Looking back at our home on a May afternoon
On the other side River Hill the Aspen leaves are opening, crowing the silver branches with a pale green haze, soft as smoke wafting around up the hillside, a promise of what will be rising up the mountain, day by day, as the season inches its way higher.
Baby geese are all already out swimming with their proud parents around Road Canyon reservoir where the ice fishermen were what seems like just yesterday.
And a single bald eagle soars down from the rocky, austere face of Bristol Head mountain to the ponds in the flats where the elk winter.
All this and more on a quick trip to the vet to pull the stitches from the well healed Malakitty, no longer looking much like a Frankenkitty.
Would I be less complete if I missed the changing of the seasons? Would I feel out of place if I failed to notice the swollen tips of the budding branches ready to burst forth with new life, new leaves?
I have moved plenty and long for solid grounding. That which comes with the seeing, feeling, understanding and being a part of the change of seasons. The completeness of the cycle each year. Is it the longing for acceptance, perhaps, the wish to be a part of the land? Or maybe the ability to blend in as unpretentious and natural as the deer in the woods? It has become an important part of me, to allow myself to be and change with the seasons, with the land, and yet, I can not get too comfortable. The impermanence of life on the mountain looms large all around me.
At what point do we really know the land? The mountain can look and feel the same when we remain looking from the same perspective, the same point of view, and same time every day, every year.
I could stay home and look at the same view from my front porch day after day and the mountain would seem rather simple and similar. But when we start to go out into her, to explore every hill and draw, trail and off trail route we can find, our eyes open up. We begin to see how little we really know. How small and insignificant we really are. How unimportant our need for importance really is.
To be out there, to feel the seasons change, be a part of the transformations. There allows the completeness of the circle. There are great mysteries, but no voids. Empty space is replaced with intimacy, understanding, acceptance.
Suddenly it is warm again. I do evening chores in shirt sleeves. I consider changing my jeans for shorts mid day (but I don’t go there more than a time or two every summer, as my bright white legs will attest).
The mountain has turned temperate and easy. She spills forth with abundance and life, with energy and color, with open rivers and trails.