I hope you will join me in a new space and place
My postings will continue here:
www.GinGetz.com

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.

The first of April is noted by the birthday of my son. Eighteen years ago on this day I was in downtown Chicago, living in the basement of my parents’ new town house.  They had just moved from New York.  I had just come up from Santa Fe where I had been working at the frame shop until my mid section deemed too big to belly up to the work bench.  I had been surrounded by a sea of men looking at the skinny thing that I was with the expanding stomach as if there was something alive in there besides my growing baby. Zero comprehension, but a few attempts at compassion.  I appreciated that, but it was not enough.  I was tired of being alone.  There, then, alone was lonely.  A month before birthing, I showed up at my parent’s brand new doorstep in a city where I had never been.

There I was in this old rusted black car with a big crack covering the windshield which made it hard to see when you were driving into the sun or headlights, and these brakes that worked in a way that required you to drive barefoot because every time you pushed down they would stick and you had to get your toes underneath to pull the petal back out.   The back seat was torn out to make room for my two dogs and everything I owned at the time, which although it was only what could fit in the little car, seemed like plenty, perhaps too much, as I drove pushed back so far away from the steering wheel, almost fifteen hundred miles in three days, pulling over in rest stops to climb on top of the platform of cardboard boxes and take a rest with my dogs, and all too often, quick stops for a quick relief from the growing pressure on my bladder.

The morning of the first of April.  The softest blanket of snow was settling on the tiny box of a yard outside the basement window.  I would look out there at the gentling world, lawn furniture covering in white, and forget I was in Chicago. It was one of the most peaceful sights I had seen or felt, though I imagine that may have been the hormones doing their part.  There I was, just standing, staring, watching the snowflakes fall.

The cable guy was getting my parents set up with that all important television connection in their new home.  I calmly walked into the room where my mother was and informing her that my water broke.  The cable guy was kneeling down working on some wires poking out of the wall.  He stood up fast when he heard me. You could tell he had been there before.  His eyes got huge, his mouth dropped open, and he left the job undone.  Said he’d be back another day.

So Forrest started his life in Chicago, born into my own arms and held tight from the moment of his very first breath upon my chest, lying there on a big bed in a birthing center with a midwife I had never met at the foot, and both my parents there beside me. Despite their having had four children, neither had witnessed a birth before.

After the midwife and family and visitors left, I lay on that bed that night, my baby and I, in such silence with a warm yellow light from the bedside table and the breathing of his little lungs against mine. For the first time I crossed the great rift between lonely and alone. 

I look at my mares when they birth their foals and see the softness in their half closed eyes, listen to the gentlest of nickering as they turn to nuzzle their newborn, and understand just how they feel, knowing everything in their life is right, everything has meaning, and that meaning is tied up into this one tiny helpless hungry bundle. 

Since then I have always loved snow on the first of April. Big fat fluffy flakes that cover the world as we know it, soften my view, and soothe my mind as sweet as any lullaby.

My life has never been the same, never been better, since that one snowy day.

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.

This morning she was there, austere and aloof, low to the west. Though an intimacy grew as I stood with my coffee in hand, sweet and creamy, sipping by the sliding glass door, staring over the backs of the horses silhouettes, the peaks of the bald mountains, and asked for nothing. There, alone, the two of us, she faced me.

Was she closer? Did she appear bigger? I can’t say I saw a difference. What I can say is that I looked a little longer than I usually do. And you know, the longer you look, the more you see. , More. Deeper. Details. Lines and curves and subtle shadows I never notice before. And something more.

The importance of that little bit of rock reflecting the sun back down at us. And to think when I was a child, man had not yet touched her. She was still only a myth.

Our moon has since become closer, more manageable, understandable, real and tangent. Funny, though, how the mystery has not disappeared. Like fire, our innate intrigue does not dissipate with a grasping of the facts. It only goes a bit deeper, more personal.

My moon.

This morning I watched my moon, diffused behind the high clouds, set behind my mountain. Did your moon do the same?

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.

Aspen buds forced on my kitchen window

The dormant season begins her end. Mountain awakes. I am reminded how wild our world is. Yesterday, the first squirrel. Then a skunk, left dead to a .22 in the chicken coop before the dog or playful colts could find it or we would find a dead chicken. This attracted a fox who climbed into the coop and chased off the chickens only to be tempted by the foul smelling carcass. And finally a pine martin. All this just yesterday.

I imagine it was the fox who took care of the stinky thing for us last night. This morning, the odor of ranch begins to clear.

On a walk this afternoon along a packed snowmobile trail. South hillsides trickle with the first melting, hidden under snow, exposed where rocks have opened to earth. An unfolding, unfurling of the season. A small secret we can find by sound. The drip drip drip we have not heard for months.

Around every tree bare dirt is rendered, relieved of its heavy load. And at the very top of one tree, a quick shiver of brilliant blue. A pair of bluebirds has returned.

The place where I live is just east of the Divide along the start of the Rio Grande. A somewhat protected valley in the high mountains. A land feral, fierce, cold and stoic. Elevation: almost ten thousand feet. Population: three year round. Myself, my husband, our son. We’re not counting, of course, the assorted pets and livestock, and wild game that outnumber us a hundred to one.

The place where I live is two different worlds. That of the in season, and that of the out. I survive the in and savor the out, though numbers will tell you few feel the same. No one has lived here before, and once we leave, perhaps no one will live here again.

This place is surrounded by high peaks reaching well over thirteen thousand feet, enwrapping us in rugged arms. In winter, our nearest neighbor is miles and miles away. The nearest possibly plowed road, six and a half miles. Nearest paved road, eighteen miles. Nearest small town, thirty eight miles away. No phone, no on-grid power, no TV or traffic. I head to town but once a month, a two day ordeal involving snowmobiles, shoveling out the truck, busting through snow banks, and finally reaching the pavement that in itself looks like the end of the road to nowhere to some.

For half the year, we are snowed in. Our long cold winter turns this into a place of silence, solitude, untamed and unprocessed beauty, cold temperatures and the color white. Isolation and confinement are a part of our labored breath, though more comfortable for us than a forced or false conversation.

There is no wind before the sunrise. My world is completely still.

Far off on the distant shore in the obscurity of the timbered hillside across river an owl calls. In this blackness, this whiteness, this big wide open empty frozen world.

Who? Who does he call to there so lonely when it seems like so long since I have seen heard seen smelled life in the shadow of day?

I see her now, not all anew, but from a new perspective.

An intimate view. I slow down and look closer. Fine details reveal themselves only with time.

In the early morning after a clean snow the trees sparkled with a hoar frost in a way I’ve never seen. Fine silver branches of the Aspen, delicate and intricate tips with the new sun just up behind them, setting them all aglow. The mountain sprinkled with diamonds. For a moment I felt like a princess dancing through the soft snow beneath my heavy boots.

Yesterday in an Aspen Grove. Snowshoeing up a silent trail. The old ones are dying. The largest of the trees finished playing out their part let loose of their bark and reveal their orange blood below, the demise of the old growth. The Aspen are never too old. Short lived trees. I am glad in a way as I see the passing of this generation of so many scarred with names and initials and dates of tourists who felt they mattered so much to the mountain to leave such a lasting mark, who felt carving into a living tree was somehow not the same as scrawling on a subway with spray paint. I fail to see the difference. Both selfish marks some stranger passing by had the ego to leave behind.

It is hard now not to be distracted. First light from the rising sun has topped the mountain to the east and is illuminating the uppermost stark white peaks of Indian Ridge and Pole Mountain. A pinkish layer of light. Off set dramatically against the steel grey sky behind. Another storm pours in form the west. A little more snow to add to our load.

How can I overlook each detail now in this silence? I remain in tune while I can hear.

White on white. We are filled with whiteness. As white turns whiter still.

We make our way through trees bending with weight, turning the trail into a soft tunnel of branches and white and silence. Dormant trees come to life with their graceful slow swaying dance of the winter load.

And in the middle of it all coming down, enwrapping us and our world in another layer soft and light like goose feathers, a powerful roar shakes us. In an otherwise cavernous calm, the shock of thunder. Unheard of. Unexpected.

One and then another, rolling in the low clouds just overhead, knocked around by the mountain tops, undulating about where we cannot see only feel the powerful rumbling chanting call of the sky, the primordial song.

We stop to listen, to feel the resonant growl tremble to our bones, finding ourselves out in the open, exposed, unprotected from nothing more than whiteness, endless here and now, consuming and devouring our world and our view until we are but a part of the great wide white, nothing but air and snow.

A white out. We cannot see the trail before us, beneath our feet, can barely perceive the trees at the edge of the park, now only suggestive shadows, a truth behind a veil.

And the air is warm. We wonder if the snow will turn to rain as I smell the dampness on the back of my dog and feel it soaking into my clothes where I usually can brush it off. It clings and there it remains as I snowshoe onward with white shoulders and arms. And an inch or so collects on my wool cap.