Blessed is a life lived: Counting my blessings and noticing the shifts through one year living with the land at Savanna Moon.

“Blessed is the life lived in sync with the land on which it is lived.”

— Wendell Berry

Sunset over the prairie. June 2025. White baptisia and penstemon flowering in the grasses.

It's been one year living in the Driftless Region of Wisconsin, my first home outside of the state of Minnesota. I live with a close friend of a decade, Jayne, and a newer friend whom I met moving here, Lane. Both of whom my soul has chosen as beloved and kindred. I'm a package deal with them now, and we joke, in all seriousness, that the three of us make up a three-legged stool. Plus our familiars: two dogs and a cat. I had been yearning for the kind of connection Lane, Jayne, and I share, and I am blessed by the time we spend together chatting, giggling, and working on projects on the land. Each of us cultivates our own connection to this place, and it's touching to behold the look in their eyes when we look over the prairie together.

If I were asked to describe this land in one word, it would be: paradise. It's 90 acres of prairie, bluff prairie, woods, and oak savanna. It was a couple of months in, around this time last year, after I'd found crystals on the hills, a baby fawn in the woods, seen multiple sunsets and moon rises over the prairie, that I realized I had only been bitten by one mosquito (a miracle in this part of the world). I stated this joyfully and in awe, as I recalled all the magic I'd come upon so far, and as Lane does often, she looked at me, naming my experience in one word, and said, "Yeah, I know! Welcome to paradise."

I wanted to relate to time in a deep, slow way, which gave me space to belong and become myself. The city whirls too quickly for me, although I do miss wandering the alleyways of Minneapolis. After one year, I'm sparkling with gratitude, and my cup bubbles over with memories when I sit down to reflect. A year later, I fully agree. I live in paradise. So come on a rambling journey for a little bit, as I reflect, somewhat chaotically, on my year here.

New Skills & Relationships Renew Me

I can identify more plants, more birds, more trees, and more emotions than I could last year. My first task on the land was pulling garlic mustard, so I knew this year, as the snow melted and growth began, the time to take garlic mustard from the woods was upon us. I can confidently identify and pull garlic mustard and make a delicious pesto with it.

I know spring and fall are the times of controlled burns. It was in college that I learned some plants and seeds need fire to thrive and grow, and it is here on this land that I am experiencing it. First in seeing the marks of past burns on trails, and bluff sides, and then in the soot on my friends' faces and clothes after they come home from work and volunteering at the prescribed burns. Next year, I hope to take prairie burn classes, and this fall, I hope to see my first burn here on the land.

In May, it's time to forage for wild ramps, fiddlehead ferns, violet blossoms, nettle, and Virginia waterleaf. It's also time to reflect on the fragility of forbs like trillium and the importance of leaving wild ramps in the wild, given how long they take to grow. It takes seven years for ramps to reach maturity and be ready to harvest. The trillium sends out underground rootstocks, which take seven to ten years to bloom, too. In this, I am grateful to be reminded that delicious and beautiful things take their time. In this, I feel permission to take my time.

Not only do I know Bur Oaks, but I've been learning about Oak families of red and white, and which trees are among them. Oaks are another taker of time, slowly growing into hard, fire-resistant wood. The slow burn of the oak in the woodstove over the winter still warms my heart now in June. Imagining the walk between the house and the woodshed, carrying the wood, gives me a rhythmic sense of the land and a reason for my new envy--the neighbor's woodpile. Something to work for arising through it: Ideally, we'd have nine cords of wood. Three seasoning one year, three two years, and three to burn to heat the house in the winter. It tickles my brain to think about this now in the heat of the waning summer sun. The gnarled branches of the Bur Oak savanna embrace me and evoke a feeling of the sacred deep in my bones. Not all trees turn to firewood. I feel the bark, the textures. I know more about wood and am cultivating the knowing with reverence for the ways wood has birthed civilization. The way the trees have been so good to us humans. I've learned to plant trees here. There's something unspeakable about planting a tree. I encourage you to plant one or more yourself. I've sipped spruce tip and white pine tea, welcoming their medicine and the super charge of vitamin C.

Among surprises, I'm a bird person now. The rising song of the birds returning after winter increases my sense of relief that we all made it through. Studies show that birdsong speaks to our nervous system, evoking a parasympathetic response. Remembering feeding the seed eaters throughout the winter, and learning to take in the feeders come spring due to bears and other wildlife. There is a time for everything, to feed the birds and to stop feeding the birds. The ruby-throated hummingbird returned in all its curiosity. Flying and dancing and humming through the yard this spring, specifically around the Solomon's Seal, and pointing the way to spring blooms. The bald eagle soaring high, small, and eating roadkill in the fields, enormous. The red-tailed hawk peering through the branches. The barn swallows make nests everywhere. The Barred Owl on a sign in broad daylight? I've learned how some naturalists have deciphered calls to sound like catchy human words. The Barred Owl’s hooting call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” If you know, you know.

This spring, I expected and looked forward to adventuring through the woods to find golden oysters and fawns lying curled in the ferns or at the edges of the prairie, like in fairy tales, an encore of last year. Morels are hiding at the base of dead elms, singing fairy songs between the bones of dead deer we find in the woods after winter.

Springtime babies abound, infusing me with energy, pointing me to continue birthing what is mine to create.

Planting the garden, trying to remember not to work the soil when it is too wet, to trim the tops of the plants at the right time, to mulch and plant and weed and fence and fertilize.

Driving the zero-turn John Deere I've named "The Mantis" to cut the earth's hair each week. My sandal tan is sick already this year. Zoom, zoom.

We've celebrated the sun since Yule (winter solstice), Imbolc, Ostara (spring equinox), May Day, Lamas (summer solstice), and we will continue rejoicing in and marking the turning of the year and the sun's movement around the earth. With such a big sky to see, the sun truly "does something different" here every couple of months (to quote a friend who has been attending our community gatherings). I've learned new songs, the four directions, and deepened my relationship with solar and lunar energy.

Participating in counting frog calls for the Wisconsin Volunteer Frog Count is an adventure through the night. It keeps us citizens up and out late a few nights at the beginning of the summer. I can identify a leopard frog, boreal chorus frog, and spring peeper so far. The rest, I'm still learning.

I have watched one maple leaf emerge, mature, blaze orange, fall, and become soil. I have seen the first red tips of the buds against the bare bluffs after winter, and the emerging leaves as every other tree catches up. I know the non-natives are the last to turn in the fall because I've seen it. I have seen a full cycle, just one. I have relished in the radiance of the energy here for a blessed year, learning what happens each season, and feeling the richness around me by trying to notice as much as possible.

There is endless experience and fascination for me here. I want to take it all in and keep as many of the lessons as I can in my heart and mind, so I write them down. Lane, Jayne, and this land have changed my life. To my past self, I say, when life hands you a catalyst, follow your joy. It will open to more joy and more relationships. Since moving here, my circle has grown immensely. I hope for you, dear reader, that you come upon those someones who will change your life too, and that when you do, you receive them like the cherished guests they are in the sacred halls of your life.

I hope in the spring of 2033, seven years from now, I'm still here and ready to blossom into motherhood and stewardship, skillfully loving in community with human and more-than-human beloveds. Life here in paradise is an epic adventure.

My heart is rooting here, and so I'm finding my treasure, one dig of potatoes at a time.

This is part of the why behind Firesoul and Oak: To serve others and, in turn, serve my own continued becoming to this land. To serve the land and the community. To serve family and relationships. I can't wait to host my future clients here, and see the look of awe and wonder that crosses our visitors' faces. This land will be my co-therapist, and I am deeply honored to participate in the partnership.

I am incredibly excited to extend relational therapy to our relationship with the earth through my practice. To create a future where I can stay and continue this fragile and vulnerable act of growing for at least seven years. My soul is on fire here.

Would you like to come outside and play with me?

As often happens, a poem finds me at the right time; this morning, I came across Mary Oliver's poem below. This evening, I edited this post I had already written, which turns out to be my own living of what I've learned so far and my own fire ignited.

What I Have Learned So Far

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I

not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,

looking into the shining world? Because, properly

attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.

Can one be passionate about the just, the

ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit

to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a

story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.

Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of

light is the crossroads of -- indolence, or action.

Be ignited, or be gone.

Rewild your time and steward your soul,

Nomi