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.

willow buds in winter

This year there is little ice.  The snow seems to spread directly on the river and creeks.  I question its ability to hold even me each time I cross but see the moose tracks before me and find comfort and wavering confidence.

This winter has an easier mood. A few days colder than any others just to keep the averages in line.  Otherwise, a little less snow, a little less wind, a little less chill.  Mild. Comfortable. Comforting.  My home feels like a content place.

Easier.  Winter is not half over here. We have much work to be done.  Our lives our bustling with the well anticipated and needed change.  Electricity in the air, charging us and our lives with excitement.  The exhilaration of change, now put into action.  We can enjoy our memories, but need not grasp for what is no longer there.  I do not cling to what I no longer am. Where and who and what am I now?

Now. A perfect moon low in the sky, its cool silver light reflecting off the white ground, reflecting off the heavy clouds, the echo of this watery light.  Each molecule of air seems to embrace the radiance. Our world glows.

Now the clouds are swathed in a silver and gold luminosity and the moon slowly settles behind the mountain.

In a matter of moments, I will notice each time I look up a little more clarity in the sky, a little less magic.  Day prepares to rise.

How many mornings have I seen the moon slip behind the mountain from the warmth of my home while in the dark crystalline world outside my window temperatures are so far below zero, far below anything elsewhere I have lived through?  So close, so thin are these walls and windows, so often I step out into it all.  My home is not a bunker in which I remain hiding, but a haven I return to, rest in, allow to be a part of the wintery world while smoke rolls from the stove pipe, down the valley, dissipating into nothingness.

How much wood have we burned to allow us the warmth to remain here?

How unnatural at times it seems when I remember the fresh green of garlic poking through rich black moist soil in perfect lines and patterns of deliberate life, and tilling beds in preparation for carefree sprinkling of carrot seeds, a simple random toss that produced sweetest rewards. These were other times, other mountains.

on the Rio Grande at Brewster Park

Down by the river I flow while the water stands solid beneath me. Here, we are supported. Still we stand on the white expanse and listen.  A murmur of life below. Is that Thalia I hear beneath the surface, tempting me to join her?

It has been years since I had a dog who can keep up with me. I am enjoying the more distant explores this year. But have I ever had one who can sit and listen, enjoy the moment and ask for nothing for now, only to soak it all in as this one does? What a wonderful companion I have.

I think of how many come here to fish in summer, standing in free flowing waters with their waiters and hip boots, tossing lines to dance on the water’s facade.  And how little “use” one has here for winter.  Peace and solitude hold only so much value.  We tend to choose more excitement, brighter lights, and louder noises.  (Perchance warmer places, too.) Stimulation provided for us, not created by mind and nature. Our senses left dormant where here they can breathe.

The banks and adjacent hillsides are littered with droppings and tracks of the moose that were scattered here yesterday, high tailing it for the trees, as a low flying helicopter broke the peace, hovering over the frozen river, scanning the hillsides, back and forth. From our kitchen window we watched a bull moose run through the deep snow on the north side and seek shelter in the trees, only to be chased back out again twenty minutes later as the helicopter changed its course.

We call it wildlife harassment.  I believe they call it “counting elk.”  Funny they wouldn’t think of the simpler method – asking those of us who live where the elk do for answers. Perhaps our answers are considered too simple.  I have found local views hold less value than facts and figures filed behind a big desk.  Living with the wild life, one sees and understands more than many a report will tell you.  But learning to look… I’ve been thinking of that often lately.  Our inability to see.  We see what we expect to be there. We find more comfort in the safety of seeing what we expect to see, not what is really there. It is a blindness we all must battle.  Seeing is not always easy.

Ah, but who am I to say?  I don’t see the elaborate reports.  I don’t look. A blindness for which I am at fault.  I only see the magnificence around me, and look at the finest of details.  I hope to miss nothing.  It all holds value.

We return home among longer shadows along the packed snowmobile track, the half moon rising in the ridiculously blue sky over the tops of the trees peppering the hillside.

Have you ever heard the shivering aspen with their intricate silver tips trembling naked in the frigid winter wind?

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?

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.

There is great consolation found in following one’s own tracks home at night after a day in town.  No other vehicles had been on the road.  Only the foot tracks of wild beasts marked the snow.  One wonders how far from wild we have become riding in the warm cab of the pick-up, the three of us and the dog spread out between, huddled as if in the closed comfort of a den. Music playing softly and the deep sea glow of the dashboard softly enlightening the contented faces of my husband and son. In there, then, for just that moment, there was no place I would rather be.

Mind you, the heater broke on the way down, right after the automatic window stopped working which was right after opening it three inches or so.  I was certain I would not be warm until deep under the blankets, spooned in bed beside my hubby. I was certain driving home would be a somewhat painful experience.  The temperatures would be in the teens.  I was dressed up, not in down and wool and thick warm layers as I usually do at home.  I even had my hair brushed back neatly, and the wind from that open window wasn’t doing me any wonders on one of the few times all year I was trying to look groomed.

Alas, at the end of the day as we piled back into the truck to head home in the dark, the heat worked, the window closed, and I was glad to be warm.

I remember as a child riding in the front of the station wagon between my parents, my head on my mother’s lap, looking up at my father as the same blue glow illuminated his face focused straight ahead into the darkness he was driving through, and soft words shared between my mother and him while my brothers and sister and family dog all slept in the back and backity-back of that wood paneled sedan.

Then as now I remember no comfort greater than that close and quiet peace of driving home at night through the winter woods with loved ones beside me.  Isn’t that odd?

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

Icicles on a spruce tree looking up Ute Creek

So we were dumped on this week.  Long anticipated and well welcomed here.  Elsewhere in the Rocky Mountains is receiving winter’s wrath today. Storms are scattered throughout the country from west to east.  It is expected, in lesser or greater amounts, every year.  We have little excuse to be taken by surprise.  It is winter.

Closed roads, power outages, and communications down.  These things happen randomly, every year, across the country, at the whim of the weather.  We know few who have never experienced a part of it, in one way or another.  We know better than to think it couldn’t be me, it wouldn’t be here.

That pantry better be stocked.  Sure, maybe you don’t need 300 pounds of flour, but a few extra canned goods don’t take up that much space. Even when we’re down to the bare minimum, we can usually come up with something good to eat.  Get creative.  Think warm and comforting.  Think SOUP.

Here are three recipes for simple to make soups that can be made with canned goods and/or a few remaining items in the fridge.  Don’t hesitate to think of replacements. When we don’t have everything a recipe calls for, look around, substitute, and chances are, you won’t go wrong.

Carrot soup

Carrot Soup

In a heavy large sauce pan or medium soup pan, heat:

            2 tablespoons butter

            ¼ cup olive oil

Add:

            1 onion, diced

            1 ½ pounds (less is fine if that’s all you have) carrots, diced

Cook over medium/high heat for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Then add:

            4 ½ cups vegetable or chicken broth

            ½ teaspoon ground ginger

            ½ teaspoon garlic powder

            a dash of nutmeg

Continue to cook over medium/high heat until the vegetables soften, about 10 or 15 minutes.

Stir in:

            Fresh ground pepper

            1/3 cup sour cream

Puree the soup in batches in a blender (yes, even I pull out the power tools for this job when I have power – otherwise, use a ricer).  Salt to taste.

Oyster bisque

Oyster Bisque

In a medium soup pan, melt:

            2 tablespoons butter

Add, and sauté until soft:

            1 onion, diced

            1 stalk celery

Stir in:

            1 tablespoon flour

Then add:

            2 8-oz cans whole oysters, juice and all

            3 – 4 cups chicken broth

            1 teaspoon parsley

            ½ teaspoon thyme

Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Then add:

            2 cups heavy cream (or a can of evaporated milk)

            Fresh ground pepper

            A dash nutmeg

Heat back to a simmer, remove from heat, and puree soup in batches in blender or ricer.

Salt to taste.

Tomato basil soup

Tomato Basil Soup

In a medium soup pan, cook, stirring occasionally, until soft:

            ¼ cup olive oil

            1 onion, diced

            3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

Then add:

            2 cans diced tomatoes

            ½ cup white wine

            3 cups chicken broth

            ¼ cup fresh basil leaves, or 2 tablespoons dried, or a few dollops of pesto

            A pinch of cayenne pepper

            Fresh ground pepper

Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, and cook uncovered for 10 – 15 minutes.

Then add:

            2 cups ripped up sliced bread, or any stale leftover bread

Cook for another 5 minutes, then let sit for abut 15 minutes.

Stir in:

            ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese

Salt to taste.

Outside our cabin and the heavy snow begins to come down

In the darkness that is this early morning, I can not well see the snow that fell throughout the night. I shine my flashlight through the glass, and the small arc of light sweeps across nothing but white.  Before dinner last night, we stuck a ruler in the snow collecting from this new storm on the table out there on the deck.  By dinner, the ruler was covered.  By the time Forrest went to sleep, he took his tape measure with him to check the depth, and read over 20 inches.  Now, the table, which is our snow gage, is covered.  The snow from the deck has risen to reach it, engulf it, smooth out the surface of the deck so that chairs, rails, tables, all become a smooth white wave.

Still, the snow is falling. A mid winter storm.  So perfect in her abundance.  This is what we call a “good” storm.

The silence is incomparable.  The river, the trees, trails and life, all are covered with this heavy load.  The cabin is tucked in.  The air is filled with falling snow.  Sound, if any was made, is carried down by the millions of tumbling flakes and absorbed into the generous layer covering our world in white.

Last night we stood outside and listened to the snow falling.  The sound is like the softest of rain.  So delicate, we hold our breaths to hear. A dim and velvety pattering all around us as the snow lands, collects, the tiny facetted shapes holding together to form one smooth sparkling mass in the limited beam of the flashlight.  Coming down the snow shimmers, each flickering flake radiating like so many crystalline tears, and I wanted to cry for the beauty that overwhelmed us, surrounded and engulfed by so many fine crystals falling so gracefully from the black sky.

The excitement in our house was almost uncontained.  We anticipate the same sleepless excitement that Christmas brings.  Perhaps even more. Oh, how my boys love the snow.  I suppose like a surfer waiting for the big wave.  They were ready to burst. 

In the middle of the night, I woke to hear Alan pushing through his dog door.  I did not hear the ensuing click-click of his nails on the wooden floor.  I assumed he remained outside.  He still does not like that dog door.  I found my way downstairs, grabbed a flashlight and stepped just outside in hopes of finding him near. He was not there.  No sense in calling.  He can not hear. His tracks stayed close to the cabin, a narrow trench plowed through three feet of snow, then turning the corner and disappearing from sight.  I slip on a bathrobe and tall boots and head out to find him. There are few places he can go. He can follow the trench to a clearing beneath a huge Blue Spruce perhaps 12 feet from the cabin.  From there, I can see attempts at busting through the snow in other directions. Failed attempts, given up, the trench dead ends. He must have returned to the spruce. 

Now, my boots are far beneath the level of snow.  My bathrobe drags through the soft powder.  If I am to look further for him, I will need to be properly dressed.  I follow the trench and return to the cabin.  In one final thought before heading back out on my rescue mission, I check his bed in Forrest’s room.  And there he is, sound asleep. 

How often have I “lost” something only to find it exactly where it belongs? The last place I think to look.

And what about the birds in the trees, trees loaded with arching, heavy white arms? I consider the wild ones, the animals out there on the mountain, in this storm, tucked in somewhere, perhaps beneath other big trees throughout the mountain, seeking shelter, protection, acceptance that they can not they can not hunt, find feed, travel. They remain holed up in this deep white powder, despite their hunger, and allow this storm to pass, then await the snow to settle.  Their days of moving about the mountain with ease are over for this season.  They will long for the brighter days of spring to set up the snow, melt and glaze the surface, and enable them once again to move more freely about their mountain.

Now, spring seems a long ways away.

Now, I await daylight in this heavy darkness and silence. It is leaden, a grave in which I am softly swallowed in this tender bottomless blanket of white. I feel submerged, as if underwater.  A languid, fluid feeling of lightness, weightlessness, endlessness, as I glimpse outside and see the ground level rising higher and higher still.  

And for a while, I hear nothing at all.

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.

Snow blowing from the south and west.

Still I lie
Against your frozen breast
While slowly smoothly gently silently
You cover me with your drapes of white
As each intricate, perfect flake of snow settles
And joins and masses above me, of me
I am under the heavy cloak which keeps me
As a mother tucking her child to bed
I drift to slumber in your loving arms
A lullaby in the falling snow
And I sleep

I am buried in this sea of white and nothing else matters
Not now
Not yesterday
Not tomorrow

In darkness we learn to see.
Long shadows, long nights, long heavy sighs and sleeps.

We dream of what is to come, what we will make in this world, what we will make of ourselves of our children.
The world around us revolves regardless.

Snow falls softly this morning. I turn further within. Enwrapped in the cocoon of winter. The silence spins about me, somehow warm and comforting.

We become so concerned with fear of death that we forget to live.

I read yesterday: “You cannot compromise the dream or the dream dies.” (Terry Tempest Williams)

I am not willing to let my dreams go, but at times I forget how to keep them alive.

The mountain still shuffles with life. Little tracks cross those made by my large snowshoes. Others follow my paths; leave the work of breaking trail for me. Most are smaller, lighter. My trail becomes their highway. Better still are the set tracks left by the boys’ snowmachines, which by now, with little new snow, criss-cross every open meadow, continuing the twisted hidden trails around tight trees in uncertain patterns through the groves of spruce and aspen.

A surprising number of elk remain up here this year. We worry for them. They have been caught unaware by big storms before, left with snow far too deep to paw through, far too deep to allow them a way off the mountain.

The moose will remain all winter. Yesterday in the last light of the day, we watch as the horses turn in unison towards the willows along the east side of the pasture. Funny to call it a “pasture” when it is now nothing but white. The horses too think of it as such and insist on heading out each night after feeding. They paw and roll and romp and fend for themselves after their bellies are full. This is good for them. They allow their wild side to emerge in winter.

Towards the willows the horses are faced, all snorting, tails raised, neck arched, prancing excitedly. We know this for what it is: the warning of the moose. Nothing affects these horses quite like the moose. We step out onto the deck, look where they are all looking, and see the big black awkward silhouette moving down the fence line through willows. I call to the horses, laugh and try to reassure them. Now they know better than me. The stallion is up front, flanked by the two mares. The younger horses well behind them. They keep their distance, but define their space.

They do not settle but continue their upset. We continue to watch from the warmth and comfort of the kitchen. Now we see the dark shape of the moose crossing the pasture right below the little herd. Crossing, and passing, and contining on regardless of, unconcerned with, the horses.

The horses, in kind, cease their upset and ease up. Their fear came straight at them, approached them, and passed, leaving then unscathed. They stand their now with their heads and necked lowered, humbled. One by one they now face away from where the moose went, and towards the barnyard. Casually, they return to the corrals by the hay shed and resume their dinner as if nothing ever happened.

Down in the willows looking up mountain

Ice building up on a log in the creek

The snows have not held back the ice, but are feeding it. The courses continue to swell with frozen waters, layer upon layer of a silvery blue, here secretly building beneath the soft snow, there its run has risen to the surface as the snow bows gracefully at the frozen banks to allow the measured flow.

It has been cold. Snow has not yet slid from the roofs but clings to the steep metal sheets in defiance of the feeble of warmth of the sun. The depth of snow on the level is holding its own.  It does not melt.  But somewhere on the mountain, something melts.  Something runs its course, slowly feeding these flows of ice.

On Christmas day we journey up what is a trail in summer, now no more than a white ribbon through the trees and a path we create as we push through the first time.  The boys on their old play sleds, snowmobiles well over a quarter century in use and carefully tended each season to ensure one more year. Me on snowshoe.  The same ones that have taken me thousands of miles over this mountain. We have packed a simple picnic. The temperature rises to nearly 17 above zero. We find a relatively warm place on the hillside, protected from the bitter winds, saturated with the low light of the early winter sun.

We can not remain idle for long. The shadows threaten to engulf us. We return along the course of the creek, by way of frozen waters.

The boys zoom ahead of me on their snowmobiles.  They move fast enough not to notice, not to hear the rush of the water beneath the snow where the ice has not formed and the soft powder is somehow precariously balanced upon the gushing waters beneath.  A stealth and menacing secret that only winter knows.

We descend the creek, now to a narrower, steeper section, the smooth white trail of the water course yawning in the timber and higher banks of the deeper canyon.  The water is pushed and funneled through here.  Ice is not as easily formed as on the flat, wide, slow sections we just crossed.

Ice is not infinite.  It has its limitations.

I follow their tracks slowly, cautiously, spreading my weight out between my snowshoes and poles, hoping the snow, the ice, the solid feel beneath me will hold.  I see where the boys’ tracks have broken though, unbeknown by them, as the snow falls into the water in their wake. White breaks way to the black abyss, letting loose an angry roar of river. They are unaware of how thin the surface has become.  The motors drown out the growl that echoes from just below the seemingly innocent surface of snow.

Where do these waters come from? When the creeks seem to seep a solid form, from where does this flow continue? Deep within. With stories of the violent brown run off, of last years snow fall, of summer days hot enough to seek out shade, of springs formed beneath her flesh thousands of years ago. The blood of the mountain flows clear and cold, a pulse that never ends.

Now, humor lightens and lifts the human soul in ways nothing else can.  We have seen it with so many animals, we are no different, playing for no more reason than just to play. A simple and basic need. An instant relief from the heavy world that can oppress us too easily.

Bob’s snowmachine breaks through the ice. I don’t think anyone is completely surprised.  Laughter builds and bursts free like the ice that did not hold up the weight of the little sled.  I imagine Bob stepping off the sinking sled onto the firmer shelf of ice looking down in great amazement. And Forrest behind him, having kept a safe distance, probably glad it was not he in the lead this time.  Both would look at each other in silence, and a big wide grin would spread across both faces.

They work together to get the sled out of the creek. By the time I arrive, the sled is out, both boys are safe and dry. Forrest is contemplating how to get his sled turned around and off what we now know is thin ice. Bob is assessing the next predicament of how we will get out of this canyon through the thick timber and steep slopes, made steeper still with the tiny motors of the antique sleds.

“That was me,” we say as we point out to each other a distinctive tract left behind in the snow, a line which tells a story. I look back down the creek, up on the timbered slope. This was my boys, on Christmas day. 

We return home content.  It was another good adventure, another good day, together. Once again it is the best Christmas ever, as every one should be.

Snowshoe tracks heading down the middle of Lost Trail Creek on a wide and well frozen section