About Katie:

Native Californian Katie Willmarth Green has been a feature writer, journalist and essayist since 1957. Her Gold Rush history, Like A Leaf Upon The Current Cast (2001), is now in its third edition and available at 43/90 North Earth in Spring Green. Katie’s newest book, an historical novel about a child of the California Gold Rush and pioneer period (for readers from 10 to 110 years) will be published by Pineneedle Press. She and her husband are perched on a ridge north of Spring Green.

www.sierragoldrushhistory.com

• Romancing The Wood (Dec 22 - Jan 19)
• The Chippewa people called this first lunar cycle of the New Year "Earth Renewal Moon." Fittingly, the snow goose was their totem in the animal world, and the birch tree their plant kingdom totem. Read more >>

• Hunger Moon (Jan 20-Feb 18)
• Hoarfrost on every twig, frond, and stalk turned to pink icing at sunrise the other morning. Though it was breathtakingly beautiful, it was also deadly, in its way. Venturing forth in a gingerly shuffle with birdseed and suet, I discovered just how perishingly cold it was after a clear night during which every last ounce of warmth from the earth's surface had flown to the stars. Read more >>

• Under The Big Winds Moon (Feb 19-Mar 20)
• What a melancholy time of year! Winter has dragged on far too long, cold, grey and dispiriting. My cranky lungs have been giving me fits and I'm frankly sick to death of the interminable, frigid three-dog nights. (Three cats, at this house, but no matter.) Worse, my brain seems to have joined the smaller furry mammals in a protracted state of somnolescence, curled in a ball, its paw wrapped around its nose. Read more >>

• Budding Trees, Rising Sap (March 21-April 19)
• If January was a time for hibernation, February brought dreary resignation, that is, until the full moon eclipse late in the month appeared like a modern day covenant with God. Writ large, voluptuous, and smoky-orange in the Western sky, this spectacular omen meant change is on the way, I declared to anyone who would listen, clinging to any old illusionary port in the storm. It was more than a little disappointing when snow and ice continued unabated for weeks. Read more >>

• The Moon of Returning Frogs (April 20-May 20)
• As a person who, by choice, nearly always rusticates in rural places, I strongly identify with the Chippewa designation for this lunar cycle we're moving into: Frogs Return Moon. It was not always the case with me. Frogs were not prominent furnishings of my childhood landscape, except in mid-summer along the creeks. Many moons later, I took up residence in northern Vermont for a precious interlude of years. The winters were as harsh and unforgiving as anything Wisconsin can visit upon you, even colder and snowier, if you can believe that on the heels of this record-breaking winter assault. Huddled close to the woodstove in blizzard-battered Vermont, I used to marvel at what I'd read about the earliest European settlers to northern New England -- that they lived in simple, three-sided shelters, with a flap of animal hide hanging across the fourth side to act as a door. How the heck did they keep from freezing to death?, I wondered as I hugged my down-covered ribcage and flexed my numb toes in fleece-lined, arctic-expedition-worthy, knee-high boots. Read more >>

• Moon, June, Mulch (May 21-June 20)
• Under June's Corn Planting Moon, our hearts are closely attuned to the plant kingdom, or so say the Chippewa sachems. You can lie on your belly in the garden and hear the plants grow. Honest. Grass, corn, garlic mustard, thistles, they leap from the soil and reach for the sky, uttering a faint rustle. Schwsssshhh, streeeeetchhhh. Lying prone in the greenery is an agreeable pastime, if you can avoid ticks, chiggers, spiders and all the other small denizens of the undergrowth who wish to refresh themselves at the fount of your vital bodily juices. Read more >>

• Strong Sun, Strong Medicine (June 21-July 22)
• For the Chippewa, this particular lunar cycle from mid-June to mid-July is called Strong Sun Moon, and its totemic animal is the flicker. The flicker people born under this moon are associated particularly with ornamentation, so I read, of all people most keen on decorating their dwelling places and immediate environs. Read more >>

• Dog Day Ruminations (July 23-Aug 22)
• Since last I sat down to compose a small mind-trinket, a monsoon overtook our neck of the woods -- yes, you noticed. Even if one occupies the high ground, it's not possible to go anywhere without being stunned by the rearrangements of land and lives in the river valley. I grew up singing the spiritual, "God give Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, but the fire next time!" What the heck happened? That biblical covenant turned out to be about as trustworthy as the peace treaties our government signed with the Indians. Read more >>

• Why Gertrude Bell Haunts My Dreams (Aug 23- Sept 22)
• We are into that period of the year when full moons are designated "harvest moons", for obvious reasons. While the romanticized image this conjures up is of pumpkins, cornstalks, and an overflowing cornucopia of disgustingly healthy foods, there are fraught harvests of all sorts happening all year long -- ones we don't intentionally sow and, if destiny is kind, may never need to reap. These are the kinds of harvests I think of when in a morbid frame of mind. Read more >>

• Because Grandma Said So, That's Why (Sept 23-Oct 23)
• There's a certain maple tree along the road to town that flames crimson each autumn long before the rest of the foliage starts to turn. Why it audaciously steals a march on the others is one of those tantalizing mysteries that may never be solved, at least not by me. As soon as that tree calls attention to itself, waving its leafy red flag, I perk up. The October moon (Ducks Fly Moon, in the Chippewa calendar) rose over the cradle at my birth and it invariably makes me think of Grandma. Why? Because, quite literally, the earliest memory I have is of my grandmother welcoming me into the world with open arms. Not my mother, oddly enough, but my grandmother. Read more >>

• Bare Ruined Choirs (Oct 24-Nov 21)
• The Chippewa, unerringly adept at using earthly phenomena to describe the seasonal wheeling of the planets, call this moon cycle "Freeze Up Moon." Brrr! Natives of the tropics might draw a mental blank at this description, but those of us who hang out above the 40th parallel get the picture. As you read this, I envision you swaddled in three or four layers of wool and down, clutching a hot mug of something. Your feet are most probably cold and you wince as you take a quick inventory of the woodshed, the propane tank, and your fuel budget. You may not be exhilarated by the bracing chill and the ravishing, Andrew Wyeth-like palette of subtle earth tones now inhabiting the landscape out your window, where posies nodded a short while ago. The winding up of autumn, followed inevitably by the onset of winter, may, in fact, make you feel old, very old. Read more >>

• Into the Dark (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
• For the duration of "Long Snows Moon", dark is the name of the game. Even the totem mineral of the Chippewa for this period, obsidian -- the gleaming volcanic glass coughed up from the bowels of the earth -- is black as the closet of your worst childhood fears. Nights seem centuries long, daylight visits only fleetingly under Long Snows Moon. Read more >>