Backyard Reports are spreading like wildfire here. Started a few years ago by a Quaker (aka Friend) in the Pennsylvania highlands of Appalachia.

To this day, I can still hear the echoes of those immigrant blessings, and when I am feeling badly, they console and reassure me.

Winter is dead and buried. Spring is born and blossoming. Her baby clothes of crocuses, pussy willows, and snowdrops have already been outgrown.

I remembered the modest cabin of my girlhood. I remembered how at home I was there and in the hollow. I remembered how my best self lived in that cabin and in that hollow and that it was there I had received the priceless, immeasurable fortune for which financial opulence is a ridiculously poor substitute.

Like any wild area, it is an open haven, a clear shade from the woes of this world. Something I think we all need.

The old woman’s bones creak and crackle. Her voice is raspy and hoarse. She mutters, moans, howls, and shrieks. Her bitterly biting breath stings the flesh and can come in gusts forceful enough to jostle people, swerve moving vehicles, rattle houses, and fell trees.

It is a voice. The clearest, most calming, reassuring, encouraging, and honest voice there is. The voice of silence.

A hard frost has finally visited the Alleghenies. I am smitten by the way it makes each fallen leaf, fading blade of grass, drooping fern, and other languishing ground covers common here in November stand out and look as special as they are.

Rust is associated with disuse and deterioration. While fallen leaves symbolize death. Yet, I cannot think of anything more utilized, growing, and teeming with life than rusty fallen leaves. Just as admirable, they’re fun.