beautiful photo by Bob, up by Kite Lake

My favorite part of having a dairy cow is what some folks say is the worst. The daily ball and chain. The day in, day out, heading down the hill to bring her in, wash her up, and sit beside her as you lean over to milk, warming your hands even on the coldest of mornings.

Swish-swish-swish-swish…

The rhythm of our day. A metronome pulsing in the background, mindlessly pacing us to keep up, keep on.

Something I could count on. Like the sunrise. Or the ticking of the clock.

For my child, chores have provided unspoken lessons of caring, of self discipline and responsibility, of humility. I don’t need to remind Forrest that the chickens are waiting to be let out in the morning or closed up at night. He has left the coop unlocked and knows the guilt and sadness of the resulting loss resulting from any one of the assorted predators that call the mountain home. He has let them free range on a day that was too quiet to keep off the coyote.

Remorse from his losses, affections from his nurturing, and pride as he comes in at night with pockets full of eggs, has taught him many of life’s most important lessons. Lessons learned better from his actions than from my words.

Like learning to take the eggs out of your pockets before you sit down.

yesterday... a frozen waterfall

Our second year on this mountain I kept a pig and goat. The goat was an unintentional pet. I have never minded butchering animals I have named, but I could not butcher the goat that went on walks (off leash and right in line) with me and my dogs. There I’d be, walking down the dirt road behind the ranch at the end of summer with three dogs and a goat behind me. Funniest thing was, no one noticed. No one ever stopped and said, “Is that a goat?” or something such as that. Nope. People really don’t know how to see clearly when they are so far out of their element, which folks often are up here. The pig, however, did not come for walks. He was for meat. I learned that the same effect altitude has on us (burning calories faster than one can consume, or so it seems), it has on pigs. This pig could not fatten up. He was at best, a lean porker.

All summer we tried to fatten him. We’d have the tourists in the cabins feed their food scraps to him. Thought that was a much better bet than leaving scraps in our trash area… which we were sure would attract a bear.

However, that is exactly what the pig did. Attract a bear. Mind you, it was a little bear and he was really not interested in eating the pig so much as eating the pig’s slop. But our intention here was to fatten a pig, not a bear, so his presence, although cute and hardly menacing, was counterproductive.

And it was no wild bear. It was tagged. The tell tale sign that this guy had already been picked up somewhere else for one can only assume a similar crime. Here in Colorado, bears get a second chance. Probably even a third. It’s part of our tourist revenue. They are cute. The tourists love them. In Colorado, the pioneer, homesteader, or family trying to live off their land and make a simple living hold less value than tourist attractions. Here, I have learned, the bear comes first. I was told (I kid you not) that if such a problem continues, I might have to get rid of my pig. On my ranch. Well, I would have liked to take on that battle, wouldn’t that be fun, and fight it I would have, as you can imagine. But the problem did not continue. The bear was removed, my pig still did not get fat, and we ended the season with very lean pork. And that goat followed me and my dogs on walks all winter. We finally gave him away in the spring to go harass some other unsuspecting family. (And you thought the bear was a problem?)

I still love my bears. Just not tagged ones that are dropped off near my pig pen. I leave you alone; you leave me alone. Which reminds me of another story about another bear… But I’ll save that for another day.

first egg of the season

The $50 egg. Makes for an expensive breakfast.

Perhaps an exaggeration. Perhaps the first three will only pencil out to a total of $75. The cost of keeping the chickens through their third winter. They have not laid an egg since sometime in October, I suppose. They aren’t young hens any more. But they sure are hearty. A quality which also keeps them out of the stew pot.

It’s more than an egg. Think of all this simple object represents.

Life. The potential of new life. A chick in the making? Doubtful. Our rooster is not what you might call “efficient.” Our eggs are rarely fertile.

A homegrown breakfast with fresh bread. Now we’re talking.

And something more. Bigger. Stronger. The suggestion of spring. The reminder that already our days are longer. The light stronger. The shadows a little shorter.

Our world is white. And so it shall remain well into April. Within the next three months, the valley below us will be planting, Texas will be blooming, the coasts will be watching the greens come through their loamy soil. And eventually, we’ll finally be watching the snow recede. We’ll watch the snow gage reading up and down as the growing intensity of the sun plays with the burden and blessing of the heavy spring snow storms.

On one hand, spring is not close. We have months yet of winter in the high country. Of snow, of sub zero temperatures. Of snowshoes and snowmobiles and shoveling and bright white meadows and foothills.

On the other hand, it approaches. So soft and subtle and slow it comes. We see it only if we look. Of course I do. And am rewarded with new found warmth of the lingering sun. I have been through this before. I know what to look for. I look, and find. A simple reward of a swelling Aspen bud or patch of newly exposed soil on a south facing slope.

As simple as an egg. Simple pleasures. Subtle reminders.

Nothing stays the same.

Adventures design and construct us, are the defining form not of this place, but of what we make it to be, make ourselves to be, what we choose our lives to be. We build what we become through what we do.

Living here alone is an adventure.  What we do here, the three of us, at times adds to our richness, our relationship, our romance.  Living life loud, one person told me we did.  An odd but perhaps fitting description for a family as quiet as we are.

I considered this the other night as I held on tight to the pup, both of us balancing behind Bob as he navigated the snowmobile down the single track towards home.  No headlight. The old faithful snowmobile, the big station wagon of a sled, lost that long ago. We try to be home before dark. Rarely do we even come close.

There we were, three of us, bundled up heavy and tight against the single digit temperatures. One small shape in a very large mountain, moving slowly through miles and miles of snowy mountains, the only sign of human life ahead as we see the faint yellow glow of one light in the far distance, our cabin tucked into the side of the hill where we know Forrest is, alone, keeping the fire going, waiting.

Only the light of the moon, such a big moon, and a hand held flashlight to help stay on track in the trees. Not against the elements, I feel, but within them.  A part of the mountain.  Behind us was dragging a sled filled with four quarters of our young cow, slaughtered down at winter pasture where grass was still exposed, now being hauled back home to hang and process in our snowy haven.

Home, so far away from anyone else, seeming farther still under the pale cold light of the moon on the mountain. So small and safe and simple, the slight pinpoint light seen from two miles away, tucked in towards the blackness of the timber on the side of the mountain, among the shadows on the muted snow.

And above the sound of the snowmobile muffled by my balaclava and helmet, silence prevailed, something I could almost feel as I looked out to lightness of the high peaks that define our part of the mountains. Recognizable shapes now of an ashen glow at the top reaching to the black and sparkling sky, and down to dark silhouettes where the trees and shadows swathed about the base of the mountains, clear down to my home.

Funny to feel so safe, so far away.  With such capable hands of my husband, my son, even my dog to shape and share my life.  A completeness to a simple day, a simple life.  A day that begins and ends in quiet adventure.

It was almost romantic.

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?

the Rio Grande at the Ute Creek trailhead

Ultimately, I suppose it is the people who define a place more so than the elements we endure or the view we look at. It is because of our choices and circumstances that we are there. The land is not there for us; it is only what we make of it, or something we put up with.  And it will forget us when we are gone, if we are vain enough to think it cares that we are there. We hold onto the land, but the land does not hold us. Only in our heart, as so many like to say.

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.

looking up at Pole Mountain

The holiday rush begins.

Not quite here.  There are no stores, no restaurants, no coffee shops, no flashing lights luring you in to buy, buy, buy; no Santas on the corner ringing bells reminding you to share your wealth. There are no corners for that matter.  Here is a world of soft, curved unrefined lines. Nature, not neighbors, to compare with. No treats or temptations except for those we create with what we have. And as I see so often, we have so much.  Often, it seems, too much.  Will we ever learn to let go, curb our desire to feel we need more?

Bob brings home the mail from his weekly trip to town, stacks of shiny catalogues filled with suggestions to spend, spend, spend. We flip through to see if there is anything we can’t live without.  Nothing.  And into the fire they go.

The big forecasted storm once again turns into not much at all, just enough to freshen the mountain with a clean sheet of snow. Despite a road rough and unplowed, with a little help from chains or studded tires, a crew of 13 gathers in the early winter snow for this holiday.  It looks more like Christmas than Thanksgiving with the ski poles and down jackets, Elmer Fudd hats and heavy snow covered boots lined up at the door when we gather at the big cabin for meals. 

Yes, we do the traditional feast regardless of how untraditional I feel. Sister brings the turkey, brother the potatoes, brother’s wife the desserts, Mom the veggie sides.  I bake the rolls with the little nieces.  Traditional dinner rolls end up in shapes like cowboy boots, hearts, braids and dog biscuits.

Traditions. There are a few traditions the three of us keep.  Very few.  But somehow they seem important.  Perhaps they are a semblance of order in an otherwise chaotic world.  Knowing what you’ll have for dinner just a few nights out of the year somehow brings us security.  We grasp for order to stabilize the uncertainty. Traditions provide.

What would really happen if we let go, if we walked away from all tradition and started each day fresh and new without ties, obligations, and assumptions?  Would we feel lost or free?  Would the world open up, or in that lack of order and recognition would we find nothing but bedlam and never soothe our soul with the comfort of family, friends, and yes, even food?

We make elaborate designs for the day yet the children and dogs remind us – laughter, pleasure, and play – these are easy to come by. No plot or preparation needed.  Just wake up and start the day. Forgot the fancy feasts and the best laid plans, and just begin building the snow fort or sledding down the hill.  How sweet these simple pleasures!

And so we spend our Thanksgiving together, with so many here in our otherwise quiet wintery world. Perhaps it is not much more than a shallow tradition seeped in abundance. But I ask myself if I would want to do without, and I’d rather keep this one – if only that it means family, friends and a regularity and date on which to base the rest of the year.

The thermometer reached 18 below zero.  Another storm cleared out. The sky ends up mid day a ridiculous shade of blue that matches one of the little girl’s jackets – store bought and brand new, you would say most unnatural.  But this is real.  Blinding. We strap on our snowshoes while the turkey is in the oven and escape and for a few moments only perhaps, each of us are a part of the mountain, together.

Icicles on the roof at sundown

I feel a commitment to the land, and yet, I am preparing to walk away.  I ponder this paradox. I have been through this before. 

A visitor speaks of his fierce attachment to the land.  I am intrigued with this expression, and consider his meaning further. A fierce attachment to the land.  What I see is a fierce attachment to the past.  He remains attached to a memory.  An important place in his heart, I see, but as vague and distant as a dream only partly remembered.  When he is awake, he is not here. He has built his life and home elsewhere. 

For us, it is more, it is less, it is good, it is bad. It is home, where we struggle and strive to be, to make a living, to raise our family, to build our house, to live best we can off of and with the land. We have been committed. We have remained, labored and strained in the face of family conflict, colts dying, financial woes, and weather changing for the worst.  We have endeavored and dared to make our dream come true.

Now the dreams have changed.  Such is the nature of dreaming.  Such is the nature of life.  Things change.  How long do we remain committed?  When does it turn to attachment?  When is it time to let go?

In attachment, I see a holding on, a taking only. Attachment.  I think of a child clutching to his mother’s skirts, so afraid to let go. Afraid to grow up.  Attached.  Attachment is a needy state. We cling to what we barely hold.

Where is the sense of commitment? There is no partnership with a land from which we only take.  I seek a balance. I must give.  I must work on the land, with the land, of the land. I am willing to commit to the land, but not cling to attachments of a dying dream.

Commitment comes only with a struggle. We button up the coat and pull down the hat and brave the storm because this is our home, and home is worth standing up for. We don’t leave when the weather changes. This is all we have.  We are willing to fight for our home, our children, our lives, our land.

Commitment.  How do I define this?  I see a husband standing beside his wife as the storm approaches.  He reaches out and holds her hand and they know they will manage together.

And yet, here we are, packing our bags.  A bittersweet struggle.  A paradox.

Down in the willows before Ute Creek

Years ago, when I moved to the Pacific Northwest with my baby, I was the caretaker for a remote kids camp.  Closed for nine months of the year.  Only ours.  Ours to tend to, to toil for, to wake in the middle of the night and check on a crying lamb, to stay out in the rain through the last light to weed one more garden bed, groom one more horse, or repair one more broken pipe. And I loved it.  Learned one need not “own” something to make it theirs. We can commit without attachment. As long I was there, I treated the place as mine:  every animal, every pipe, every fruit tree, everything.  I felt appreciated. I felt at home.  I was committed.

Mind you, this was a seasonal camp for kids, and no where did I see the difference between the sense of attachment and the sense of commitment more clearly than I saw at camp.  The campers, or the adults who once had been campers, held an attachment so fiercely to the land, to the camp, to their past.  I saw men and women in their thirties, forties, fifties and older, for one week out of every year regress to their childhood reminiscences and once again “be” campers, holding on to a fierce attachment to memories of a land, a place, a way they once were.  And then they would leave, go home, return to their life for 51 weeks, return to their commitments and count the days until revisiting camp again.

On the other hand, were the locals, folks who were not amongst the elite of those who had been sent away to experience the world in which the locals lived. These were folks committed to the land.  Land on which they struggled to make a living, support their families, raise their children, grow gardens and animals and barns and dreams.  Land they  knew they could not get something out of, be it a safe and warm home, or a crop to sell, or a beautiful view, without putting into it, working for it, fighting for it. Committing to the land.  

And when the weather changed and the mountain threatened, there they remained long after the campers left.  They continued to toil, put up with the harsh winters. Droughts.  Calving complication.  Horse births. Crop failures. Floods, storms, wild fires, children who grow up, spouses that pass away.

Now, the neighbors – a small community of perhaps 200 people spread throughout the mountains – was built with the bricks of some remarkable human beings.  Women like I never had the opportunity to know.  My friends and neighbors were then in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. . Most that I remember were amazing women. Strong women.  Women who had homesteaded there. Built their homes. Worked their land. Raised and fed and taught their children there, found a way to scrape by a living, usually on the land. They knew how to work hard, were honest, sincere, caring.  It was not a place to “get away.”  It was a place to commit to, to work and reap the meager rewards. To hope and dream and struggle through hardships.  It was not their vacation.  It was their life.

They were surprisingly open to have someone from the younger generation show interest in the old time crafts, and were remarkably willing and able to share their knowledge with me.  I was lucky.  I wanted to learn it all, and they were willing to share. Many of these women were already widowed.  Since I left, three more have lost their husbands. Most still remain on their ranches.  All still work hard, for the land, or the community, or their families.  Full lives, filled with commitment to a rich life.

Looking north beyond Pole Mountain

I moved away.  I’ve grown.  I’m not the fresh young thing I was there and then.  Now I have a bit of the knowledge they so graciously shared with me. I can bake my own bread, milk a cow, make butter and cheese, grow my own corn.  Maybe now – or next time – it will be my turn to help share knowledge.  I’m not an old lady yet.  Maybe there is stage in between being at the receiving end, and being the teacher.  Maybe I just have to live it for while.

I consider this change, and see a natural pattern.  I try to see my place between attachment and commitment and make sense of it all as I turn to walk away.

There is commitment in community. Here, I think this is what I have missed.  There is no community in attachment. One can enjoy each others company as long as the weather holds.  But when the storm clouds roll in and the leaves blow from the trees, one can walk away, each in their own direction, and perhaps each hold that attachment in the back of ones heart until the next summer arrives.  Attahcment allows them the hold on and walk away at the same time.    

I seek a place to remain.

The irony of it all.

I am not attached.  I am too practical to hold onto the past. I am committed only as long as I am here. But I am not tied to nor bound by this land.  Between the family conflicts and the ensuing wave of discord; a land that has killed my horses and part of my dream… what a fool I would be to remain in a place and position providing for others dreams when mine is only washing away with the heavy rains of summer? Does one remain committed in a relationship so imperfect, or does one strive for more?

I have compromised enough. I feel myself dreaming again.

I long for commitment as I long for a true home. A sense of being, a sense of permanence in an impermanent life. I am no closer than I was when I moved here, and began these years of commitment to a land I am ready to walk away from.  Perhaps permanence, home, commitment, these things are found only within us. 

Where does this leave me?

Looking up at Simpson Mountain

Far away from the stores... but still not far enough.

The headlines read, Storm hits East Coast, and then, Snowstorm may curb weekend sales.  This is national news. Big time. A friend writes, “Perhaps the snow will keep people home instead of out shopping for more things they do not need.”

It did not.  The storm did not amount to much for many.  The following day, the same friend writes, “We only got an inch.  I’m heading out in the car and going shopping…”

I smile. This is Christmas.  But I wonder: when and why did it become the season of shopping?  We’d rather spend our precious time (not to mention our monies) out shopping for someone, rather than spending that same time with them.  Does this, perchance, seem a bit odd?

Ok, it’s Christmas.  This is America.  We shop. We consume.  Do we stop to look around, to listen, to slow down and perhaps give the gift of time… or are we too busy shopping?

Oh, I know it does feel wonderful to give, even if what I am giving is a store bought gift.  And in a convoluted way, of course, this still represents time:  time spent working in an office to earn monies to pay for the gas to get to the store to buy the gift… It is complicated.

Perhaps I’m not patriotic enough.  It is Christmas and I have not been in a store since… since…when was the last time I was in town?  Last month some time, I suppose?

Now I can’t claim innocence here. I am as guilty as the rest for falling into the trap of the Christmas spirit fashioned by shopping. Remember, one can shop on the internet… even out here (though the packages don’t get delivered out this far in the winter!).  And I did. There will be presents under the tree, though few and practical, at least this is what I strive for.

Time.  Time spent cleaning cabins, and fixing clogged drains, and hammering nails, and hanging curtains and saddling up a string of horses early in the morning to pay for the shiny packages stacked beneath the tree.

Time.  Time that could be spent talking just a little longer at the dinner table. Baking.  Taking walks in the softly falling snow together.  Reading by the fire.  What is more important?  I have to question myself in order to remind myself.  Time for the simple things goes against what is instilled in us.

It is easier here to find alternatives to the emptiness we fill with objects, with shopping.  I have tried to find these things everywhere.  Even in New York City. I could climb to the roof top or go by the West Piers and watch the sun set. Yes, I would. It is a miracle to watch, even there.  Anywhere. In Greece, I would sleep on the beach in order to see the same sun rising over one side of the island as the full moon would set simultaneously over the other side. A minute that seemed to last for hours. Or sit in the cold sands in the desert of New Mexico and await the rising of the big moon amongst the scorpions and rattlesnakes.

I have tried to find alternatives. They are everywhere though I have often forgotten to look, or became too busy, or the view obscured by obstacles I created, and could not get myself to clear in order that I may see the view before me.

It is free. It is everywhere.  It only takes time.

Time is money, we are told over and over again.  I say it myself regularly. Time is money?  Or is money time?  Another value put on the most valuable of substances. Time.

Money. How much our lives are held by its strings playing us like puppets. If we sever the cords, we fall.  It seems we can never fully live without.

I dreamed of being a female Jeremiah Johnson and leaving it all behind…

I still dream.

Perhaps I should dream even more.

Tiny white lights in the big spruce before our cabin.

I fear we are addicted to snow. Goose down as is pours from the sky.  Powder as it piles up on the mountain.  We love it.  I would guess this comes as no surprise to you.

Of course the snow has its inconveniences as well. One of them is our commute. Getting from the ranch to anywhere in winter is an ordeal.  But a minor inconvenience to me, as I’m most content staying home.  For anyone else coming and going… it is, well, an interesting challenge.

Bob was coming home last night.  Not having phone service here at the ranch, we communicate by text messages.  And not having cell phone service with witch to send or receive text messages for at perhaps 30 miles in either direction, we have come up with a system where by the person who went to town (usually not me) sends a final message at the last place the cell phone works, sending a message back home to let the home front (usually me) know they’re on their way.  That final stretch of the way home which may take less than hour in summer, takes quite a bit longer in winter.  We drive up the snow packed dirt road, pass through the locked gate about 11 miles below the ranch, drive another 5 miles,  park the pickup, transfer the groceries, mail, and other supplies (ranging from  Christmas presents to building materials) from the pickup to the tub sled, fire up the snowmobile, hook up the tub sled and securely cover the cargo, pile on a new layer of clothes and a helmet, then ride along what is known in the summer as The Reservoir Road, but in the winter is just a single track snowmobile trail on the bluff above the big frozen water.

Of course, it is usually night.  Darkness adds to the adventure, the mystery, the feeling of being out in the middle of no where… until you see “The Beacon.” You can see it over two miles away.  And why not?  The power is free thanks to our solar electric system. And there is no one within those two miles, or many miles beyond that, for that matter, to be bothered by the light. 

The Beacon, as we’ve called it for years, is a blue spruce tree outside our cabin to which we hand dug an electric line from the house, and on which we hung a few strings of little white Christmas lights.  With our limited solar electricity here, you’ll rarely see these lights on in the summer.  But in winter, ah, it is a different story.  Our power is abundant.  And free.  That sun does shine, and our system usually provides only for us!  So, I am generous with Christmas lights. And not only during Christmas, but all winter long.  I have them strung about in the house, on our tree, around the windows, over the dove cage… and outside, on the Beacon tree.

The tree has grown.  Where once I used a ladder to hang the lights, my bull (yes, a bovine bull) walked by that tree one day, wrestled with the branches for some unknown reason apparently fueled by testosterone, ripped off a bunch of branches with his big head, and tangled the lights in his horns.  Always wished those lights were shining.  If that wouldn’t have been the best photo ever…  Well, it was day light and those lights were off, but that spruce tree will never be the same.

Now the tree has grown. Minus a bare section down low where the bull pruned it. This year I hung the lights as Bob raised me in the bucket of the back hoe, far higher than the ladder could reach, and far higher than I would have liked, for that matter.

Our indoor Christmas tree, by the way, is a used, recycled fake tree. Really. Bet that’s not what you’d expect being as we’re surrounded by a forest of beautiful Blue spruce trees. We’ve never been keen on cutting down our own trees.  I’d rather plant them around us instead.  Last time we cut one down, Forrest was perhaps four years old. I explained that I was “thinning” (and I was!), but upset ensued which is really no surprise coming from a little one raised in the magic of the woods, thus that was the last time. We cut “Christmas branches” for a few years after that, which worked well enough – big boughs from giant fir trees.  And then, when my folks were tossing their “old” fake tree, we took it. Thus… a recycled, reused tree. Tacky?  Maybe.  Green?  Definitely! How “green” can you get?  Funniest part is, no one notices that it is fake.  No one.  Not until we tell, and sometimes, well, why bother? After all, it does look like a Blue Spruce… sort of… and it’s about the last thing one would expect to find up here…

Back to the drive home…

So, Bob is coming home last night.  Through text messaging, he makes arrangements with Forrest to meet at the parking area around 8 pm.  Forrest will help Bob haul in the supplies Bob brought back from town. Forrest heads out in the dark, no moon, just his headlight on the snow, around 7:30.  I get dinner cooking and keep the fire going. Around 8:30, I see the two single headlights, shining from over two miles away and approaching fast. One can travel this road much faster over the snow with snowmobile than over pot holes and ruts with a pickup. And traffic is rarely a concern.

Within minutes, I hear the roar of their motors settling right outside the kitchen door.  My boys are home. 

Bob gives me a kiss and hug, but he’s holding back.  There’s something wrong.  There’s something in there, inside his jacket.  He unzips.  Pulls it out. (Please trust me here, this is G-rated…)

A bouquet of flowers.  Tucked in his snowmobile suit to make it back with minimal damage from the frigid cold and wind and pounding that the ride home usually brings.  Instead, they arrive warm and well, if only slightly “pressed.”  

I think this is a first.  Six years of marriage.  Life is full of surprises.  Life is good…

The bouquet on the table, beside the blooming paperwhites and before the blossoms of the bougainvilla. A bountiful world we live in.

yesterday, along the road home, the snow is only beginning...

The snow has arrived!  Can you feel the bursting excitement?

Yesterday it began, slowly at first, soft and light, settling and easing us into the world of white. It gave us warning and did not catch us unprepared as it has some years, sneaking in after dark, under the radar of the weatherman’s predictions. We had been skeptical this time too, doubting this well anticipated blessing, disappointed time and again by the empty promise of storms passing us by.

Forrest reminds me, “Hope for the best; prepare for the worst.”  The snows that cover our world are both.

This one did not pass us by.  It came.  It is still here.  When it is light enough to see, I will be out with my camera.  We will get little else done today but play in the newness our snowy world. 

Mid afternoon, the snow is still light, there is still doubt, but we decided to play it safe and get the pickup out before it is too late.  Too late means getting snowed in, which in turn means either leaving the vehicle there until the road is pushed open by the first snowplow of the year, around the end of April next spring; or wrestle with chains and shovels and perhaps even a front end loader like we had to do one year when our skepticism tried to outwit the weather.

Bob and I drive out in two separate trucks.  Vision is limited in the heavy veil of snow.  I keep my eye on his tracks and try to follow.  I stop often to look, to take pictures, to stare in amazement at this incredible phenomenon and the intense beauty as if it were my very first time seeing it all.  Ah, but it is the first time I have seen it like this… 

I watch as the golden eagle flies above and before Bob’s slowly moving truck, guiding us through the storm.  We are a convoy, the three of us, the eagle leading the way, Bob’s truck crunching through the untouched powder, my old red Blazer following close behind.  The eagle turns off and up the steep cliffs. We continue onward.

We leave the pickup at the end of the section of road that is often kept plowed, and drive  home in the old red Blazer, 6 ½ miles back to our cabin, along the road above the reservoir as the snow seems to come down thicker with every mile.

We stop to watch a family of Big Horn Sheep stop to watch us.  They climb the steep cliffs above us effortlessly. Now they would rather be still and observer the odd phenomenon of a passing vehicle.  How hidden they are in the cliffs and falling snow.  I take pictures, and later show Forrest, “See this dot? That is a lamb…”

Above the flats at the delta of the reservoir, a coyote too stops to watch us.  His coat is thick and beautiful.  There are no hunters here now, and he seem to knows it.  He stands proud and easy, somehow understanding he is safe with us.  Although he is beautiful to see, I wish he would run.  There are few coyotes who winter up here with us.  Fewer still if  hunters come for the sport, still claiming that they are controlling a nuisance.  Up here, I wonder, a nuisance to whom?  A foolish claim to continue the sport. There is no one here besides us for miles and miles and miles. 

The road will be closed now.  This is the last of simple trips, enclosed in a warm vehicle, straight from the front door of our cabin to wherever we need to go. As we drive home, I watch patches of bunch grass still poking through the hillsides.  Golden rays fanning above the thin snow. They will be gone this morning, buried under this all encompassing world of white.

Solitude descends with the heavy mantle of snow.  There is a silence, a peace, a comfort I can not describe. It is mine, it is ours, it is different from anything else I have ever experienced before living here.  Snow.  It becomes a part of us, our world, everything we do, everything we see, a besieging blanket of white.

A red tail hawk takes flight out across the reservoir in the middle of the storm.