Gratitude is a wilderness skill.

As one year ends, my wish for you today is…

When I wrote my end-of-year post one year ago on Medium, a poem called Wildnerness Skills, I had no idea how much I would need the guiding words within it. This past year has been my most challenging ever. I experienced this holiday season as more memory than memory-making. Over the past 14 months, there has been one passing after another in my life. More remembrances than celebrations.

Driving cross country yesterday from Appalachia to Denver, I revisited and updated a list I've tended for years – a record of the things I hold dear and am grateful for. Today, I share this list with you, for the roots of my curiosity and the questions that shape my writing and research were cultivated in a place called Breathitt County. I want you to see it through my eyes.

As we step into 2024, it is natural to think about endings and beginnings. This year, I find that, even though I hail from Breathitt County, gratitude is now my home.

As one year ends, my wish for you today is… to break shit that needs breaking, heal things that need healing, explore things that have been calling, learn things that bring knowledge, hold things closer that bring meaning, love things harder that bring joy, and, most importantly, stay open to the wonder within it all.

There is a comments button at the end of this substack, I’d love to hear from you, so I invite your thoughts and reflections. I have new Culture Futurist content coming again in January that will continue exploring the intersection of creativity, art, science, business, and the future of work. Hope you will join me!

Wishing everyone a wonder-full 2024!

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My firsts in life happened in Breathitt County

My first laughter and first steps.

My first love and first tears.

My first and best friend. She now rests at peace in this place.

My mommy and granny – the only unconditional love I have ever known – joined her this year.

Breathitt County is where my people have lived for nine generations.

Times have been and are tough. Resources have gone down and workloads have gone up. We have seen uncertainty rise.

I know that some of my people feel overwhelmed and exhausted. Many may even want to give up.

And, if you just look at the statistics about Breathitt County, it is easy to understand why.

But when I think about who I am, when I think about the place that shaped me, I don’t think about statistics.

I think of the place and the people for which I am grateful.

I’m grateful for hand-sewn quilts and the memory of Ma hand-churning butter on her front porch on Shoulderblade in a house that is no longer there.

I’m grateful for Moon Pies and the old wagon wheel tracks worn into the creek bed in front of the house where Granny was born over 100 years ago.

I’m grateful for the water from Granny and Papaw’s well... cold, delicious, refreshing, it tasted slightly of Sulphur and apples. I drank it directly from a dented silver tin ladle.

I’m grateful for the mountainside that rises behind the abandoned rock church at Highland. It’s where Mommy and Daddy, Uncle Gordon, and Aunt Connie were all married. At the top of the mountain behind the church, surrounded by a chain link fence, are gravestones. Beneath the weather-beaten, thread-worn, silk and plastic flowers rest strong-faced ancestors who gave me my watery eyes and my old lonesome fiddle heart. Every Memorial Day, a trek was made up the mountain where new flowers were placed by Granny and her sons. I wonder how flowers will find their way there now.

I’m grateful for my first clogging lesson on the stage of the old high school. It was torn down to build a new one in the 1980s. I’m grateful for my last dance with Scarlet.

The funny thing about first times and last dances, only one of them will ever be known to be what it is when they are happening.

I’m grateful for meandering Sunday drives over to Booneville and Natural Bridge in after church Papaw’s old pick-up truck.

I am grateful for faces and voices that bring cultural memories of who I am back to me, like Opha, Rhonda, Craig, and Shortcake

I am grateful for names like Willie, Lizzie, Della, Georgie, Irene, Marvin, Tony, Ted, Christine, and Jenny... as the list grows longer each year, those who remember that kid I once was get shorter.

I am grateful for shoes, warmth, and redbirds.

I am grateful for mountain music "unplugged" and made in the moment.

I’m grateful for “I thought I told you not to do that again” and “Bless your little heart”

I’m grateful for love as religion. These days religion often feels more and more like a weapon, though.

I am grateful for the yellowing plastic piggy bank in the shape of a church where pennies were dropped on Sunday mornings by us kids during collection time at Elkatawa Methodist.

I’m grateful for Puncheon Creek, where I could walk with a saltshaker to the garden, pick a tomato off the vine, and eat it with reckless juicy abandon on a summer day… birds and cicadas so loud it sounded dangerous and electric.

I’m grateful for shukky beans, green onions, and sweet cream coffee that Papaw would pour into his saucer for me to drink.

I'm grateful for Pa’s gold tooth and the ever-present smell of tobacco and peppermint on his clothes. I’m grateful for the smell of dirt and cantaloupe in the melon patch.

I am grateful for second chances in life, GPS, old photos, and handwriting I recognize as that of someone I love… for these things help me to find my way.

I am grateful for sitting with my Papaw on the old log bench in front of his and Granny's little country store tucked in a valley between mountains, where gasoline, kudzu, commodity cheese, white bread, bologna, and Granny's flowers would mix in the air.

I am grateful that I still can remember how greens smelled when Granny was cooking them on her autumn yellow Frigidaire stove. She would watch Papaw outside working in the field from the little window above the sink. She always made sure he had a water glass there ready to be filled when he came inside.

I am grateful that I come from a people with tender hearts.

I am grateful for poetry and the touch of a dandelion against my cheek just before blowing its feathered seeds into the wind.

I’m grateful for the feel and smell of cool grass reaching from the musty dirt as I lay my head back on the ground to watch the dandelion float away.

I am grateful for science and hope.

I am grateful for the quantum conundrum of being an artist… in the same way, an apple can’t eat an apple and a sunset can’t admire a sunset.

I am grateful for the taste of salt, of lemons and of those little slightly burnt parts on the edge of an apple pie crust that has just been pulled from the oven.

I am grateful for the little scar on my lower lip, for it connects me to someone very important from my teenage years who is no longer here.

I am grateful for creative tension, artistic breakthroughs, and poetic justice.

I am grateful for understanding that where attention goes, energy flows. Whatever you practice grows. 

I am grateful that Mommy and Granny taught me the reason we go to the garden is to look at the rose... not to curse the thorn.

I am grateful for the moments of freedom I find in learning to love the life that's here.

I am grateful for a husband that constantly reminds me that my heart is worthy of being able to love on my own terms, and worthy of being loved in return.

I am grateful for nature and for those who tend to its flourishing, for surely it is our own.

I am grateful for a kitchen full of mountain women with strong opinions, thick accents, dirty aprons, loud laughter, and love in their eyes. Since my earliest memory, I’ve never known another place where I felt more like I belonged.

I am grateful for waking up today, the ability to read, eyesight to see the sunrise, and clean water.

I am grateful for the auditory memory of how my friends and family's voices sound in my head when I think about them.

I am grateful for the moment I looked up from my mommy’s casket to see Bill and Sabrina standing there.

I am grateful for the times in life when I have succeeded -- and even more for those times in life when I failed – it is in those moments I discovered a character and integrity hidden within me.

I am grateful for the crawdads I used to catch in Puncheon Creek with my cousins.

I am grateful for the way Daddy's eyes look when he gets excited about something, and how Mommy sticks her hip out when she's trying to be cute. I am grateful for the grief I experienced after she drew her last breath. It is in my grief that I rediscovered these and other small things I’ve collected over a lifetime that hold me now in big ways.

I am grateful for pancakes, people who work for justice, nurses and caregivers who keep going even when they are tired, for the words and life of those whose leadership is moral and just.

I am grateful for Breathitt County teachers, for Sunday school lessons, and for the freedom to vote.

I am grateful for being witness to the tender way that memory causes a gravestone to hold warmth.

I am grateful for the ancient feeling of silence found in nature.

I am grateful for the grace I have experienced in always being able to get up one more time than the number of times I have fallen.

I am grateful for the sound of a train whistle, it brings me back to that room with the gold-tinted windows and stories about Jesus sitting on Mrs. Johnson's lap, watching the train go by in the little church by the railroad tracks.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be part of building communities where people are respected and valued.

I am grateful for the love I feel when I see my friends smile with their eyes.

For fresh peaches, old-time mountain songs, to love with fierceness, to laugh with my whole body, and to be awake in my journey as a son, friend, poet, husband, researcher, and mountain boy.

I am grateful for the smell of freshly snapped green beans on my grandmother's hands and the smell of lavender on her clothes.

I am grateful for a lifetime of family and friends who have taught me how to always build toward hope no matter what happens, and how to be angry without hurting others.

I am grateful for a growing sense of self that guides me forward even in those times I am afraid.

I am grateful for butterflies, worn-out rocking chairs, black skillet cornbread crumbled into buttermilk… innovative friends, creative leaders, and being from Appalachia.

I am grateful for being taught how to be kind and freely give that kindness to others.

I am grateful that I have learned that truth and self-respect are dependent on each other.

I am grateful for being an individual while understanding that we are all one spirit, connected and inseparable. 

I am grateful for the warmth of sunrise when it hits the mountain valley floor, the feel of raindrops on my face, and the memory of the times growing up when mommy made breakfast for dinner.

I am grateful for knowing how to cry, to laugh, and to let both come forth in the carry of love.

I am grateful for the stubbornness to still be fiercely hopeful and wonder-prone. I still believe that good brings good… while being wise enough to understand that it is not my timeline determining when the good will come.

I am grateful for the place called Breathitt County, Kentucky.

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Wishing everyone a wonder-full 2024! I have great new Culture Futurist content coming in January that will explore the intersection of creativity, art, science, business, and the future of work. Hope you will join me!