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.

Close your eyes to the air in your face as you fall
And as naturally as a young child struggling to stand
Wings unfold
You learn to fly again
With air
With wind
With life
Exhilarating as the sky that holds you

The beating of the sun
Burning my nose and shoulders
The same which turns the snow to river
Taking soil and dreams and hopes
Down
In violent rush
I can hear from my porch
A quarter mile away.

Another new moon rises somewhere out there where I cannot see
In the lightening sky beside the brilliance of the awakening sun
And I think of how many have come and gone
While I’ve sat here in the early morning hours
Silent alone with my old dog now young dog
And wanted to be somewhere else
Longing for home
Permanence if there is such a thing
I have read about but never found
A place to belong
Here I have been forever a stranger in a land that clings to familiars
Familiars which seem so false
Romanticized memories with no solid core
Shallow and shiny

I remember role models of pioneers and brave souls
Strong women willing and able to step away and try
Working the land raising babies and lambs and lettuce
Instead I find myself in a land based on getting away
As I prepare to leave
Shed my skin that has grown tight and weathered
Strip me clean and wash me free
And watch me step out naked and unbound
Stronger and freer than I have felt in years
Leaving

Leaving a land I have known so intimately
Yet knew had no connection to me to anyone else
A masculine rugged and indifferent land
Perhaps with the wider the view the narrower the vision
I have no attachments here
Anywhere
I fear I leave in anger
All I want is a release

Plans finally coming together
This is not the first time
I’ve been through this before
Here
Plans and preparations and packing
The boxes still stacked in the storage shed
Labeled “books” and “kitchen” and “canning supplies”
Wooden shelves Bob and I built years ago
Thick rough cut blued pine on the walls of our living room
Alongside the wood stove where I sit now warming
And in the empty hallway have been left bare all winter
I have refused to move back
I knew it would not last
And really I am glad
I have been gone all year though you can still find me here
My heart left long ago
Finally my body will follow

The iridescent wings unfurl in the morning air

Another storm comes

     And goes

          And leaves

               A dusting on the front porch

Freshens the still white pasture

That was brown from the sands in the spring winds

Laces the spruce tree with an antique patina as if

Once again I was looking at an old faded photo

On my grandma’s knick-knack shelf

Above her big farmhouse porcelain sink

Somewhere there in suburbia with the little lawn

And front steps where we’d wait for mailman and milk truck.

Yesterday I looked in the mirror

      Something I’m not keen on doing

          And saw

               The silver frosting as if from that snow

I lifted my hand to brush it away

My hand empty but for wrinkles so plentiful on the backside

And I wonder from where these came

On hands still so strong and able and firm

Hands which provide fare and comfort in a harsh world

     Creased with lines

          Deep with stories

How can I be aging when I have yet to grow up?

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.

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.

the top of our world. photo by Bob.

Affronted by the cold and blackness
My breath is halted for an instant
Overwhelmed by dark and silence
A great and powerful nothing

The void of suppressed sound and movement
Bearing down on me with a pressure that buzzes in my ears

Until my eyes slowly adjust
And the world widens
Horizons expand
Growing to infinite
As the stars begin to reveal their depth
And the silence from the muffled river a quarter mile away
That which I don’t hear
Because of the snow
The ice
The distance
Space which separates
And draws us together

A few steps away from the house
And the light from the windows
Glows pale golden rectangles on the snow
Warm and yellow and welcoming

There
Here
Inside
Outside
Is all for a moment
One

And I am glad to be out here looking in
In there where we are wrapped in cradling arms
Out here where I stand in her dormant womb
So small

A lullaby before settling into sleep

Snowmobile tracks along the road to the ranch

Now the snow is new.  It is soft, malleable.  It will not support my weight. With each step, I sink mid thigh.  I am confined to the few trails I have packed. Or better yet, those the boys have packed before me on snowmobile. Even for them, maneuvering their heavy sleds through this yielding powder, they are easily engulfed.

Here we do not plow.  That would be a loosing battle.  Dirt is something we have accepted we do not see here for nearly half the year. There is little mud and dust in the cabin.  Our jeans do not soil. Laundry is left at a minimum in the winter. These are the perks of winter.

We accept the snow, allow it to become the cover of our ranch, our world, and learn to acknowledge the inevitable, to work with what we have.  Between packing trails by foot, snowshoe or snowmobile, our paths are set for the season.  We learn not to wander or stray until spring when the snows surface is hardened by the melting and refreezing of the fragile surface by the stronger spring sun.

The lightness of the new powder will not remain.  Between wind and warm air, it will settle, firm up. The surface will harden and hold me better.  Within a week or so, I will be supported within the top eight inches. I will look beyond the trails I have today and break new ones, slowly.

The road along the reservoir, with snow slides creating obstacles

Direction here is set in terms of the river, the Rio Grande. Up river is further beyond the ranch, anywhere between us and the Divide.  Down river is pointed in the general direction of eventually reaching our truck, a plowed road and other human beings. I have little need for down river.  It is but a destination for an afternoon ski.  Down and back.  I have found I am better alone in the mountain.

The boys headed down river on snowmobile yesterday, only as far as the truck and the start of the plowed road.  I use this opportunity of a new trail open.  The road.  Our road home, our road out. I lace up my boots and clip into my skis.  I will follow their tracks.  Slower than the snowmobiles, of course, I can still cover good distance sliding along in their tracks. And because I am slow and silent, I will see so much more. 

Down in the flats along the river, I see the elk bedded down in the willows.  At first, I see only a black silhouette, one set of Mickey Mouse ears sticking out of the snow.  Then they stand, they mill about, and ten cows and calves punch through the snow, forming a single line winding up the hillside, regrouping on the edge of the black timber.

Above me in a cloudless section of an almost indigo intense blue, there is the moon, a waxing crescent above Finger Mesa.  And in her wake, an eagle soars, straight and sure and lofty, not moving a wing, just slowly circling, caught in an updraft from the heat of the afternoon sun on the sheer cliff between me and the sky supporting him.  Round and round, higher and higher he ascends until I can see him no longer.  My eyes can not focus, can not find him. Surely he is there.

Below me there is a coyote crossing the delta before the Reservoir.  He follows his own track, struggling to remain afloat.  Every third step or so, he collapses through the surface and falls in; only his back and the top of his head are visible.  It is difficult; he struggles.  At last he reaches the ice of river, a hard, solid surface, and he is able to remain buoyant and run.  Then again, the ice fades into the deeper snow, and the coyote is left leaping with every forward step to stay on top of the swallowing snow. He moves like the ermine we have watched dash through the snow in playful arching movements, agile and animated. Yet for the coyote, I know how difficult and tiring it must be, as I remain gliding with relative ease along the surface of the track that my boys have set for me.  He will find this track too.  They know well enough to share these simple blessings.

Fresh cut tracks in the snow

I go further than I intended.  That happens often.  I am easily lost in the wilds, taken by the mountain. I liberate myself from my self, and allow myself to shed the weight of human bindings for just a little while.  For that while, I am free, unbound, limitless.  I hold onto nothing, no thoughts, no pressures, no stresses of human confines. I simply move, a steady rhythmic forward motion, with ease and grace more like the eagle now than the elk or coyote.  It is not effortless. I pump my arms, my legs, breath and blood. There is no updraft to carry me along, only the simple silence of my solitude and the magnificent beauty surrounding me.  Only me and my heavy breath, the views enfolding me, my straightforward desire to see around just one more bend in the road. 

The sun begins to lower.  I am in shadow now of the mountains to the west.  Cold comes quickly.  I stop to zip up, tie on my scarf around my chin, around my nose, pull my hat down just a little lower over my ears.  My hands are cold.  I have been removing my mittens too often to take pictures.  The beauty overwhelms.  It has taken me twice as long to go half as far I would otherwise have gone. Probably better that I find myself only three miles from home, only three miles left to return.

The cold becomes stronger.  My hands become weaker.  I would like to grab a snack, but know my hands are too cold to risk removing the mittens once again. Two miles away now and the ranch seems still so far.  I can see it.  I know I will make it.

And then I hear the roar of motors.  It is odd how comfortable we have become with the knowing that nearly every human noise will be your own or that of your family.  It is rare another ventures up this far.

The sound brings comfort, relief.

My boys. 

I am rescued.  Again.

The boys (here Forrest) return along the road

At Ditch Camp, horses grazing before the Rio Grande Pyramid

I fell asleep last night filled with gratitude. 

Suddenly I was overwhelmed and enwrapped with gratitude. I was flooded with the thoughts of how much I had to be thankful for, starting with returning home after a hard and successful work week at Ditch Camp, finding home and horses and guests and business well and in good hands thanks to an angel called Beka. Safe and warm and comfortable in my bed after a decent meal and a hot bath, I consider how much I have to be grateful for, starting of course with the dearest of all to me, my son and husband; then my health, horses, work, and home; stamina which allows us to work as hard as we do, and love and patience which are underlying most everything we do, the path that drives us, why it all works.

Some days I don’t see it all; I take it for granted.  My bones will survive another crush from the horses foot, our guests will be happy to be here, and the mountain will be as spectacular today as it was yesterday.  I count on these things to be there, as sure as the sun will rise in the morning and set at the end of the day. 

What is the difference? What makes us suddenly stop and see and remember how much we really do have, how much we have to be thankful for? Exhaustion?  I suppose that was the case last night…

Oh, it was a good week.  Take a look at this: 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? One beautiful ditch!

We’re finally complete with the section of ditch bank we’ve been working so hard to fix. Not sure if you recall how this section of ditch looked a few weeks ago, blown out and washed down by the force of water from the flow blocked by fallen dead trees along the bank. With hands and horse, we moved about 30 tons of dirt and rock into place, and built the section back better than it was before. 

I know, it’s just digging ditch… but whatever we do, we should take pride in our work, and see beauty in the world around us.  I see one beautiful ditch!

French onion soup for dinner

I’ve been considering sharing recipes for camp cooking. You know, good ol’ ditch diggers fare. But I don’t know many who do or even want to cook over the open fire as we do in camp.  And I don’t know anyone who needs a recipe for Hamburger Helper… Yes, it’s true.  When we’re up at camp, even the most simple of foods taste wonderful.  And after a day of digging, the easier the better.

But weekends and days back home, we enjoy baking on the old wood stove (We?  OK, me.) and serving up a little more fancy fare, as occasion, energy and ingredients allow.  We don’t have a great deal of opportunities for town trips this time of year either (though you know by now how good I am at putting those things off), so available ingredients are often slim picking.

Can’t tell you how grateful we are for generous neighbors, who may share their “leftovers” as they clean up their summer home-away-from-home and reluctantly head off the mountain and back to the heat of their main home.  Last night, its past 8 pm, the day was too nice to work inside, the dishes left undone, and dinner in desperate need of cooking for us three tired and hungry mountain folks.  Lo and behold, our neighbors stop by and present us with the gift of a whole cooked turkey… still warm.  Talk about counting your blessings…

Otherwise, we’d be doing the pantry scraping, creative cooking. Which really isn’t too bad.  As long as there is some fresh bread around, and for some reason, I usually do manage to keep up on my baking.  Strange sense of priorities, I suppose.

French Onion Soup is a good example of that pantry scraping cooking style.  Chances are pretty good we can scrounge up all the necessary ingredients in the pantry or on the counter to put this one together.  It’s a rich, satisfying meal with minimal fuss and even fewer ingredients.  Simplicity at it’s finest. 

Well, if anyone is interested in how to cook simple meals over the open fire, tips on how to avoid smoke in the eyes and soot on your clothes, please let me know.  In the meanwhile, I’ll share this recipe with you.

French Onion Soup

In a medium size heavy pot (I use a dutch oven without legs) over moderate heat, melt:

            2 tablespoons butter

Slice in half and then in long even thin curls, and sauté in that butter until tender and golden brown:

            2 large onions

Stir in:

            2 tablespoons flour

Then slowly add, stirring constantly:

            5 cups beef broth; or 5 cups water and bullion cubes or beef base.

            ½ cup white wine or dry vermouth

            1 teaspoon sugar

            ½ teaspoon thyme

            A small pinch nutmeg

            A dash of white pepper

            Fresh ground black pepper to taste

Let the soup simmer for 20-30 minutes, covered over medium-low heat.

Meanwhile… toast and smear with butter:

            6 small slices of day old French bread. 

Actually, any kind of bread will do.  I’ve used old hamburger buns when that’s been all we have in the house, and it still tasted great.

In a separate bowl, grate:

            2 cups swiss cheese

Now, assemble the soup.  I start by stirring in ½ cup cheese, then layering on three pieces of buttered toast, then ½ cup cheese, then the final three pieces of buttered toast, topped with the final cup of cheese.

Put this in a medium hot oven without a cover for 15 minutes.  The toast will be crispy, the cheese hot and bubbly, and everything soaked together really well.

Hope you try and enjoy!