Balance in Extremes

Some reflections on what the changes of seasons in the north might teach us about allowing for different phases in life plus notes on kale, applesauce, and granola.

Happy fall!

This is the third installment of my newsletter (if you missed my latest post about picking berries, writing about motherhood and domesticity, and my obsession with frangipane tarts [which has continued to blossom during apple season!], here it is). This time: some reflections on the extremity of the seasons in the north, the balance between a full life and a calm one, and some notes on kale, applesauce, and granola.

What I’m Thinking About: Balance in Extremes

The sun rises after 9am at the moment, so it’s dark for most of the morning. When my toddler wakes up, I put on the happy lamp and start using the word “morning” in every sentence to reiterate the concept that it is no longer night. She’s a snoozer; she’d rather linger in bed for an hour and nurse.

It often takes me by surprise in both fall and spring how precipitously we either gain or lose light. The rate of change in daylight slows down significantly as we approach both the winter and summer solstice. It is around the fall and spring equinox when we plummet toward an inundation of either light or dark.

This transition of course happens cyclically, but this year I’ve been mulling on it more as I try to make sense of what balance means in this phase of my life. Living in the north, we get balance in extremes: the whirlwind of a luminous summer, fishing, camping, gardening. This past summer contained so much joy – we attended several friends’ weddings, hosted visitors, took our daughter backpacking, picked gallons of berries, filled our freezer with sockeye salmon. But mid-summer, I started looking forward to a season with a calmer rhythm, which meant we’d had a good season, with enough good weather to make the most of all that light. I try to remind myself that I’m allowed to slow down in summer, too, but it’s hard. This past season, the one time each week when I consistently slowed down was during the yoga class I taught, which mostly took place on the floor. I guided students to place a sandbag over their eyes to block out all that light. We often stayed in a couple poses for fifteen or twenty minutes each, supported by bolsters and blankets. I often resented the obligation to teach when I drove over to the studio on a gorgeous summer night, but summer is actually when I needed that forced calm the most.

I imagined more floor yoga would be in store for me this fall, but this season hasn’t yet been as calm as I imagined; there were the season’s final weddings, the whirlwind of Jewish holidays, and the cascade of fall gatherings with friends to mend clothes, carve pumpkins, talk about books, break bread. There was the shift from camping in a tent to venturing out to public use cabins, the quest to find lingonberries near Anchorage (which often means hiking to the alpine to get them), and the need to harvest and process the carrots, kale, fennel, and beets from our feral garden – plus the need to make and can endless applesauce from apples we harvested from a friend’s yard.

But the slower season is coming; the snow line is creeping down the mountains. As the cold and dark arrive, and I still find myself longing for a slower season, I find myself asking: what is the balance between a full life and a calm life? Especially since having a child, part of me has been afraid to let things go: I want to keep camping and fishing and gardening. I want to keep celebrating friends’ weddings. I want to keep attending all the potlucks, toddler in tow, and hosting our own gatherings, too. But saying yes to all these things – which I hope will enrich my life, deepen my relationships, make my existence vivid and full – often means not having a calm, predictable routine as a family, which I crave, too.

As we talked about this question, a friend recently reminded me that it’s possible to have balance over the course of a lifetime, rather than in the course of a day, a week, or even a year. That kind of balance in extremes often calls to me; I’ve long been drawn to intensity. The intensity of this moment of my life is wrapped up in motherhood, in the intimate relationship I have with our young daughter. It’s bittersweet that that intimacy will shift over time. I look forward to sleeping more, to having more space for my own projects, to eating breakfast without her sitting in my lap, where she picks the wild blueberries out of my yogurt. Yet I also know that, as her need for me lessens, more distance will spread between us. That still feels far away, especially since I am in the final stretch of another pregnancy, which means starting that cycle of intensity and intimacy all over again, but I am trying to remember all the different phases I’ve had that now feel distant: the living-in-remote-cabins phase, the trekking-across-the-backcountry phase, the going-to-college phase. This mother-of-young-children phase, too, will shift. And other ones await.

I don’t yet know how I will find the balance between a calm life and a full one, between yielding to the intensity of motherhood while still keeping hold of other parts of myself, but I hope that recognizing the ephemerality of these different life phases will help me let a few more things go so that I can show up fully for this particular one. Seasons change; you can only catch sockeye during the run, can only pick blueberries after they’ve ripened and before they’ve turned soft. And I only get one shot at this phase with young children, so I don’t want to wring myself out trying to do everything else at the same time, too. I have an inkling that I won’t have much choice on the matter later this winter, anyway, as we cocoon with a newborn and a toddler and release expectations of doing much else for a little while.

That idea of balance accounted for over a longer stretch of time reminds me of these stark contrasts between winter and summer, dark and light. In the north, we get as much light as other places. We end up with our own version of balance, even if it comes in extremes. I want to use that image as inspiration to feel okay letting a little more go so I can be fully here, yielding to the extremity of this phase, lingering in bed with the toddler after putting the happy lamp on, knowing other seasons lie ahead.

What I’m Eating: Kale, applesauce, and granola (a very balanced diet)

It is also the season of harvest in Alaska! We are surrounded by abundance, and squeezing anything into our freezer requires quite a bit of tetris.

Kale: I am not a particularly ambitious gardener; I like to grow what grows easily. I am not like those Alaska green thumbs surrounded by hot peppers and fresh tomatoes and cherries. This means that every year, I grow a somewhat ridiculous quantity of kale. One of my favorite things about kale is that you can freeze it without blanching it. When we can’t to keep up with the harvest, I cut a bunch of leaves and stick them in gallon ziplocks. All winter, still frozen, they shatter easily when poured into soups and stews, or dumped in the cast iron to make sautéed greens with eggs.

Fresh, my favorite use of kale is a salad with a bright vinaigrette that is one part lemon juice, two parts olive oil, crushed garlic, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Toss with a hearty amount of shredded parmesan. It’s so simple and so delicious.

It’s inspired by the kale salad in Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden, a wonderful book I’ve been turning to these past couple of months as we harvest carrots and beets, as well.

Applesauce: Applesauce has long been my comfort food; I come from a long line of applesauce makers and eaters. It’s what I crave most when feeling sick, tired, sad, cold – under the weather in any possible way. Earlier this fall, a friend in Anchorage invited me and my toddler over to help pick her bountiful trees, so we’ve slowly made our way through those beautifully tart apples, one batch at a time. My parents have also gotten into the annual habit of sending a flat-rate box of apples from their yard in Connecticut, and it’s such a treat to bite into those New England apples, too.

Applesauce is so easy! I don’t bother to peel the apples. I cut them up, stick them in the instant pot with a little water and a hearty shake of cinnamon, and cook them on pressure for ten minutes. Then, I use the immersion blender to mix it. I never used to use these gadgets when making applesauce – and it’s also very easy to just make on the stove – but this method has allowed me to make batch after batch without much effort. I like to can it so that we have jars ready for those moments when applesauce is called for.

Granola: Our house, lately, often smells like cinnamon. Of course, there’s the applesauce, but I’ve also returned to an obsession with granola. Store-bought granola is often just… so bad. I’ve been on a quest to make a version that is crunchy and tasty, but packed with more nuts and less sugar than most recipes. Here’s the current version:

6 cups of nuts - I’ve been doing half almond and half pecan. I blitz them in the food processor so the toddler won’t choke on the almonds.

6 cups oats

1/2 cup coconut oil, melted

Cinnamon

Pinch of salt

Other add-ins: pepitas, sesame seeds - whatever is around

1/2 cup maple syrup

2 egg whites (makes those fun chunks)

I mix the dry ingredients together, then combine the maple sugar and melted coconut oil. I pour that over the oats and stir. I then whisk the egg whites and add them. I spread the mixture onto baking sheets lined with silicone (parchment paper works too)— trying not to have it be too thick — and bake in the oven on convection roast at 300 for about 40 minutes. I flip it halfway, then let it cool completely, which helps secure that crunch.

That’s all!

Thanks so much for reading! If you have any thoughts or questions – or just want to say hi! – you can reply directly to this email. I’d love to hear from you.

Diana