Baking...

There's something peaceful and centering about baking bread. The velvety softness of freshly-sifted flour...the warm, sour smell of proofed yeast...the constant rhythm of kneeding the dough and forming the loaves or boules or what-have-you.

I've been baking. It's my celebration of the season. It's bringing nature's bounty--wheat, millet, barley, oats, nuts and seeds, etc.--into a flavorful concoction that can be shared with friends and family. It's celebrating the bounty She offers to us...and embracing it as it should be.

Looking out my kitchen window as I mix or kneed or wait for the oven timer to "ding", I can see the chill breezes play in the pecan tree. Squirrels scamper in its limbs, glut themselves on the last nuts clinging on the branches, nest in its topmost reaches. Smoke lazily billows from our neighbor's chimney. The errant cat wanders through from yard to yard...anticipating dinner and watching for diversions (a mouse, bug, or bird).

The world is starting to bed down for its annual rest....and I'm baking...'putting up' for the forthcoming season as it were. I've a cup of soothing tea beside me, bread scenting the entire house as it bakes in the kitchen behind me, and sleeping pets purring and snoring as appropriate all around.

That I could freeze this moment in perpetuity....