It’s too easy to leave the door shut, to stay inside during cold winter days here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s too easy to stoke the woodstove with dried maple and linger near the window reading books, checking email, putzing on various projects, writing blogs on Gaia.com, doing work, cooking healthy dinners.

At other times in the year it’s easier to walk briskly up the road, wander in the woods or hike along a nearby river. But in November each year something inside me clicks shut and the door stays closed and the energy moves inwards towards warmth and inactivity.

But not this year! I swear it, not this year. (I know, I’ve said this before. Every year there’s a new vow to force myself off the couch and into the wild & woolly outdoors, but you know….there’s always some excuse to make the indoors more appealing. I’m sure many others have experienced similar failures of motivation.) But this year a new incentive surfaced.

And you’re looking at it! (What? you ask, there’s no pictures here. What am I looking at?) You are looking at the incentive in the form of a new blog. This blog will have the power to pull like a magnet. It will.

Starting next Sunday, as the Solstice arrives, I will begin writing a daily blog complete with daily photo about what’s-outside-the-front-door. The blog will insist upon it. It won’t allow bedtime to come without fulfillment.

We shall explore the outdoors here. Although the Mind says, “oh what’s interesting out there anyway?” and “what a silly project” and “no one wants to see pictures of snow and trees” and “It’s going to be way too cold!” we’re out to see if the Mind is wrong. We’re ready to investigate and see if there’s something interesting in these-here woods.

My goal is to stretch this beyond the Winter, into the flowering of Spring, the bursting greenery of Summer and the golden-red-orange Autumn. The goal is 365 days. 365 days of blogging! 365 days of opening the door and walking outside every single day. While this may not be feasible, let’s see how many days can be accomplished.

I’m not a seasoned photographer, so this part of the experiment requires some learning. Blog-readers (if any shall exist) must be patient.

So that’s the overview. That’s the promise. That’s the pledge. As background, I live in the middle of the woods with my husband, twelve miles from the nearest “little” town of 1,500. The entire county hosts 8,000 at last census. We’ve lived here thirty years, raising two young ‘uns who now live in major metropolitan cities of the United States. We own twenty three acres of cut-over forest, meaning the land once grew huge maples, oaks, spruce and hemlock which burned in a fire back in the 1920’s after lumber companies harvested most of the trees.

Until the Solstice, then. Please come back and read then if you like. Together we’ll discover….what’s outside the door.