Constellations No. 14

Moments with Trees

Hello and Welcome to Constellations 14—

Since I last wrote here, I have been looking at and thinking about trees. Trees hold my attention more distinctly in winter than in any other season, after the deciduous ones have shaken their last leaves to the ground. Each limb is revealed, all naked branches and bark.

At home I live amongst a forest of towering old oaks, poplars, hemlocks and cedars, as well as a proliferation of thin-trunked striped maples. This time of year, I like to study their curving shapes and twisting columns; they lend perspective to the other elements outside my windows. One tree’s knobby branch touches the slender reaching arm of another; mossy vertical trunks frame a slice of sky.

I marvel at the great, mysterious beasts as they lean resolutely into hail, snow, and gale force winds, their tallest limbs swaying in fierce gusts. I imagine their roots sprawling wild and entangled in the sandy soil under the foundation of our house, cradling us and all of our strange human activity above them. Sometimes I wonder if they might be equally aware of us as we are of them. Do they sense us scurrying around below their canopy, collecting their fallen foliage in neat piles, or meandering among them on walks as the seasons change?

Lately, I have felt hyper aware of how personal and collective grief are shoved closely alongside the annual preparations for year-end festivities, and the complexity of looking back and looking forward. In these moments, my arboreal neighbors seem all the more compelling. While they sleep through the dark season, trees wisely circulate their stored resources while they wait for the light to return. There is something so personal, so unambiguous in the way they survive.

I recognize something familiar in their bareness. I have known myself in my most exposed state, when dormancy was key to survival, too.

As Earth starts its turn back toward the sun, trees remind me to be patient, to have faith in my body’s resilience and my mind’s capacity for growth. I see their lanky silhouettes, stark against the inky December sky: an embodiment of promise.

NEWS

2026 Farm Club Calendars for Leelanau Conservancy

I am sending out a huge thank you to everyone who purchased a 2026 Farm Club calendar benefitting Leelanau Conservancy’s Farmland Protection programs. This year’s calendar sales will allow us to make our largest donation since I started collaborating with Farm Club on the annual project in 2021. Our cumulative donations over the past five years have now surpassed $20,000!

Making the paintings for this calendar each year is a joy and privilege. It has become one of my favorite excuses for looking closely and appreciating the remarkable parts of every season.

Reminder: if you ordered a 2026 calendar, it is available for pickup. Farm Club still has (a few) calendars available for purchase in the market. Preorders for 2027 calendars will go live in October 2026.

BRIGHT LIGHTS

A short list of some of the most inspiring art, music, travel and reading from 2025

• Experiencing David Byrne perform at Detroit’s Fox Theater in October. It was sheer collective joy and hope in music and dance form.

  Read: Amanda Petrusich on David Byrne in November’s New Yorker

• Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Murals at Detroit Institute of Arts

• Many hours in, around and next to Lake Michigan

• Watching snow fall on a Rodin sculpture at Grand Rapids’ Meijer Gardens in November

• A snapshot of Lois Dodd’s work table from the new book Framing the Ephemeral, published in conjunction with a retrospective of the artist’s work at Kunstmuseum Den Haag this year.

• Watching my kids’ last swim of the season in October

• Visiting Lily Stockman’s mind expanding paintings at Charles Moffett.

  Read: Stockman’s interview in Vogue with Grace Edquist about what inspired the show.

• Meandering around the Met Museum with my just-turned teenager, and a special dinner at King. The women behind King also just published a cookbook that I can’t wait to check out.

  Read: The King Cookbook

• Zadie Smith’s essays, especially this incredible one on writing essays.

• E.B. White’s “Freedom,” first published in Harper’s in 1940 shortly after Germany invaded France. Strikingly relevant today, 85 years later.

• Jumping from cliffs into the Mediterranean Sea with best friends in July

• Taking the long uphill walk on the way to visit Foundation Carmignac serenaded by cicadas

IN MY KITCHEN LATELY

Big Birthdays

Between September and December, our family’s birthdays arrive in rapid succession. This year, our daughters turned ten and thirteen and my husband Craig and I found ourselves surreally cresting into a new phase of parenthood with two kids now in double digits. Milestones for all!

Much celebrating ensued, and with it many hours of cooking. There is no doubt that festivities require a fair amount of work and effort. But I never feel an ounce of regret celebrating the people I love most, or reflecting on time and where we are in it.

For Craig’s birthday, the kids and I attempted to recreate a famed chicken dish from San Francisco’s Zuni Café–one of our favorite places to eat when we lived in the city. We spent the better part of a day tending to a bird, then roasted it to crisp-skinned perfection and served it atop bread salad with currants and arugula.

When we finally got it on the table, we were unabashedly proud of ourselves. We ate by candlelight and felt a little closer to that special place all those years earlier, the people we were then, and all the mysteries that were waiting for us. We saved room for silky Pots de Crème.

Both recipes can be found in Judy Rodgers’ beautiful book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.

POEMS FOR THE MOMENT

Tree
By Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish
to let a young redwood
grow next to a house.

Even in this
one lifetime,
you will have to choose.

That great calm being,
this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.
Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

From: Jane Hirshfield, “Tree” from Given Sugar, Given Salt. Copyright © 2001 by Jane Hirshfield.

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The Loved Ones
By Wendell Berry

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.