I’ve made my lemon tea and I’m reclining in my armchair, listening to the hum of a wood fire going in my warm, cozy strawbale cottage, wondering how to begin this latest edition of a Dancing Rabbit update, when a flash at the window makes me look up. I see a bright red male cardinal perched on a bare mulberry branch. This is a common sight in the village, one that I never seem to take for granted, as it is a bright spot of color in a monochromatic landscape this time of year, and I welcome the sight of these birds every time.

Liz here, with the latest news of the last few weeks at Dancing Rabbit.

I’ve lived at DR for six years, and I now have DR traditions that I look forward to as part of my winter holiday celebrations every year, like Christmas Eve dessert potluck at Cob’s house and Christmas morning brunch potluck at the Mercantile. Alas, this year, due to extreme weather and a high level of illness in our community and the surrounding communities, these two events were canceled. 

Extreme weather is an understatement. I emerged from four days of below zero weather right before Christmas day, with wind chills of -24 to -39, with more confidence than ever in my cottage’s ability to keep me warm and with SubHub passing her first extreme weather test.

I have been sewing insulated curtains for the last several weeks for SubHub, a natural building project that my son and I and a crew of primarily women have been working on for three and half years. This winter the building became a “shoes off inside” building, and everything we had to do to keep the brand new earthen floor in the living room from getting dirty moved the building from being a project site to a home: slippers for each crew member by the door, rugs on the floor, construction dust cleaned from the windows and window sills inspiring me to decorate the sills with cedar boughs and poinsettias, and K* added paper snowflakes and festive knitted holiday balls. 

Adding curtains and a daily fire in the masonry heater added even more to the humanizing elements that make a building into a home.

With two holiday events canceled, my son and I went ahead with our plans. On Christmas day we feasted on cheeses, olives, crackers, wine and port. We took a break while Graham made us some chocolate and walnut cookies and then we finished the day with two Zoom rooms going at once; one with my sisters in California and Australia and one with my daughter and her sibling, Isabelle, visiting in California.

The new year invites some introspection about the past year and what the coming year holds. It helps me to make a list every year of what we’ve accomplished over at SubHub, to stave off impatience when thinking of what is left to do on the project. And every year it turns out that we do enough to feel a sense of accomplishment. And since everything we do at SubHub is for the first time, it adds to that sense of moving forward. 

We started the year with Graham and Emeshe laying reclaimed floorboards in the upstairs lofts and then sanding and staining them. Graham, Emeshe, K*, and Mae added beautiful white oak trim to the outside of the building. K*, Mae, and I finished trimming the window sills in the kitchen and cleaned and sealed the kitchen floor tiles. All of us at various times helped to add a finish layer of lime plaster to the outside of the whole building, and then I painted it a deep, mossy green color. Graham and Prairie started the kitchen base cabinets, which are almost done. Alis excavated drainage ditches for the shower and kitchen water and the foundation trenches for a large patio on the west side of the building. Later in the year he also excavated foundation trenches for a utility room and pantry addition and drainage for the addition and our cistern. The whole crew, including new crew members Jen and Kyle, poured a cement floor for the addition, filled trenches with gravel, mortared a cinder block foundation for it, and installed a 1,700 gallon cistern next to the utility room. I worked with Squirrel in August and September to build a wall between the bathroom and the living room using a clay plaster method called wattle and daub, and then moved on to create an earthen floor for the living room with Squirrel, Jen, Prairie and Graham, with red pigmented clay finish plaster saturated with tung oil to make it durable and cleanable. And running throughout all that we do, is the gentle leadership of Alis as our experienced building mentor. As of yesterday, I finished sewing all 12 of the insulated curtains for the downstairs, holding heat from the masonry heater inside the building as much as possible, ready for the next wave of extreme weather.

How vulnerable we remain in the winter, even with wood for fires and sun for warmth. Winter reminds me of our vulnerability and how dependent we are on Earth’s resources for warmth and shelter, despite relatively mild local climates. Noises outside my house one night recently pulled me out to witness Cat’s roof on fire. The local fire department and our neighbor, Jed, helped put it out. Cat’s chimney fire reminds me of that vulnerability, and for a week or so I feel vigilant and without a safety net. 

Living simply exposes for me how close we are to not surviving, to not having anything. Having houses that are primarily straw and being aware that there is nothing between me and freezing but 16 inches of dried grass and several inches of plaster made of clay mud, straw, and sand sometimes leaves me feeling vulnerable. The flip side to that is how connected I feel to that material and how grateful I am that the Earth can sustain and grow that grass for my survival and comfort. And how all these thoughts of survival, which come around every winter, are intertwined with gratitude and the enjoyment of the season: the warmth of a wood fire, warm lights in the windows, the sound of people laughing and talking as I enter a building, how K*’s laugh rings out from wherever they are in the village, and how it makes me smile every time. 

After the gentle snow flurries we’ve been having, a thick silence descends on my neighborhood that is blanketed in snow, dazzling in the sun. That silence is sometimes broken by the sound of Kurt’s news podcast coming from his phone as he walks by, always waving and calling out hello and whistling for his dog, Virgil, who’s gone exploring. Kurt has recently returned from surgery, with a care team being assembled to help him and Alline take care of everything during Kurt’s recovery. I look forward to seeing him again on my own daily walks around the village.

On my walks, I hear the startling break of a rabbit as I walk within feet of it; watching the pattern of escape he chooses, like a tiny quarterback running a play, and that white little cottontail streaking across the landscape. I entertain myself while I walk by looking at footprints in the snow and trying to guess which of my neighbors they belong to, based on as many criteria as I can think of.

Winter can be isolating because the spread of illness can be alarming sometimes, and trying to break the spread means wearing masks at Subhub and staying out of the social loop of many gatherings that would otherwise counter winter's gloom: meditation, happy hour, and coffee group.

I just recently joined the Long Term Planning Committee, and it feels like a good time to join such a group and think about the future of the village. As we begin a new year and start thinking ahead for the year, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine what we can accomplish in the years ahead. Doing these mental gymnastics has made me feel closer to the village and its mission, and hopeful about the future.

I took a break from writing this, to attend a New Year’s day gathering, centered around a craft activity called “intuitive collage.” Eight of us gathered in the Mercantile, Alline set out chocolate croissants and coffee, and we began with a check in, each of us sharing briefly what is on our mind. We then started cutting images from large piles of magazines on the table, whatever we were drawn to, and then glued the images together to form a picture of our inner state. I am always the skeptic, and yet, even with my resistance, my collage manages to broadcast my subconscious state. While we cut and glue, there is much sharing and catching up with each other, lots of laughter and even a few tears. And this is a big part of why I continue to live here; for me there is hope in gatherings, camaraderie, warmth by a fire, sharing food, and continuing to be vulnerable with each other.

May a spirit of hope pervade your holiday season, and carry through the rest of the year.