These waters…
First, for those who care about these waters…

I start today’s post with a promotion for a wonderful cause, a fun event, and something for which I am most proud of Forrest and a friend for taking the time to organize (and indeed it proves to be a lot of time for both!).

There are few opportunities to show you care, to give back to something from which we take so much. Our mighty Rio Grande!

Land owner, tourist, farmer and fisherman.
We hope you will all help out by showing you care, and showing your support.
The 2nd Annual High Country Hustle.
A 6.6K run/walk for water, and fundraiser for the Rio Grande Headwaters Restoration Project, this Sunday afternoon in Creede, Colorado.

Please see the web site at: http://www.highcountryhustle.webs.comto learn more, sign up, sign on, show your support, and donate.

A most sincere thank you to all those who truly do love these waters and have already signed up to participate and/or donate. It means a great deal to see your support of the river.

Thank you! From the proud mother of Forrest, who is co-organizing this event once again with Heather Messick. Because they both care about these waters.

This time last year.
Forrest co-organized his first High Country Hustle.
About 80 people crawled out of the woodwork on a sleepy Sunday morning to attend.
Bob left for Canada following the Hustle with our “new boss” to confirm the arrangements for something we were diving into head first – moving to Canada to manage a cattle ranch. Alas, the pool turned out to be empty…
The following night, old Alan dog peacefully passed away in the loving arms of Forrest and me, right there with us at his place between our chairs at the kitchen table.
Eight days before making the big move, the job fell through. I know, we’re better off without them, everyone has told us so, and it’s not too hard to see. But watching your plans and future fall apart instantly from under you, well, for lack of a more eloquent term, it sucks.
So there we were, suddenly homeless since we’d already rented out our house for the season and hired caretakers we never ended up needing in the way we originally planned. We kept our word, kept them on, and paid them for a position that was no longer, from a salary we no longer had, while we spent the summer seemingly stuck in the one room cabin on blocks, the only running water a leak in the roof, a nearby outhouse, and back to hauling water like I had done back in the day.
And to fill a huge void, I bring home the puppy from hell and our world really gets stirred up.
This guy is no Alan. I’ve never been so challenged with a dog. As I told Karen yesterday, right now, he’s the best trained, worst behaved dog I have ever had. (And yes, I do believe someday, hopefully not too far away, he’ll be the best dog, period.) In the meanwhile, life with Gunnar is like the lessons my stallion, Flying Crow, taught me in the horse world. The most difficult ones teach you the most. They’re the ones who teach you how little you knew before.

And this time next year? Where will that find us? What adventures will we have between now and then? I’m pretty certain there will be plenty.

Stay tuned.
Stick with me…
There’s more to me than this mountain I turn my back to bittersweet.

You know, few well thought out choices are ever really wrong. Some are just better than others. 

Only in retrospect do we judge.  And who needs to spend time looking back?  Today is already too short, too full, I’ll never get it all done in one day!  And tomorrow will be here soon enough.

Tomorrow. How do you figure out where to go, what to be, what to do when you grow up, and when will that finally happen?

Yes, it’s a big wide world.  I want to taste it all. How will I know if I don’t try? I wish I could take your word for it.  That would have saved much pain throughout the years. 

How many said I couldn’t live here?  Next month begins my tenth year.  I think I’ve proven I can.  And now I’m ready to try somewhere else.

Decisions are not always easy.  Bob has been here, working to not only keep the family ranch up and running, but to make it a better place, and has succeed. That’s got to feel good.  And at the same time, he’s ready.  Ready to try something else.  Finally free.  He struggles to see beyond.  He is catching glimpses.  Some days bright and shiny.  Other days blinding and quite exhausting.  I bet you know what that’s like.

Forrest has big decisions to make.  The future awaits his choosing. School.  College.  Career.  Opportunities.  Obligations.  Expectations.  And dreams.  Dreams yet to be.  Dreams still unborn.  Such wonderful options and opportunities!  How does one decide?  See which door opens widest and sucks you in…

Me, I have nothing to hold me back.  There are no roots.  The ground on which I stand is separate from me.  Still, a severed cord at birthing pours fourth blood.  Change is never without loss, remorse, pain.  When we look back.  Excitement, anticipation, and hope when we look ahead.  Which way do I look today?

I leap and rush to build the net as I fall if need be.  Weave together my own threads to carry me.

Shed my skin and step out unadorned. It’s only cold for a little while.

But now winter remains, and it feels cold and dark and I’m somehow longing for mud, and flowing waters, and sun on the back of my neck.

The sun will rise. I will walk the land. I will step outside and smell the purity of air and stare up at the growing light on the sturdy mountain and see the brightness and beauty again.

Like seasons that blow the leaves from the trees and winds that cover the tracks, the problems of the past will not remain. Really, how shallow are my concerns? I will ascend above the skeletons in the dirt, and climb the magnificent mountains that beckon me.

My moods fluctuate with the wind and change just as quickly.

I am a kite caught in a whirlwind I cannot control. I seek stability but find none. Not within. Only around me in the solid rocks of the high mountain, the spruce trees that have endured how many seasons of storms, and the steady flow of the river.

I am not certain like the seasons. I am quick to cry. Slow to heal. I love fiercely. And see passionately. And give all I can to those I love most.

I feel too much.

I am here to seek a balance in a land more passionate and intense than me. I give myself to the mountain, my tears to the river, my rage to the wind, and for a moment, I feel nothing but the ensuing silence for which I have hungered.

I’d like to look at this process as learning experience. So what have I learned so far? How much work my writing needs in order to be as good as I want it to be. And how much time things take when some of us want results yesterday. I wish I could say something like you can’t rush the aging of a fine wine, but I’m not going there.

Here’s how it worked. This time last year I was finishing the original manuscript. Later in the spring I sent it out to several literary agents. One was very encouraging, positive of my writing, but wanted me to refine the manuscript. After my family’s plans and thus a big part of my life fell apart later in the spring, I sunk and wasn’t able to see the trees for the forest, or something like that. I couldn’t get myself to edit my own work well. This winter I found an editor I decided to work with. A remarkable man with more knowledge and experience in writing and publishing than I will ever dream to amass. And for me, the most interesting and exciting part of working with him is that he speaks and writes with more grace and courtesy than I have read/heard in too long. A reminder of the choices we have in communication. Do we want to be curt and slang and casual? Or positive, inspiring, and polite? His words are always the latter. Always. And that makes hearing from him always something one looks forward to. Words like little blessings. That alone is an invaluable lesson.

He’s been helping me re-see the old work, and what I’m seeing is, it needs a lot more work than I was hoping for. I find myself re-writing about three quarters of what I already wrote. Like starting a new, but with the old stuff. Not quite as fun and exciting. Really, quite a challenge and a chore. But I am learning from it. I’m learning how much I do not know. And how much work my writing needs.

It’s growing. I’m growing. That’s a good thing. I should be done with this stage in the next month. And then… back to the editor in New York, and we’ll see what he says. Move on from there.

I’d like it to be done now. I’ve been ready to move on to the next book for some time now. Continuing to work this first one is like reliving the past, Groundhog Day, over and over and over again. It’s not a past I want to relive. No past is. I’d rather live today and look forward to tomorrow.

But ultimately what I want is good work. And I guess like that fine wine, it takes time. At least I don’t have to sit and watch the bottle age. I can be in the vat, mixing and stirring and making it happen. I’ve never been one to sit around and watch my life ripen. I don’t think it really ripens that way anyway, now does it?

I’m going to dive in. Sometimes it’s pretty messy. But look at it this way. At least it always gives me something to write about.

ice sculpture behind our house

The only solace is the sound of the river
A quarter mile away in the black of the frozen night air
Or the sun on my closed eye lids as I rest against the hillside to catch my breath.
This is my God.
Blind faith carries a strong need
To share what one cannot see.
This is what I see.
This is my church, my temple, my mosque.
Listen and hear these sermons and chanting in the winter storm and spring river.
I cannot be converted but am filled with trust.
I find my answers in the wind.

an aspen leaf from last season

I sit here on a hillside of exposed dirt, dried grasses, crushed wild rose stems, aspen leaves brown and frail. Perhaps the only place on the mountain with signs of life exposed. Dead and dormant, but a fragile promise. Not frozen or covered in white. I feel more alive by sitting here, smelling the distant odor of decay and thawed earth.

Here is where spring will come first, now so far away. Here is where I will come to find the first bit of green. A place of hope.

Now I sit here in silence and listen for the sound of my boys approaching to come find me. I hear nothing, and wait for the last of the sun to fall on me and the dried leaves I stare at with my head resting there on my knees.

There is no noise. No one will come.

It is my fault. I have chosen to be here. And even here I find it. Disappointment and isolation. An odd combination that makes one wonder what really does matter.

In a land more harsh than any other I have endured I try to find my place. I try to find solace. This is still a softer world than from where I came. Am I far enough away? What I run from, is it something within me?

Or am I here because I have nowhere else to be?

An Aspen leaf. That’s it. In one little place where there is no snow where today I sat and cried. With my head resting on my knees I saw this perfect beauty between my feet. The light just right. Perfect nature in our imperfect world.

sundown at pole creek, photo by Bob

Darkness of the early morning

Stillness as the rest of my small world remains asleep

Contented breathing and the whisper of the wood stove

A space and place for my mind to wander

It takes off and I dash to keep up

Wild horses running on the plains of my imagination

Behind them dust settles

Silence returns

And words pour onto paper

Light slowly comes to the sky as I lift my focus from the screen of the computer.  A pale silvery grey showing me no further than the mountains that contain and protect me.

What about the world beyond?  Somehow it no longer seems right to be stuck in a land where others cling to no more than memories and find that to be enough, yet my mind searches elsewhere for true meaning. Deeper waters beyond the shallow pool.

You will find it within, I have been told.  Limitless, bottomless; I fear I may drown.  Choppy waters that long for relief. We seek walls to contain us, boundaries to define us.

I find purpose in the connection between hands and land.

What more will bring us to the place where we belong?  It can be anywhere.  I can be here. Today.  Tomorrow perhaps somewhere new.

What lasting connection can there be without labor?  Shall we stake a claim and say we deserve and expect to be given and think it shall last?  Or do we build and toil and create, and grow with our creations?

majestic mountain

Quite contrary.

The garden will not be given a chance to grow this year. I won’t even try. Last year I watched it turn fallow. Is there a crime or sin in rich soil left uncultivated?

I think of the days of roses, pruning, tending, caring, transplanting, nurturing each branch like a child, each blossom like a humble reward. That was not here. Here is a world of white. I await the opening of the forced Paperwhites on the window sill above the sink with great anticipation for their simple splendor and heady fragrance.

Seed catalogues arrive. I am learning not to look.

Inside I am growing what I can.  The south windows are cluttered with lettuce, chard, kale, parsley, chives, basil and one cherry tomato plant that may never produce a single fruit for lack of light and warmth. We try though our results may be futile.

Though now hidden and nearly forgotten under a smooth white cover of snow, in spring we will pull the boards that defined the raised beds and spread out the mounds of years of collected horse manure, chicken coop cleanings, wood ash and compost. What hurts more?  Seeing something we built left barren?  Or turning it back to the land from which it came?

Can I define the place where I live it in terms of what it is not? This is not a land of deep roots or fertile growth.

These are my minor concerns, selfish and shallow they seem to me now, and it embarrasses me that the matters I share with you here on days like this are the worst that trouble me. Or the worst I can find words to describe. How petty they seem when I open my mind beyond the protective boundary of these formidable mountains surrounding.

How slight has life become (or has it always been) when we consider such to be a trauma?

And we worry about bad hair days and finding a parking place and will we have time to stop by the store and pick up that extra special something for dinner.

What lies beyond your mountain?

willows like flames before the mountain

Today I do not want to return to the seemingly shallow words of speaking of the weather, the mountain, my moods flying in the wind as permeable as snowflakes.  I am in a solid mood, a heavy worn oak table of a mood, rich as the soil now frozen and buried and firm as the rocks from which it came, soil that runs deep in my veins in places where perhaps you thought there would be blood.  

Will I ever be a part of a land as strongly as I long to be?  I think about roots.  I have shallow roots if any at all. And yet I long for the settling into the land.

To be a part of the land. The land as partner, solid as a long time lover, more than agrarian but rather an intimate connection like an old married couple… the unspoken understanding.  I go deeper still in the relationship, beyond farming to the connection with the wilds, the parts of the land we cannot touch, out of reach, private parts if you will. We keep our own identity but share the same house. Two strong individuals living side by side.

Here an uncaring mountain.  There, perhaps where you are, a completely cultivated landscape.  I need a bit of wild places and space.  More than a bit.  I need room to roam.  That is where I belong, not tightly squared into a lot of farmed ground under a patriarchal order of existence. Can you see me there? You know I need room to think, to choose, to do what is right based on my choices and thoughts, not because I am told or it is what I was taught.  I learn for myself.  Don’t you, too?

It is about home.

My quest for home.

For home, you know, is not always the place where you live.

How simple, you say?

Yes, but oh-so complicated at times too.

I was not born into, taught, or raised to be. I was left to discover. Is this a blessing or a curse? I find a bit of both. Every life is, or can be. It is what we make it. Rich, full, a fantastic journey. I was not happy remaining. And still I am not.

Funny to look for a place to commit to, to grow up with, to grow old with, now when I am already mid life. May I never stop learning and growing. And what have I learned today?

The world appears before me, calling, though I find myself here, and what can I do?  Nothing is never the answer.

a cold day in the back yard

Twenty five below zero.
The coldest we have had to suffer this season thus far. There will be more. There will be worse.
I sit now as close to the wood stove as I can and still I feel cold. A safe and shallow cold. What I feel outside is different. That is strong, powerful, frightening. At once demanding respect and fear. Best yet to avoid.
We cannot. There are horses to feed, chickens to care for, water and power to maintain, a puppy that gets stir crazy. We bundle up and bear the burden.
At first it is shocking to eyes, nose and cheeks, the only parts left unprotected. The breath is halted for an instant. We lean forward as if hunching over somehow helps, and continue on.
Over time, the extreme cold instills a slow soundless fear that penetrates body and mind, an open mouth braced to scream, yet the noise cannot come out, the listener does not hear. I wonder if we only understand when living through it. Once it is over, we seem to forget. Our memories fade the pain, like I once read is true of childbirth, to allow us to live through it again.
The horses kick up their heels in anger at each other, the dog, the elements. Their patience has been worn thin by the bitter cold. They seek relief and find little on days like this when the temperature struggles to reach above zero, and drops below with ease at the slightest suggestion of sun fading behind distant mountain. Long shadows of mid winter provide little relief mid day.
The boys carry the puppy home on snowmobile. I have never worried about frostbit paws before. I do now. We feed the horses double and hope it helps.
The cold penetrates. Sends us running indoors. The work can wait. The walk is shortened. The wind makes it even worse.
There is an odd sense of panic, trepidation of the elements that cold creates. Its power is fierce. Our abilities to overcome are few. Our preparations and actions must be precise. The cold is not forgiving.
I see our house, only a quarter mile away through the veil of blowing snow, horizontal beads that burn flesh, the little bits that are left exposed. The house looks so far away. My legs feel weary and the cold has ripped through the parka and seeped into the bottom of my pack boots and I wonder if I will make it home.
How silly is that thought?
Unjustified perhaps, and yet, try telling that to my frozen mind.
Is that the worst of our fears?
As we sit on the sofa together sipping tea, so civilized, while the wood stove cranks away, and look at the news from the past two days. How can all this happen in just two days?
Bombings, crashes, protests, violence, hunger and persecution.
Would we see it if we did not look? How sweet and at ease my mind could be if only I did not see?
And I realize again how safe we are in our frozen little world. How foolish are my fears. How narrow is my vision. And how little we do but listen to our brothers complain as I have heard myself do. I abhor the bleating of this country. I don’t want to hear it. But want to hear what we are doing about it. For someone else. For someone who needs it. Not for those of us who just want more.
My country is missing her soul at times. We are cold at heart. While the blood of our bleeding sisters pours warm and rich and red.

snowing in trees

My boys are sick.  All three of them. One husband, one son, one dog.  Winter colds.  We blame it on the mall.  (Yes, we really did go to a mall!)  

I cannot be too.  Someone must care for them.  You know how it is.

Caring, nurturing, giving.  Is this not our nature? An integral part of our selves as strong and healing and natural as the river that runs down the face of the mountain, feeding the hills and valleys?

As women, perhaps our greatest strength is found not in bulk and brawn but in that quiet caring. The gentle brook that meanders through the shade of the tall trees.  Quiet force of healing.

How much of ourselves do we have to give? The spring does not go dry, though in times of drought perhaps is reduced down to a trickle and may not feed its full course.  The rains come.  The source replenished.  And we have more to give again.

We bequeath a part of ourselves to our children (two and four legged), our partners, our careers, our land and animals, our passions and art and writing, nature and gardening…   A part of our selves is lost, and a new part is found in the feeding of our souls that giving allows.  Nurture the soil and seeds grow fruit.

For each we pour forth of ourselves, our bleeding enriches, nourishes us, our land and families and dreams, fulfills us, completes us. And thus we grow like the seeds we tend.

And suddenly we return to the beauty and magic of our world and our lives.

I had slipped into the state I find myself too often of fear of our fellow man, the mess of the world, and the muddle of my mind.  It is a place of darkness where the stars do not twinkle and the snow does not reflect the wonders of the universe in this subtle indigo glow of a moonless night.

It is as if my eyes are closed and I must make my way about the cabin in the inky air with arms extended groping about to find the things I think I need or need to avoid.

Perhaps you would turn on a light. And you may wonder why I do not.

Ah, for if I had a light to blind me I would not be able to see out in these early morning hours that belong only to me.

And I would have missed the shooting star.

But I saw it.  A bright blaze across the southern sky lasting no more than a second or two.  And that was time enough.  Time enough to fill me with hope, marvel, and the feeling that even in the darkest hours, there is magnificence to be found. 

(If we keep our eyes open and the lights off…)

on a snowshoe trail

I read yesterday of “the richness of solitude.” Have you considered it to be such?
The solace of solitude came early for me, found as a child in the secret rocks where I played behind the house or the corner of the basement where I hid in my own little world away from family, friends, neighbors and noise. And in my own mind there was plenty. Stories and songs and colors and lights that could keep me entertained for hours.
Solitude. Rich and full.
Solitude. Room to breathe. The place and space to let the resonant sigh from deep within the dragon’s belly roar. We settle and are satisfied in the vast expanse between lonely and alone. It is a peaceful sea on which we float, buoyant in the salty waters of silent waves. There we are both soothed and strengthened. Though we risk floating farther and farther from shore where our loved ones await us.
This does not make for a good wife. I lose myself at times intentionally. How can I expect my husband to keep hold when I swim away in my mind so often like the flash of the fish under the shady bridge in an autumn river? And yet he gives me the space, allows me to wash away in the currents. And sometimes I see him there too under the bridge like a sparkling flash.
My son is somehow used to this. He knows I am still able to love, and so many of my thoughts are for him. He too is at ease in silence, and in that voiceless place finds a deep wealth of inner resonance as words pour forth from him in silver streams like flowing water when he sits to write a poem.
Solitude. I think of it often. Society does not approve. An intentional outcast. Some of us are comfortable alone. Perhaps we should not be.
Perhaps I will never fit in, and have learned no longer to try. Pain is hard to wash away.
Am I too young to find such contentment and comfort alone?
I complicate my own self with nothing but words and thoughts.