weddings, divorces, birthdays, new babies, hospitalizations, job loss and new jobs, new homes, travels, and pilgrimages—as well as in their deaths.
When I looked closer, I saw consistently intentional choices that align with my values and priorities, that positively influenced my relationships, communities, and planet, and kept me heading in the right direction.
“I guess what I’m really leaning into is the middle ground, a place where we can be thankful and reverent for what we have without forgetting where we are. In our ever-expanding global community, we can get stuck drawing bigger and bigger circles, our shouts rippling further and further outward. But maybe this [time of year] should be a time for drawing the smallest ring around those closest to you…and talking in a whisper,” wrote Raven Smith, in a Dec. 1, 2021 Vogue article.
“And it’s right to briefly press pause on all things—the drumming of the news, the pursuit of joy itself…It’s also right to rest and prepare for whatever’s coming next, conserving energy to adapt and readapt with each wave. In the meantime, we have the middle ground, the now.”
See beautiful winter wonderland photos on Instagram.
Just like that thick, white fog bank, the beauty, the simplicity, the clarity of this winter wonderland opens up one of those beautiful wormholes of presence when one can both remember and dream simultaneously.
As I’ve had a lot more time to reflect on the past year and set intentions for the new year, I’m reminded that I don’t need to have the year figured out yet.
I don’t need a clear vision of what life looks like to keep moving forward intentionally.
What if the whole season of winter is our time for looking inward, not just on New Year’s Eve or even this first month of January?
After all, there are still several months of winter to come. When the world is covered and quiet while I stay cozy and warm inside or walk slowly and carefully outside.
As I take it all in.
May you turn inward this week.
Love,
Jules