When it started getting cold a few weeks back, I knew it was high time for me to order the cord wood that I should have ordered months ago. Now, I know full well that the folks who know what they’re doing (i.e. the REAL New Englanders) order their wood back in July. Heck, REAL, REAL New Englanders don’t order cord wood at all. No, they just throw a flannel shirt over their shorts and go out with their hatchets and chop down their own trees. But we Janey-come-lately’s, well, we call the wood guy. And if we’re really organized, we get to it sometime before the first blizzard of the season.

So a few weeks back, after the third snowfall, I finally got around to calling my wood guy. And it was during this conversation that I was reminded of some of the many reasons that I love living in the Pioneer Valley.

The conversation went an awful lot like this:

"Blue Sky," I said, cause that’s my wood guy’s name. (That’s one of the things I love about living in the valley.) "How are you?" I asked like I really meant it – cause I did. (And that’s one of the things I love about living in the valley.)

"Oh, not good, Eve. Not good at all," Blue Sky told me. "Mercury is in retrograde and things are really out of hand." And Blue Sky was dead serious. (And that’s got to be the thing I love the most about living in the valley!)

And right about now some of you are nodding your heads and remembering – not too fondly – when Mercury was in retrograde. And you may not get why I get such a kick out of this. But remember, I grew up in New York City. If a conversation had the word ‘Mercury" in it, it was about a car. If it had the word "retrograde" in it, you were at risk of getting a fat lip for dissing someone’s mother. And if you were talking to a guy by the name of "Blue Sky" well then they just figured you were one of the regular loonies and left you alone.

And here are some of the other reasons that I love living in the valley:

– Being invited to sweat with the grandmothers in a healing sweat lodge in Leverett. Getting stuck on an un-air-conditioned subway car with a bunch of old ladies in August was as close as I got to that in New York.

– Getting smudged with burning sage by a guy named "Moonlight." If a guy tried that on me in New York, I’d have called the cops.

– Going to the local food co-op to get milk from hormone-free cows, eggs from happy chickens and the scoop on the next anti-war demonstration!

Whether you are celebrating by smudging and sweating, chanting and welcoming back the light or by a more conventional celebration, you have my hopes for a peaceful and light-filled holiday season. May we all remember not to take more than we give. May we remember the true spirit of the season. And may we all remember why we love living in this valley.

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