Beautiful photos from my Sky River Retreat Cabin in Gold Bar by my daughter, Nikki Jacoby

    It is as if I can hear those clicking bones from the mid winter lodge carry out along the barren landscape of January…  Click, click, click…  Strong distinct sound and rhythm under the winter starlight.  Swirling mists of ancestor breath freezing in the air have me journeying back through the countless winter count of cold, hardship, and orange flame under midnight sky. Damp stone, shoulders hunched against stealing wind I step into fierce dreaming of spring green shoots and pink cherry blossom.  The bones of who am I, brittle structure wrapped in wool, digging sown into the deep marrow of my life, building a new world of vital cells freshly vibrating from source carrying the sound of the past, future dreaming on the… click, click, click… of the clicking bones out along the ley lines of my soul. The geological layers of my soul clean for the picking, clear for the seeing, creaking up into the watery light of day… click, click… this is the time of bone cutting decisions, bone making broth.  Strong in roots of fennel and parsnip, there is an eerie stillness out in the wild, a quiet of snow in the mountains, so forgotten lost in the artificial city hum. But even here in the midst of street light and a dumbing down of winter storm, the winds are up and about with our Mother moving and weaving the long winter’s sleep. The elements loom large and strong, rising crescendo in loud storms, threatening to pull us asunder and then there is the click clicking along the edges of the black glassy lake… click, click, click… we are still here. Click click click and the storm has passed.

    Copyright 2024 Sarah MacLean Bicknell | Photography by Jenn Whitney | Illustration by Nikki Jacoby