December 2024 Backyard Bulletin

Cover photo by Jackson Podis

View the full edition at this link.

I was recently reading a newsletter by Elif Batuman in which she paraphrases another author (Proust) who I'm sure the most cultured among us would recognize, but I did not. Elif says: "the trick in writing/life...is to figure out how to import a chunk of the past into the present, so your present self can feel all the things you’ve forgotten." There are several different directions this quote can take you. One option is connecting with the painful parts of your past, remembering and understanding the way you felt, and wielding that understanding in the form of empathy for your present self or others in your life. Another option is connecting with the past to see how far you've come, to not let the goals you've achieved be fully overshadowed by the new ones on the horizon. A final option, perhaps furthest from the original context of the idea, but nearest to our context in the Methow Valley, is to import joy from the past, to look backward as a way of connecting to wonder, awe, and excitement.

There's something about a huge snowstorm that, for me, opens such a joyful window to the past. All of a sudden, I'm 19 years old, in a car packed to the gills at 6am, brimming with excitement to go powder skiing. Or perhaps I'm 12 years old and school's just been cancelled, I'm on top of the world! Maybe I'm even younger, in a friendly snowball fight with my Dad. Some of my most playful memories are snowy ones, and perhaps the same is true for you. So next time you're slogging through your morning snow shovel routine, reach back into your memory bank, import some joyful, snowy memories, and allow your present self to "feel all the things you've forgotten." Happy solstice!

Bridger Layton, Education Programs Coordinator