At
some point
in 2020, I lost 
​my way.

The
turmoil
went to my
head and to my
heart and I
​froze.

Thankfully,
though, the compost
pile beckoned.

The colors,
textures and yes,
the pungent odors kept
things real and reminded me of
the beauty of it all.

I am
grateful
for extended
time with my family
and with my
​thoughts.

Light
emerged
on the other
side of dark, and
we just kept showing
up for each
other.

The
dailiness
of watermelon
& houseplants that
needed trimming invited
calm in the midst
of brewing
​storms.

And
I voted.
We voted.
​Hope.

And the
Christmas Cactus
bloomed at Thanksgiving
as it does every
​year.

And
we finally
bid farewell to
my mother-in-law's
pressed leaves and rhyming
dictionary she used to
write holiday
​poems.

It was
a messy, smelly
and uncomfortable year,
but it will be impossible to forget
2020 and the good that
will emerge from
the all of
it.

Pressed
leaves - - so
easy to collect &
so simple to
compost.

National
Geographic, not
so much. Each year, eleven
pounds of images from around the world.
But last week, it was time for this collection of stories
and images to move on, to mix and mingle
with holiday wrappings ​and
​old bills.

​Our
children
did not plow
through them, as I
once did, and no library
wanted them. This 450 pound
collection was, in fact, a
burden from
another
era.

We
were managing
the clutter we brought
home from my mother-in-law's
house, which we had cleared out three
years ago. It was time to say farewell to her pressed
leaves, National Geographics and her
dog-eared rhyming
dictionary.

The
compost
absorbed all
of it, including the 
expectations of creating
the perfect turn of phrase in a
gift card, thank you letter or speech
at the garden club. In our pile, the leaves
& this book will nourish new growth
in a new year & maybe even
inspire new ways of
thinking post
2020.

Colors.
Textures. Shapes.
Invitations to pay attention.

Gorgeous Garbage. Mixed
up and mingled.

Curious
about time & the
need to document how I
use it...Fear emerges: Will we
have the time we need?
Thoughts shift. 

Trump's
election sparked
my initial focus on compost.
Since then, the pile has shifted from
metaphor for America (a diverse soup), to an 
invitation to explore my relationship
to just about everything and
everyone...including
​myself.

So I've
been hanging
out with tea-cups
submerged in ponds and
feeling the power of
moss while in
prayer.

I wonder:
Will I take this invitation
to change, to emerge from this time
with renewed interest in what's possible? Or
will I hold on to what I know & to
what feels safe because
​I am afraid?

​There's
The Tempest, a
drama by Shakespeare,
and there's the perennial plant, Good
King Henry. Both white men. Both British. One
an old text with faux leather cover & the other gone to
seed. Together, they make a perfect mix
of nitrogen and carbon in 
​my compost
pile, 

Because
it had rained a lot,
I added some old newspapers
to the mix and was surprised that they
were from 2018 - must have been
from the back of the
​storage ​​bin.

When
I stirred all this
green and brown stuff
together, they mixed & mingled,
creating a fertile space for decomposition.
It takes time, but not much, if I aerate the compost
by turning it over & making sure it gets good
& messy along the way. It smells like
an old barn, which I love, and
all that work makes
​me strong.

We are
in the midst of
a global pandemic. There
are riots & demonstrations throughout
the country. I'm angry, sad and very tired of feeling
complicit in a system I did not design or
choose. Turning compost is my
way of processing the
​all of it.

The
natural
cycle of life,
death & renewal
I witness in this pile is
also context for the other
continuum it includes - - The
shredded news, sometimes current
and sometimes from years past, that reveals
the causes and effects of policies
and actions over time. 

Mix &
mingle a diverse
bunch of decomposing matter,
turn it over once in a while and you get
soil to renew the earth from which it came; Create
policies that increase inequality and you get anger, frustration
and the perpetuation of an unfair system. It's all right
here in the compost behind my garage,
messy, smelly and beautiful
in a weird kind of
way.

In 2018,
when I composted
my Harvard and University
of Virginia diplomas, I experienced
the power of decomposition as not just a source of
life for the earth but also as a source of inspiration & renewal.
What seemed a dangerous & radical act at the time
did not cause the earth to shatter, but
instead freed me to reframe
​my narrative.

For two
years now, I've
been exploring what
it means to be the product of
privilege and to own my complicity
not just with the climate crisis, which was
the original impetus for my reflections on "Two
Degrees," but also with the social and
economic disparities that exist
as a result of our current
market economy.

Facing
truths is hard,
but when I go astray,
feeling tired & lost as I do now,
compost keeps me grounded. It is in that
pile behind the garage that clarity emerges: The power
of diversity & balance, the importance of
showing up & being patient,
and the beauty that
emerges from
the mess.

​Instead of
leaving my diplomas
in a frame in the attic, I tore them
up & let them break free as well. There is power
in recomposing, decomposing and reframing our narratives.
Sometimes, there truly is a tempest in the compost.
It's smelly & messy & hard to take, but it's
beautiful, too, and I'm ready for
whatever work is needed.
It builds strength of
​many kinds.

Other
pieces, like
Mixed Carbon, hide
in my studio, bringing calm
and delight, but calling ​out for a wider
​audience. Or, my first ​Dried Flowers, from 2017,
are part of a set of greeting cards also wanting to share
their energy - - The cards are calling out "please
write letters, keep connections between
people going, & oh, by they way,
the US Postal Service
needs us!"

Over the
years, I have learned
to listen to my children & am
grateful for their guidance, like when they
unknowingly inspired me to finally seek help for my
lifelong anxiety or when they encouraged
me to actually sell my photographs.
So now, I am listening to
them & my work.

During
this time of
social isolation, it
feels strange to store all
these magical moments in my
studio, when they could be out in the
world for others to see. Because, at their heart,
Compost Compositions are all about community and
our essential interdependence. Just as the
green stuff and brown stuff have to
mix & mingle to create nutrient
rich 'black gold,' so too do
we depend on
​each other.

So here
we are! It's the
50th Anniversary of Earth
Week, we are entering our sixth
week at home as we #flattenthecurve,
and it's time to share the love  & powerful magic
in each of these Compost Compositions.
Please visit my online Store or the
Vermont Center for
Photography.

I am
excited to
donate a portion
of proceeds from all Compost
Compositions sold during April 2020 to
COVID-19 Relief and, in celebration of the 50th
anniversary of Earth Day to ecochallenge.org.
We are in this together. If you are able
and inspired, please share
​the magic!

My gratitude
for this pile is deep.
Year after year it transforms
waste into nourishment for gardens
while at the same time inviting me to be
patient, get my hands dirty, and
remember that sometimes
life is really messy.

For me,
It's so much
more than textures
& subtle muted
tones.

It all
seemed 
so funny, how
I packaged them up,
but am waiting two weeks
to send them, for fear I might have
The Virus and might unknowingly mail it to
my sister whose husband has cancer and definitely
can't get this thing. So once again my compost
and all its associated projects invite
patience and humor. This
really is all quite
messy...

...and
beautiful,
because even
though we may be
thousands of miles apart,
we are together, exploring these
funny pieces of paper and
wondering what will
emerge from it
all.

...because 
it is March and
even though it seems dark
and gray and lonely to be stuck at
home, I know that the bulbs will emerge
from the frozen earth & spring will
come, because that's nature's
routine, and I'm good
with that.

PS
It is still
Women's History
Month...so let's support 
each other as much as we can
from afar. For inspiration of all kinds,
check out my friend Jennifer Jewell's Podcast
Cultivating Place - - The January episodes were all
about the therapeutic and spiritual capacities
of our gardens - in all their forms. We
need that now, more
​than ever. 

I love
working with
these strange pieces of
paper. When we have coffee at our
house, which is rare, we use a French Press. So
for me, these are an entirely new material which have, until
recently, just been part of my decomposing compost.
Now, though, with my sister's inspiration,
they have become yet another
invitation to explore
our material
world.

When I 
take them out
of the 5-gallon compost
collection bucket and move them
into the rinsing tub in our sink, these dirty
filters become precious materials
filled with creative
​potential.

All I
want to do
is move in closer to
explore these materials about
which I know so little. Once again, my
compost invites me to consider more than meets
the eye. While I have an idea of what my sister, Sarah C.
Swett, might create out of these filters, their
back story, like so many back
stories, remains a
​mystery.

Clearly,
this narrative
is unfolding as I write,
Sarah's imagination leading her
and my investigations taking me where
they go. But here we are, unfiltered, making it
up along the way. It does seem, however, that ours is
a circular narrative, filled with the ebbs
and flows of our lives and
curiosities.

And it's more
than the reality that 
I hate waste. In fact, I found
these on a day when I had been
ruthlessly sending all manner of things
to the landfill. At that moment, though, I had
a feeling there was a story embodied
in those bags that I would
​explore someday.

So here I am,
wondering about my
daughter's old socks and my
mother-in-law's fabric remnants.
The thing that's bothering me most is
that they can not be composted because these
colorful textiles are made from or contain synthetic fibers.
As I have recently learned in Rebecca Burgess's
Fibershed, there is more to our clothes
than I ever knew.

It turns out
that I am asking
the same questions of
these scraps that I ask of my
compost. Where you do come from,
how did you grow or how were you made?
Who was responsible for your emergence and
ultimate journey to me? Were those responsible for
you (fabric or fruit) paid a living wage? Was 
the soil from which you grew (veggie or
fiber) rich with compost, or was
it polluted? The Fibershed,
it turns out, is like a 
foodshed or a
watershed.

Walking sustains
​energy, as does witnessing
creative Little Free
​Libraries...

So when not
exploring and playing
with extended family, I made
time to read and sew, taking a media
holiday of sorts. I hadn't planned it this way,
but it turns out I read about another inspiring and game-
changing woman, Rebecca Burgess and the Fibershed Project.
The subtitle "Growing a Movement of Farmers,
Fashion Activists, and Makers for a 
New Textile Economy" 
connects to, well,
​everything.