With the frost kissing my upturned face, I took the last walk of the year in my favorite forest, listening to the trees whisper and creak in a language lost to us, watching the sunlight filter through the soft pine needles and cast its dancing shadows on the cold-packed earth, and as I stood gazing at the snow peaks that reflected across the sound, the strands of bare branches waved like a field of wheat and everything was cast in gold, my heart full of the beauty of nature, my spirit home in the sacred, quiet places of wood and water and wind. And so I reach the end of this experience and as the year is packed away in boxes, and the wheel begins to turn anew, I wish you all a Happy New Year.