Winter’s Long Shadows

Once upon a time not so long ago, we gave living at Ocean Shores a go.  The plan didn’t work so well for me.  I missed my Seattle life.  My heart and soul ached for my friends.  I missed teaching yoga on a full-time basis and I yearned for the cultural heartbeat of the city.   So we returned to life in the city and I gradually took up most of my classes again.  In the process, I started up and discovered a new aspect of yoga that I feel passionate about: teaching Adaptive Yoga for Special Needs Children.

In the move back to Seattle, we took up one apartment after another until we found one that suited us both quite well. And now, my Seattle week days are once again filled with teaching yoga, enjoying time with friends, and diving into all the interesting aspects of city life.  Through this process, once again, I rediscovered the preciousness of our home at the coast, Little Renaissance, and our weekends spent there.  Whereas I cannot live there full time, I deeply enjoy the quiet weekends our light-filled home and green wildlife-protected property offer us.

Little Renaissance is a sanctuary, una casa di salute, as my parents called it:  a house of health.  It is a healing place where nature and home are inseparable.  When I do yoga in the great living room, it is as if I am in a tree house, looking out at beach forest.  As I reach my arms across the room in Warrior II, I see birds flitting their way across the green corridor of bird-wilderness.  After a week in the city, the pristine air of the ocean greets us.  I marvel at this quiet peaceful house my husband built.  I admire the winter garden in its winter-resting stage and the wildlife traipsing or flying across our land.  I seemingly breathe in the constant lull of ocean waves and the night sky, void of light pollution, scintillating with stars and distant planets on clear nights.

Because I have am back to my full life in Seattle, I have a new-found appreciation of Little Renaissance, our home and sanctuary at the coast. After a week of intensive teaching and being with so many wonderful people (my life is very people intensive), it is a joy to spend quiet time at the coast.  I find my equilibrium at Ocean Shores.  I am renewed there.  It is a place where we offer retreats, but also a cherished place for us to retreat on weekends, a home away from home.  Many times we considered selling the property to consolidate living in one place.  We don’t feel that need anymore.  Our sanctuary at Ocean Shores has been in our lives for so long.  We will continue to beautify it and give the property all the loving care and respect it deserves.  Little Renaissance lives on!

This past weekend, we shared our home with some friends from our Yogi Culinary Group.   We have some fantastic cooks in our group and the theme this time around was Mexican.  Our menu?  Guacamole and chips, Mexican lasagna, Shrimp Diablo and Mexican rice,  baked beans,  and cabbage salad/slaw with lime dressing, punctuated by a plum almond tart served with a plum compote and chocolate sables. Needless to say, the meal required a postprandial one-mile walk around the block, our flashlights safely revealing the path along the otherwise pitch-black road.

We meet about once a season and this is the first time we had the group out at Little Renaissance.  It was great, just sad that two from our culinary group were unable to make it due to work-related travel conflicts. Ours was a weekend of laughter, wonderful conversations, bird watching, shared stories, cooking and great meals, yoga, and beach walking under the vast clear sky, chased by Winter’s Long Shadows.

Winter’s Long Shadows

Zooey, our wind-blown Westie guest of honor this past weekend

Lively group

Laughter on the Beach

Driftwood I

Driftwood II

Taking it in

Silhouette

Shavasana