Gratitude 2025

 

I hope this finds you and your loved ones well this holiday season. While I don't blog much anymore, I still try to at least write a Thanksgiving post as an exercise in gratitude. 

As I progress along the trail of life, there has been more loss of family and friends the last few years. First, I'd like to express my gratitude for the life of my good friend of 25 years, Don. He passed suddenly in September, and his lack of physical presence leaves a void in my life.

At Twin Falls on a very rainy hike with Don

 

Don and I worked together and stayed friends after I left that job. He and I were founding members of the "Sunday Morning Church of Tea" at Miro Tea in Ballard, where we had good, relaxing conversation while sipping fine tea. He was a reserved but very smart, kind, good man. He was a font of information, active in the national and state American Society of Landscape Architects, and waxed poetic about the tamales and local food he grew up eating in Taos, New Mexico. (He even shot pool with Dennis Hopper when he was a teenager in Taos.)

If you follow Pacific Northwest Seasons on Instagram or FaceBook, you might have noticed more mushroom photos the last year or two. I'm grateful for the abundant and varied fungi that grow here in western Washington. I find them endlessly photogenic, intriguing, and weirdly wonderful. 

Amanita muscaria, NOT edible but hallucinogenic

 

I treasure invites from a good friend to forage for chanterelles and morels each spring and fall. It's a combination treasure hunt, forest bathing, and great together action with good people. And of course I can't divulge where we go to forage. :)

  

 It goes without saying (but I'll say it) that I'm so grateful for friends and family. So this year a shout out to my beloved, formerly feral cat Mittens, also known as Yuki. I can't believe she's still with us at 17 going on 18, after 10+ years surviving outside with her colony dodging coyotes, cars, raccoons, cold snaps, and who knows what else.

 I actually thought I was losing her just a couple days ago, but once again she has bounced back from an IBD flare-up, but for who knows how long. All I can do is try and appreciate each moment of kitty kisses, being trapped with her purring on my lap, and her general spicy character that makes me laugh. There's even a Team Mittens group of friends who help me hold her when she gets her daily meds. 

 As always, I'm grateful for my home region, where I've lived all but 4 years of my life. The Pacific Northwest, specifically western Washington and Oregon, is deep in my bones, with some of my ancestors arriving in Seattle as early as the 1860s, which I realize is not early compared to the Coast Salish peoples who have lived here for thousands of years. 

 

With humanity's excesses, our remaining forests, rivers, lakes, and the sea are suffering. So I beseech us all to be as conscientious as possible about our driving, buying habits, and general consumption to lessen the impacts of these changes while there's still (?) time to check the worst effects of a changing climate and plastic pollution in our oceans.

  

 I could ramble on (swimming in the Salish Sea, skiing and hiking with good friends in the Cascades, farmers markets, my two book clubs, my Zen community, good books, etc.). But who reads long blogs anymore? (A thank you to the few of you who do.) I was going to copy an excellent quote I read in the New York Times about the value of brevity at Thanksgiving time, but I can't retrieve it from the massive inflow of information each day.

 So happy holidays and may this post spur you to also think about your current list of things for which you're grateful. If you feel so inclined, I would love to hear about some of your gratitude list in a comment below.

Happy trails and thanks for visiting Pacific Northwest Seasons! In between blog posts, visit Pacific NW Seasons on FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram for more Northwest photos and outdoors news.