Something Wonderful Happens (Finding Solace and Inspiration in the Natural World)

A charming and beautifully illustrated collection of stories that shine a light on the good things that often sit right under our noses, by a biodynamic farmer and beekeeper who has spent years in conversation with cows, honeybees, spiders, plants, and the land itself.

After enduring wildfires, a pandemic, a shoulder injury, a mold-contaminated farmhouse, the death of her mother, and the loss of two beloved pets, Jacqueline Freeman found herself doing something she’d never done before: lying awake at night worrying. She had spent years in close relationship with the animals, plants, and land of her biodynamic farm in southwestern Washington, but the accumulated weight of hard times had closed something off in her. She needed to find her way back.

So she began a process of deliberate remembering, harvesting the stories and experiences from over two decades of farm life — from the funny to the miraculous and illuminating. She wrote them all down. And something wonderful happened: Her heart got lighter.

Something Wonderful Happens collects more than four dozen of those stories across seven themed sections. Readers will meet a menagerie of characters including a standoffish cow who becomes a devoted friend after an encounter with a porcupine, a house spider who positions herself with geometric precision above the bathroom mirror each afternoon to visit, and a fish who sends a telepathic distress call to Freeman’s sleeping husband.

As charming as these anecdotes are on their own, Freeman uses them as a gateway to something deeper: the elemental spirits she believes inhabit the land, and the spiritually gratifying communion with the unseen world around a working farm. Readers who come for the animal stories may find themselves staying for something profound and captivating.

Written for anyone who is tired, anxious, or just in need of proof that the world is still full of good things, Something Wonderful Happens is an antidote to indifference, a primer for resetting one’s attention toward what is near and alive and worth noticing.