The Hopscotch House, Louisville, KY. Photo: Kentucky Foundation for Women.
I never can remember whether the 6 weeks of continuing winter depend on the groundhog seeing her shadow or not, but Friday in snow and rain it seemed likely he wouldn’t see it and whether that is good news or bad I really didn’t know. We need the moisture here in the desert southwest and I’ve learned, slowly, not to complain about muddy boots, worn parkas and so forth.
So today I’m celebrating something that happened several decades ago when Hopscotch House, belonging to the Kentucky Foundation for Women in Louisville, was just getting started and we needed an executive director.
We were meeting in the beautiful big living room there with glass doors opening onto a patio and the fields and woods behind. I don’t know what we were discussing, possibly our need for a director and the kind of programs we were going to set up for women: short or long stays for artists to use the five bedrooms and the studios, cooking meals together and having the good times that we always seem able to generate.
As we were talking, a plump groundhog came up onto the patio and stood up against a glass door, peering in with curiosity.
What a blessing!
The greater blessing was finding my dear friend, Wren Smith, to direct the programs, take care of the house, and live in the little cottage next door.
Wren has exactly the skills we needed. (She’s now the director of volunteers at Bernheim Forest outside Louisville). She loves everything having to do with nature: groundhogs, weeds, herbs (her herb-drying shed still exists new to Hopscotch), birds, bugs, snakes, and she began at once to introduce women staying at Hopscotch to the trails through the woods and down to the triple waterfall. The weather never deterred her and the sometimes timid participants learned through her to love and respect every aspect of nature.
How I miss her! Now that the Kentucky Foundation for Women is no longer running programs at Hopscotch and it sits dreary and abandoned at the edge of Wolf Pen Mill Farm, I appreciate Wren even more.
And—she made me my first and my last roadkill pâté!
It was delicious.
The Wikipedia entry for Groundhog Day has it that only in one of about every seven years does the groundhog (Punxsutawney Phil of PA) not see its shadow. Thus, this year is in relatively rare company, a conclusion bolstered by its being a leap year—just one out of every four. I’ve pasted below an excerpt from the entry upon which I make my case:
“In 2024, during the 138th and most recent prognostication event, the groundhog did not see its shadow, calling for an early Spring.[4][52] This has only happened 20 times in the celebration’s recorded history ..”
Sallie, I always LOVED going to Hopscotch House for the monthly drumming, toning and chanting sessions that Phyllis Free and I would do together. There were also monthly programs put on by local women artists and will always be vibrant memories to me! Several times I took one or more of my 3 daughters with me and they also have fantastic memories of those magical evenings, dancing in Wren’s Moon Garden and chanting outside in the full moonlight!
Those were the days! Would love to recreate that for the next generation!
Sallie,
I’m so disappointed that the KY Foundation for Women has shut down Hopscotch House. I long for its return. In fact, it seems the foundation no longer gives out grants either. What are they doing with your enormously generous donation to the Foundation? I understand the fund has grown even larger, but where is the programming? It feels like a terrible travesty, though I realize that you no longer have control, which is even worse.
Wren Smith is a treasure. I hope hopscotch house finds another person to lead adventures, the woods of Harrods creek are amazing place to reflect upon the world.
Wren caring and creating
Fairies shadow dancing
Moon garden
Sun circles
Maypoles and more
Quilts made of women
Colorful alive on the side porch
Glassed in porch
Rituals and feasts
Gatherings to write and rest
Wolf Pen paws writing and reading poems
Sewing and singing
Drumming
Remembering
Crowning maidens mother’s and crones
A place to bring my children to walk.
The children would point to the hawks and owls flying overhead
then tell their friends
that these were not birds in the zoo but they were Sallie Bingham’s friends flying free and watching the land to say hello to her, the trees and flowers.
Thank you for those days Sallie and even now the sanctuary of the empty space.