This post originates at Red Sofa Literary. The agent I’m working with for a new book project posed this question for her agency’s annual NaNoWriMo series: Did you choose writing or did writing choose you? I had to think awhile on this. Why do I write, day after day, word after word? Did I actually choose it, or … Continue reading Fuel for Writing
This Autumn, let something die. I first read that phrase by Asia Suler a few years ago. Every time I read it again, it makes me wonder why we are so afraid of death, of letting things go, of decline, of allowing something that has run its course to fade into whatever lies beyond. It … Continue reading Let Something Die
“America would not be the wealthy country it is without slave labor. We would not have our power or wealth if we had not, for a very long time, depended on the unpaid labor of millions of human beings. I feel like I shouldn’t have to spell this out, but maybe I do. America was … Continue reading Listen to Black Women
It’s been almost two years now since I got the news that I was being laid off from a long time job – and in that time a short book about the experience has come into being, and as it gets closer to being released into the world, I am finding myself torn. On one … Continue reading Reason to Pause
*This is an excerpt from Woodland Manitou: To Be on Earth, available wherever books are sold. June always holds a sense of emptiness for me – not in a negative way, just in a way that reminds me that for a really long time, “working at camp” and everything that comes along with what that means … Continue reading Practicing Resurrection
A bear wakes up in spring and gets back to the business of living out loud and breathing fresh air and moving though the days with intention. Maybe a person in spring can do the same and get back to the business of living and breathing and moving through the days with intention. … Continue reading Waking Up
Have you ever heard of a “food desert”? The term is becoming more common in conversation these days, but if you are unfamiliar, a food desert is just what it sounds like: a geographic area where residents’ access to affordable, healthy food options (especially fresh produce) is significantly reduced due to the absence of grocery stores within reasonable traveling distance. These regions show up in urban neighborhoods, but also in small rural communities. And when you live in one, or even visit one for awhile, it can be really hard to maintain healthy eating habits. Continue reading “Navigating America’s Food Deserts”
A few months ago I sat down with Iris, founder of The Nabalo Lifestyle, for an interview that appeared in their most recent online magazine.
You can download the full publication of Issue Three: The Mystic (and the back issues) here: The Nabalo Lifestyle Magazine
Iris: Can you tell us a little bit more about the beautiful place that you call home?
Heidi: My family and I (myself, my spouse, and our six year old) make our home in the St. Croix River Valley, just to the west of the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin in the United States. It’s a landscape full of lakes, rivers, bluffs, ancient glacial potholes, small towns, organic farms, and plenty of winding trails to explore all of it. We live in a little red house perched on the edge of a ravine on the shores of a tiny lake, with a large field just up the hill from the house that provides space for a large vegetable garden, several types of berry bushes, and an apple tree. It’s all imperfect and takes a lot of work to maintain, but I love it here. Continue reading “The Mystic: An Interview with Nabalo”
Someone shared this poem, by Patricia Monaghan, in a group I facilitate, and I keep reading it over and over again.
The Old Song of the Tribes
The sky draws its curtain
across the season. Any day
now it will snow, curtainingthe footprints in the soft earth
we made today, but any day in this life
or another, if I meet you, the earth’spull will be upon us, the mark of the forest
will be on us, indelible handprints, birthmarks.
We will know each other in city or forest,despite continents and oceans, we will know
each other as much, as little as
we know ourselves, as much as we knowwhat the mind is, what the body
can be. Amidst
all the changing, our souls will remain
true to each other. The rest can be mist.
I wrote the following post four years ago. The issues outlined in it are still a struggle, but we can only change what we name, right? Right. So, here it is again, slightly modified to fit the present.
I spend too much time looking at screens.
I have decided this before, but it screens have proved very persistent at creeping back into the limelight. They have become a central part of my days, and I am realizing that my balance is off. I have been crafting my definition of what “simple living” means to me for a long time now. But even with a mindset that is pretty solidly committed to principals of simplicity or “enough but not too much”, it still seems like screens have been taking center stage. I need to figure out how much screen time is enough, but not too much.
Generally, when I think about living simply, my list includes the following:
Heidi Barr | Author 