Looking west along the snowshoe trail
I avoided the computer this weekend. It called to me but I would not answer. Do inanimate objects get lonely too?
From time to time I took a peak. Smiles from far away. Messages that do mean so much to me. I thank all who took the time to write here or by e-mail.
Here, the weekend brought life to the mountain, oddly abuzz with humans like ants on cake left behind on a picnic, though somehow lacking the sense of shared effort that ants are known for, each one feeding himself. How odd to hear the occasional distant motor, see tracks following our tracks. The strangeness of the holidays on this mountain attracts folks escaping. Each one seeking their own solitude, avoiding the hope for society, perchance even just neighbors. They come here to get away from those things. They can, they need to. It is no more than a weekend away. I have memories of distant mountains and neighbors at the holidays stopping in for eggnog or cookies or a story and smile. We sat at the kitchen table far too long. Funny the things I have missed. For these few times in the winter, this mountain seems small, aloof, uncaring, and cold. And yet, the air blows unseasonably warm. I take comfort once again in no more than the air. I need little else. There is little else. The rest will blow away.
Warm air. Warm enough to melt snow. Icicles form on the eves of the cabins. The ice flows on the creeks continue to build. Down at the Rio Grande, Forrest straps on ice skates and tests the frozen waters for the very first time. It intrigues me, the things I failed to teach him. No TV, no town. No peers, no peer pressure. How odd his education has been. Book smart. Mountain wise. Yet I forget many things, often things I took for granted as a child, things I assumed all children did and knew.
His life has been different, here, where we were before, where we will be next. There are few who have had the freedom of the wilds as regular as a deep breath. Nature teaches things I can not. He will learn his own boundaries, I thought, and he has. I try to be the mother wolf. He knows he is safe with me. And away from that security, he has learned, slowly, how far from the den he can wander. On his own. We do not push him. We try not to pull him back. I am here, wherever home is. Well and wild in the mountains.
I skated often as a child. I remember how it feels. Fond reminiscences of elegance and ease, gliding on this hard, unforgiving surface I felt enough to know intimately. He moves with surprising ease. The recollections I have of little boys beginning to balance on blades on ice is not what I see before me as this tall young man stands straight and begins to move with the manner of a young horse testing his legs on pasture. I am pleased.
The proud parents, Bob and I stand and watch. We both remember how this feels. We both wish to be there, gliding, over the mighty river flowing free, barred only by its cold, hard surface.
What is hidden beneath this heavy sheet of ice? I cannot even hear the waters below. With my wide flat snow shoes, I walk down the river in the center of its smooth silvery pale blue course of frozen waters. Now and then, the surface is broken, revealing the sides of the rigid surface in places a foot thick, and the dark depths below. I approach cautiously and look into the abyss. I hear the rush of the river from these faults, powerful and mighty, made more so by the memories of being here to watch raging brown waters in the middle of a summer storm. Now, the flowing black waters seem somehow colder even that the surface. Uninviting. Ominous.
What is hidden beneath this flat expanse of ice? There are my answers that I seek.
The plan lies dormant for lack of direction. Yet here I watch and see the water knows where to flow. Why don’t I? I am as still as the frozen waters on which I stand, as the sun dips behind the mountain and cold air spreads like wildfire in the wind, chilling me in an instant as the line of shade now works its way up the mountain,. I watch the warm gold glow rise and diminish towards the top of the mountain as the world below fades to indigo.
It is time to go home.
Forrest learning to skate along the Rio Grande
Please note I will not be posting on a daily basis this year. For now, I will try for Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. And on the other days? Saturday, I’ll still post on the High Mountain Horse site. Sundays, I’ll often still share recipes – hopefully some of you do try and enjoy them – but at the least, it’s a good way for me to keep track of the ones I like best as I prepare to give my cookbooks away. And the remaining days? Time for me to get that book together…
Regardless of when I post, I hope you will continue to join me here again this year. Please know that as always, I love to hear from you, to keep in touch, and hope too that you will continue to keep in touch with each other as well.