running wild in the rain

The first rain of the season fell upon the mountain and me, the only two legged for miles and miles in this land now spilling with life. Wild life. A celebration of life with the soft sweet soothing melody of rain. Is there any sound so beautiful as the waves from the sky sweeping across the grateful land? How I long for the rain after the season of bright and  white and harsh and cold. To hear the tapping on the metal roofs, the smell of the musky soil so purely refreshed from the falling water, the languid movement of the heavy clouds, rolling and wrapping themselves down the sides of the mountain, subtle and subdued visions and views.  The mountain blends together in shades of green and grey.

No one but the rain to tell me not to, and she lets me be me. Lets me run wild and free. And so I do. I run around the ranch spreading seeds and manure, picking up objects buried for months beneath the oppressive white, I’m getting the most of this rain, I enjoy it to the fullest, find plenty to do to keep me out in it.  There’s no time to cook to talk, to dress in a proper way. And no one here to care, to judge, to notice.

I could sing and shout like the coyote and  throw back my head to let the soft wet spray cover my face as the trickle from my hat pours off behind me. I could run like the deer and be free and splash in the little pools forming in the pasture without fear of unapproving eyes, tisk-tisk voices searching, digging so deep to find fault.

There is no fault in this rain.  Only cleansing. Pure and simple.  Untamed and liberated.

Running wild in the rain. Away from the fears the failures the family ties, tangled behind us like the string of a kite. Or the rope that binds the falcon to the ground.

Ah, but to run in the rain. Because for no other reason than we can. Our legs carrying us like wings. Up and away, yet never more grounded. Kick up our heels in the pure exhilaration that explodes with the warm wet wild rain. The mountain lets lose and bursts free. Here alone for first rain of the year.

A spring storm passes over the reservoir at sunrise.

Last night I sat on the porch of the Little Cabin.

My husband to one side of me

My son on the other

My dog lying close by

In the new darkness of early night

And the crisp cold air of the end of winter

Fresh frosted brown earth exposed to the night air for the first time in so many months

The last reminder of daylight behind us, behind the cabin

Softly fading, easing off into the black sky

The rising moon light ever so gently illuminating

Snow covered peaks of the mountains surrounding us

Sitting silently so close and so far apart

As our thoughts wandered

As we awaited the rising of the moon

A bank of low clouds glowing more vibrant with each blink of the eye

Turning silver gold bright, heralding the coming of the moon

And then the arc of a pure white light clears the mountain

Slowly rising with the silhouette of the giant spruce trees

Trees and moon rising together before us in this silent, subtle display

As if lifted by an almighty source unseen

Growing to unreal proportions

Light behind trees, trees behind light, the shapes become blurred and blended

Then a perfect circle held steady with the shape of the trees now so small and low below

Trees on a ridge we have never quite noticed before

And for a brief moment my world was perfect

Sitting in silence as we stared off into a past and distant world

Floating freely, there but not really there

So calm and soothing in the crisp cold air and silver glow of the moon

And for a brief moment we were free from the troubles of the world within

Financial problems, family conflicts, uncertainty about the future and how we will arrive there and when, the aging dog, the college decisions, and what is this all for?

All this for just a brief moment in time, was left behind

In our own calm hush

Gazing at the past, the future and now

At the black shape of the spruce tree, tall and majestic in the perfect circle of the moon

The white noise steady rush of the recently open and wild river

We are briefly set free

By this silent and simple and cold and vast moon in the big sky before us

Wondering how many have looked up at this same moon

And too forgotten their worries

For just a brief moment in time.

Window into the Wilderness. Photo by Bob Getz

Looking into the wilderness, looking into the wilds, from an elevation of 13,000 feet, you feel you are on top of the world. Or perhaps another world. Can you believe such majesty on this earth exists? I wrote to a girlfriend this morning that yesterday the boys rode once again to a place that seems all at the same time as awe inspiring, far away, and inhospitable as the moon. 

Only an hour’s ride from our front door brings them there, when it’s just the two of them, no one to slow them down, riding as a team, two as one, on a track they know so well, on a mountain they know like no one else.

Father and son sleds, side by side. Photo by Bob Getz.

They come home and tell me stories of dropping down into Stony Pass, when the rest of us struggle to make it up to Stony

I have been there before, in summer, on horseback, when I feel invincible and limitless; when I have no boundaries, and there are few places I fear and will not go; when there is dirt and rocks and solid ground beneath me and my horse, and trails leaving some sort of trace for me to follow and feel the comfort of knowing where I am and where I am going. Shouldn’t looking around and knowing the mountains be enough?

And I have been there before, in winter, on the back of Bob’s snowmobile. It frightens me in winter, this awesome world. I can not make it there on my own.  In winter, it is different. There is an immensity, an emptiness, an extremeness, a coldness.  There is an intensity and urgency as I have never felt or seen before there in the wind blown snow, the exposed rocks and the jagged peaks swirling around you in this dazzling spectacle we call the High Country.  Right here in our back yard of southwestern Colorado.

A cut looking into Elk Creek and the Weminuche Wilderness. Photo by Bob Getz.

In winter, it is a different world, wild and free, so rugged and inaccessible and far and away.  It is vast and powerful.  It is humbling for those who make it up there.  Very few do.  It is not easy, it is not close, it is not convenient.  But I suppose this is also what will save this land.  They can never take this away.

Where on earth can you still be so far away from others, 15 miles above me, down here and already so alone on this mountain, already so many miles beyond where anyone else may be?

A view of the east garden from the deck taken yesterday

Gardening update from 10,000 feet elevation… 

OK, so perhaps that is a bit of a joke. But look! In the garden’s lower left are the first signs of a raised bed peaking through the receding snow.  In that bed, are strawberry plants. Last year, they continued to grow, though we have never harvested fruit from them.  Our growing season is usually too short even for berries.  But the greens survive and continue to try every year… Amazing how persistent nature is, how strong our need to try…

And over in the front right, you can see the bare stalks of the top of the gooseberry bush.  This has done wonderfully here, relatively speaking.  We planted it for Forrest’s birthday four or five years ago, and it has more than doubled in size.  Though again, no fruit.  Well, look on the bright side (and there is always a bright side!): that’s why we don’t have many bears up here. 

Hmmm, a ways to go before digging my hands in the warm soil.  But I know it will come.  It is under there… waiting… I too can wait.  There is still plenty to do in the snow (like the big snow shoe climb up Pole Mountain, which the boys promised me they’d join me on this winter).

An open hillside, from where we find the first signs of spring.

On my snowshoe today, I came across an open hillside, a place where the snow had melted off before any other. I went there looking for it, for the first signs of spring.  If they were to be found anywhere on the mountain, they would be there, in the protected cover of the Aspen trees, a direct south facing slope. A tiny little hot spot on the mountain, secret and secluded.  I have stopped here every year in the spring for the reminder that winter will end, that this mountain can harbor other seasons besides the six months of winter, for the hope of change and things yet to come.

It was there. I had to get down on my hands and knees to see it, but it was there.  A few blades of green grass.  The first dandelion leaves of the season, poking through a blanket of dried and worn grass that managed to grow up here last summer.  There was new life on the mountain. 

The first blades of green grass (look closely, there to the left of the stick)

The first dandelion leaves of the year peaking through

Up here, perhaps we just need to look a little closer. Signs are a little more subtle. If we hope to have a true feel for the land, we need to create an intimate relationship with mountain, to lie quietly with our head to the ground to feel her, understand her, learn her hidden secrets. But if we search hard enough, work long enough, believe strong enough, it will come. We will find what we are looking for.