Fruit on the vine: Welcome back to Moment Sketchers

Two weekends ago, José and I had the chance to return to one of our favorite places in Uruguay — a beautiful, colonial-style guesthouse called Cumara.

You might remember reading about our first visit to Cumara last October, when we set off from Montevideo to explore an inland hill range known as the Sierras de Minas. Perhaps you might also remember just how captivated we were with our guesthouse and its thousand tiny enchanting details — with the central, enclosed courtyard and rows of bright green grapevines hanging overhead; with the prayer flags and painted signs everywhere reading Namaste and Stillness.

Cumara was the place that taught me to look for the beauty of simple things.

But our recent return to Cumara and its simple beauty had a different feel to it.

January was a somewhat strange month for me. Instead of feeling energized for the new year ahead, I felt a little foggy and unsure of my next steps. It didn’t have the feeling of a new beginning to it, and when I wrote about this here, I’m grateful that many of you reminded me of natural rhythms and seasons — how, if we look to nature, we find innate patterns of hibernation and letting the fields lay fallow. I so needed your reminder to leave room for rest and restoration.

Then the calendar turned to February, and as I looked out across the expanse of a new month, I had the idea to use that time for redesigning my website — something I’ve been wanting to do for nearly a year now. And I find it remarkable how a single idea or decision can suddenly unlock a fresh sense of energy and purpose in us. Within 24 hours, I’d written a completely new story for my About page, focusing on my lifelong love for storytelling and art, and when I shared it with José that night after he got home from work, I’ll always remember what he said next:

“February is going to be our January.”

And so it was that when we returned to Cumara two weeks ago, we brought more than just our Kindles and sketchbooks, like we did on our first visit. We also came laden with cameras and lenses and a tripod that José’s sister had kindly lent to us — my friends, it was production time!

The new theme I’d bought for my website included the option of having a video header on the homepage, and José and I couldn’t imagine a better backdrop for the video than Cumara’s vintage charm. And even all those wooden repurposed sewing tables we’d spent hours at in October — reading and talking and lingering over cups of tea — were put to use as we took many of the new header photos and background shots you’ll find around the site.

Now, after nearly two weeks of sitting motionless at my desk and hardly leaving my laptop’s side, it’s a tremendous thrill to welcome you back to the new-and-improved Moment Sketchers today.

There’s so much I’m excited to share with you — not only the new theme and design, but also some new pages and structure. I created a new About page, a collection of selected stories from the past ten years — this idea was entirely José’s, and we’ve since come to think of it as a digital anthology — and a special page called New Here?, for anyone stopping by the site for the first time.

But what I am perhaps most grateful for is how the new design is going to help me tell better illustrated stories. This theme uses something called the Visual Composer, where each element (text, photo, header, etc.) is like a different building block, so there are lots more possibilities for how you can actually build a post, weaving words, photos, and art all together. And the more I learned about this new theme and what I could do with it, the more I began to think of old journeys and sketches I want to resurrect and share here with you — it was as though being able to tell visual stories in a more compelling way suddenly inspired me to think of new stories I want to tell.

I’ve already got a running list of ideas in my notebook — from places like Ecuador and Guernsey, Burma and India — and I can’t wait to share them with you in the coming weeks and months.

Before I leave you to take a look around the new site, there’s one final moment from Cumara I want to share with you today.

When José and I arrived two weeks ago, on a warm Saturday afternoon, we were delighted to find Cumara just as we remembered it. We immediately spotted its blue colonial façade as we entered the town; its many stained glass windows still glowed with color and light; and, most importantly, the prayer flags and painted signs were still on display in the small room off its courtyard.

But there was one noticeable difference I caught almost immediately — the grapevines were in full and glorious bloom. There had been no sign of the grapes in October; only the bright verdant leaves I loved photographing. And so to return a mere three months later and find such a transformation had occurred, felt more than a little telling. Everywhere I looked, there were bunches of russet and green-colored grapes cascading from the vines, as though they had been there all along.

Even the shadows had been transformed. When I compare photos of the courtyard from our two trips to Cumara, I’m amazed at how much more dappled the sunlight is on the courtyard’s stone floor in February — what with there being such a greater bounty for the light to pass through.

And so that’s the latest lesson I’ve carried home with me from Cumara: 

There will always be seasons to rest and seasons to grow in life…

And I think all we can do in those murky, in-between moments is trust that in time, the new fruit will come.