May 25, 2012

Horse matters

By Gin Getz

For Julia.

Opening a can of worms, or a barn of horses.  Let the fences fling open and the horses fly free. Where do I begin, such a huge and important part of my life… Will only skim the surface, like brushing off the last of the winter’s coat to reveal the shiny spring hair hiding beneath.  But it’s still no more than the shell.  What matters most is deep inside.

Horses.

I wasn’t raised with them, didn’t have the opportunity to ride as a kid, and wasn’t lucky enough to have my own backyard pony.  This is not a sob story, just a fact of life. It didn’t matter to me then.  You don’t desire what you don’t know exists.  I didn’t know a horse back then, let alone anyone who had one.  We didn’t watch Westerns, and the mountains in which I now ride were very far away.

I think this is an important point to note.  Most horse people I know talk about their childhood longings.  And then, more often than not, I hear of their adult distance.  The horse, who once held an important place in their life, has become no more than a fond memory.

I’ve done things backwards.  The horse came into my life later and expanded its importance, value and attachment.

The horse became my work.

Something I believe in, for the horse is a creature bred to work, not just sit around and look pretty, which I will admit they manage to do quite well.  But they, like us, have the inner spirit that thrives with duty, responsibility, accomplishment, and a job to do.  Tell me, who has a better life?  The person with a point and purpose to every day, or the one sitting idle watching the world go by?  Yes, this may be a matter of opinion, with my working class mentality…

So giving up the title of “outfitter” was an odd evolution in my journey with horses.  Yet as that part of our business began to fade with the changing demographics and shrinking horse industry, lo and behold, our opportunity of taking on “the ditch job” was a blessing.  A prayer answered.  Careful what you ask for.  I want to keep working with my horses. I’m not ready to become a hobby horseperson.  No offence to those who are, but it’s something that’s mattered to me.  Part of my identity.  I take my horses, horsemanship, and learning and growing as a horseperson quite seriously. I don’t intend to be the horseperson tomorrow that I was yesterday.  Today is for experiencing, learning, growing.

My relationship with my horses is thus changing, as is my role of mother, wife, sister, daughter, friend and neighbor.  Nothing stays the same.  Our relationship has transformed, and continues to do so.  The ignorance of fun, beauty, simply sitting on the horse and enjoying the ride has been replaced with the deep bond of time, work, experience, shared trauma.

I have grown beyond looking for a horse to make me look good, and am now enjoying learning to make a horse look good.  It’s not about me, it’s about the horse.  I look at the few horse people I respect and admire and thrive to learn from them.  Watch how they sit on the horse, move with him or her, communicate and become one.  The fluid motion, subtle movement.  You notice the horse.  The rider is no more than a pure and positive passenger, perhaps subtly directing the movement, but not where the observer can note.  Yet for those who pay attention, the rider is often the center of attention in the deal, and more often than not, because he or she looks so awkward and out of place upon their back.  Those riders still must chose the horses that make them look better, not learn more. Me, I’m still somewhere in between.

The days of just getting on and enjoying the ride are behind, though there will always be moments of that bliss.  Replaced with understanding, analyzing, evolving.  It’s gone deeper and once you go that deep, the shallow sitting on the horses back is left far behind.

And then there are the cold hard facts.  There is so much more to horsemanship than riding.  That’s the little fancy candy flower on the icing on the cake.  The rest is the feeding, cleaning, mucking, brushing, vetting, trimming, shoeing, training, fencing, transporting, worrying, day to day care and paying the bills for all of this to happen.   Compare this to the amount of time, money, planning, preparing, practicing, etc. that goes into making a movie, and all you do is pay ten bucks and see it all in two hours.

I’m sorry, my friends, I know most of you are not horse people, don’t know much about horses, and may not even care.  I share this on the chance that you understand what the horse means to me, and what in turn such a beautiful, vulnerable, powerful beast might in turn mean to you.

My focus and attention and time returns now to my horses.  This is the time of year.  We are riding most days, getting the horses and myself in shape, clearing trails, maintaining routes we are passing on… and finding new ones.

I must leave you now.  Time to slip on the muck boots and head out to feed.

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May 23, 2012

Slide Lake in Spring

By Gin Getz

Wolves.  Wild horses.  Water.

Wouldn’t you say the three most controversial and divisive topics in the west?

I can see both sides on the first two topics and am unable to choose sides.  I can see through the power and passion of emotion ruling both segments to a middle ground where the two should but just won’t meet, won’t budge, won’t give, fingers pointed and backs turned and nothing positive is resolved. That’s where we need to focus.  On the compromise. I guess that’s usually how things end up getting resolved.  But in the meanwhile, it does take both borders to define the middle ground.  Change often requires conflict to come about.

And then there is water.  The first essential to life. The west was built with liquid gold, and our future is pending upon it.  I see no controversy in the obvious and inevitable. What am I missing here, because somehow, we’re not agreeing that there is a problem?  Man based, nature based, call it what you will.  While some places are getting flooded out, pummeled with regular deluges, and learning that natural disasters are a usual occurrence, the Southwest is drying up.  Yes, even in the high mountains. Even in my back yard.

Yesterday Forrest and I hiked up West Lost Trail to Slide Lake.  Elevation 11,400.   We wore shorts and t-shirts.  There was green grass, wild flowers and the dog swam in the waters while the squeals of the pika and marmot echoed on the hard face of the rocks surrounding us.  And everywhere we looked the one rich green slopes were striped with the red and brown of dead trees defining draws and shoots as the beetle kill seemed to be pouring from the top down.  If you don’t get this picture, figure this out.  11,400 feet elevation should just be melting out in May.

Data from the NRCS as of May 18th show the Upper Rio Grande Basin snowpack level, which was reading at 52% of average, dropped to 14% with the peak a full month ahead of average. Current reports from the Snotel at Beartown read the water equivalent of our snowpack to be at 1% of average.

These are not opinions.  There is no emotion here.  These are simply stated facts, real and raw.  Do you see a problem? So now the question is raised.  What are you going to do about it?  What am I going to do?

Maybe it’s just this year, we say.  Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe we don’t have a do a thing.

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May 21, 2012

Eclipse

By Gin Getz

We sit around the campfire awaiting the break in the heavy clouds that might allow us a glimpse of the darkening sun, a chance to see this eclipse before the sun settles behind the mountain to our west.

You’ve got to have a sense of humor.  How else can we make it through this thing called life?  And for those of us lacking the ability to crack jokes, may we be lucky enough to have a husband and son willing and able to share theirs freely.  A balancing act.  What we don’t have ourselves, we learn to enjoy from others.

They’ve got their welding helmets on, worn as comfortably as ball caps, only they look more like Tin Men or something sort of medieval and evil. They are ready to look at the blinding sun, if it were bold enough to bust through the clouds.  They are confident it will happen. There are two small holes in the cloud covered sky that give us hope.  Pin pricks perhaps into the view of the great abyss.  But sometimes, that’s all it takes.  You gotta have hope.  You gotta believe it’s possible.  You gotta be ready, just in case.  And in the mean while, you might as well have some fun, because what you’re waiting for may never come, but the rest of life isn’t too bad either.

Lo and behold.  Moments before the sun drops behind the mountain for the evening, one of those pin prick openings in the cloud cover widens, opens just enough to reveal the sun with a big dark circle missing from its fiery face.

And then it drops, the clouds continue to open, the sky clears and the evening around the campfire becomes just another beautiful night in paradise.

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May 18, 2012

An ugly picture in a beautiful world

By Gin Getz

I think when you come down to it, truth is, everyone wants to be loved.

Though at some time, with some people, we must face the facts that attempts for being loved, let alone being accepted, are futile.

Oh sure, I’d love to be like those that claim they do not care.  Seemingly untroubled by who calls them what, the stories that have been told, or the judgments made.  Maybe such people really do exist.  I am not one of them.

So it was with that hope in mind, that of simply being loved, and then reduced to liked, and then reduced to accepted… by my in-laws, that I write today.

Oh, not all of them.  In fact, only a few.  There are a lot of them around here in the summer.  Some have been fine.  Some have been great. But that very unpleasant, difficult few have made a big impression.  Not a pretty one, either.

Why?  Go figure.  We’ve learned we’ll never really know. I’ve heard all kinds of theories.  The typical, “She must be a hussy.”  Or thinking I was no more than the hired help.  Or that I married Bob for his money (no offense, sweetheart, but I can hear the chuckles).  Or fear.  Fear of me taking their little boy away.  Fear of losing control.  Fear of change.

For their world was perfect before I came.  Right.  Wrong.  Frighteningly so.  But I don’t know if anyone every spoke about it, you know, as in “admitted it” before I was here to open up the closet and let the skeletons spill out.  Hush-hush, brush it under the carpet, don’t tell a sole, and just pretend we get along.  Good lord, but you HATE each other!  Who are you fooling?

An ugly picture in a beautiful world.

When you put the pieces of the puzzle together, there before you is one ugly picture.  But it’s just one, spread out on my kitchen table, a twisted mix of facts and lies, and I know I have the ability to brush it off, toss it away, clean the slate and begin my day, my life, in a beautiful way. Even here.

Pieces of the puzzle.  It’s a long story.  I’ll probably only get to a part of it today.  Bear with me as this might not be the lovely lighter side of life you like to listen to.  But it’s real and raw and revealing.  And I suppose there is something to be said for that.  Like letting it all hang out so you can lighten your load and learn to laugh again.

And I’m gonna have the last laugh after all.  Because although legend has it when we were married my husband’s brother and mother vowed to chase me off in five years, I’ve spent the last four chuckling, just knowing my presence alone causes them misery.  And now, with our return, with our commitment to the land, it’s easy to see how  we’ll still be here, enjoying a new group of neighbors, long after they leave.  And yes, I confess, I do I take pleasure in that.

So where do I begin?

An ugly picture.

Most of the details I chose to forget.  There were many.  Ugly, ugly images.  Memories more like nightmares.  I learned to say this family is not mine.  No family is perfect, I know, but this was a bit much.

So why am I rehashing all this crap?  Because I can, the brother used to say.  He never gave us a better reason for treating us as he did. So maybe just this time, I’ll say the same.  Because I can.  And because part of healing is forgiving.  Letting go. And I’m still holding on.  I’m still hurt.  Having people hate you, hate everything you do or did or built or made, finding fault in you and your life and your dreams and your hard work hurts.  Period.  The scars are deep.  But they are healing.

This story will help clarify the picture for me, ugly as it may be.  Only then can I brush it aside… and laugh.

I might add that this post is not endorsed by my husband, and may be the first one which he will read and won’t say, “It’s nice.”  I guarantee.  This will make him cringe.  Why stir the waters, he will ask me?  I will tell him that the mud is thick and deep, and taints the clear waters that calmly lies on top.  It doesn’t go away on its own.  At some point we must drain the pond and begin anew. Let sleeping dogs lie, he’ll tell me.  But my dog sleeps restlessly, and wakes up barking.

Life isn’t always peaches and cream.   Maybe it’s because of the bitter apple and sour milk that fine wine seems so sweet.  It’s a package deal.  The good and bad.  An ugly picture in a beautiful world.  So, I’ll tell my story finally.  Forget the silence of the lambs.  It due time I climb to the top of the mountain and let loose my feral wail.

It isn’t going to make me any friends.  But truth is, it’s already cost me plenty.  That was their intention. Stories from my mother- and brother-in-law. I’m better off not knowing the half of them.

I would like to claim innocence but that would not be fair.  I could have/should have seen the signs, and probably did, but love is blind.  The sweet little old lady who had already had about twenty five years perfecting the act.   Oh, she could tell a story so well!  A historian, she called herself.  Though I cringe to think of how many stories were told for the sheer impact and effect on intrigued tourists.  I too was enamored by her once, and so looked forward to having her… love me.

Silly me.

Why she couldn’t run me off like she succeeded in doing for others before me, I do not know.  But for that I am grateful.  Though the battle to win and keep her son left deep scars within me.  They are worth it.  He is worth it.

An ugly picture.  You built your own hell.  Alas, it’s fading.  It’s lost its control.  The rein of critiques and criticism from the plastic throne is withering away.  The powers she appointed to replace her are not even worthy of mention.

There is more, so much more.  I need not remember it all.  I need to learn to let go.  For myself, my son, my husband.  For them, I push open the shutters and pull up the shade and let go of the past and let new light flood into the room.

As one friend writes, “The old me would have…”  But the new one won’t put up with crap.  OK, well, so maybe I never did.

So what is the solution?  Learning to let go.  Learning not to care.  Learning not to be affected by the words and actions and stories spread by others.  Well, one thing is for sure. I’ll never run for public office.  I’ll never be a politician.  For I never will care enough about what others think of me to act falsely or to put up with injustice and sit around silently. And still, I find I care too much.

So, where does that leave me?  I guess exactly where I am.

We have not spoken in years.  A big fence divides us, and I have learned no fence is big enough to hold back hatred.  I’ve stopped listening to them, to their stories, though I still hear them from time to time.  I think only a few still listen, though only a few ever did. They still spend their idle time here, coming and going in the summer.  Just more fair weather tourists who like to think about how many years they have been coming here, as if that enables one a greater hierarchical ranking.

And I will watch them leave, and breathe again.

And in the meanwhile, I will learn to accept that not everyone is going to love you. Some, in fact, will hate you.  Not because of who you are or what you’ve done, but because of themselves.  Let them keep their misery.  They build it well.  Some people choose to paint their own ugly pictures, then spend a lifetime looking at that, rather than the beautiful view before them.

I don’t want to be that person.  I want to see that beautiful view, be out in it, be a part of it, and should I lift my paintbrush to add to the picture before me, may I only craft it to be a more beautiful one.

If ever that were possible in such a picture perfect world.

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May 16, 2012

Enwrapped by vibration

By Gin Getz

Lightning on the other side of the Divide where the clouds are steel grey.  A blinding bolt in the dark sky. A mirror image remains for a moment even through closed lids. Holding still, I wait and count and listen for the inevitable thunder.  Further away than I would have guessed.

The sound reverberates in a broad booming circle about us, bounding from the hard face of the mountains all around as we stand there in the center, protected in our little fenced yard, holding our spade and hoe. Waiting, awaiting, the certain sound and stirring.

Enwrapped by vibration.

The rain won’t reach us today.  I would like to smell the sweetness on warm soil and have the lettuce seeds and newly transplanted rhubarb and bunching onion softly sprinkled. But I can tell. The heavy clouds will loop around and loosen their load elsewhere, always elsewhere it seems. Except for when it’s here, and then it seems we are in the storm forever, forgetting what before and after sunshine feel like when the cold of mountain hail and rain surround us.

Not quite the banana belt. It was twenty five degrees this morning.  We’re still a month away before morning temps might remain above freezing.  And then, even then, I’d be a fool to count on it.

Quite contrary.

How does your garden grow?

Talk about an uphill battle, but I’m going to do it again this year. I’m going to try.  Lettuce and chard and kale, potatoes, onions and herbs.  Seeds spread out on my kitchen table of what I used to plant for spring crops when I gardened in California, here will grow in summer.  If I’m lucky.

And this year I’m cheating.  My husband brought me home starts from the greenhouse.  Tomatoes, peppers and flowers.  Geraniums in the boldest reds, so many shades, shocking and vibrant and really quite sexy.   Just ask the hummingbird who already found his way through the open sliding glass door to get closer to the brilliant blossoms.  Silly little birds.  Still seem so oddly out of place in the high country, yet manage just fine, even without the sickly amount of sugar so many humans think they “need.”

The chance of rain passes us by.  The dark clouds dissipate, or hide on the other side of the Divide, which is possible, for I would not see them for days if they chose to remain there.  And in the evening as the clear sky darkens for the day, the dog and I walk from the yard back towards home, smoke from the wood stove slowly waving like a happy dog tail as the temperature has already dropped to the mid thirties.

The smell of burning cedar.  Scraps of the posts pulled up, rearranged, fencing removed and replaced, because nothing stays the same, and we always find better ways. Even better places for the garden, now tucked in closer to the cabin, a little more protection from the extreme elements of the mountain.

We stop to listen, just the dog and me. There is a snipe’s flickering mating call to one side of us, and the bellow of geese on the other.  I imagine them there, perhaps no more than a pair, following the black ribbon of the river up to higher grounds until they settle in to the concealing darkness, wait out the night, and celebrate the first of light on the mountain in the morning with broad wings and joyous voices taking flight above the now silver flow of our Mighty Rio Grande.

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May 14, 2012

What matters most

By Gin Getz

This is personal.  I should be more inclusive, more open, universal, involving.  After all, this is a blog.  A conversation with the public.  And here I am today unable to see beyond my little world, my mountain, my family.  Unable to find words or stories that might incorporate you.  Except that I think perhaps you might understand this.  In one way or another.   Your own way, I shall hope.

So today, I’ll use you as my sounding board. Feel free to bounce back.  Sharing thoughts I’m only starting to clarify.  Not the most profound perhaps, but stuff that matters most to me.

It’s about mothering.

No surprise that’s on my mind as yesterday was Mother’s Day.  A “Hallmark Holiday” my own mother used to call it.  But I think this one is more. I think it’s an excuse to remember how important the “job” of mothering is, or at least, can be.  A position that lasts “until death do us part” and beyond, for no good mother forgets or lets go of a child lost before her. Likewise does a child of any age not recover from the loss of good mother.  An irreplaceable void remains.

Mothering.  A position that goes without proper recognition, title or salary, but without which the world would fall apart at the seams.

And then again, I’ve met mothers not worthy of the title.  But I’m not going there today.

Mothering has meant the world to me.  To be a mother.  Nothing has formed me, transformed me, more.  And then last year when I first lost the daily point and purpose, the focus, title and self definition, when my son went off to college, I was lost.  But I learned that a grown son is still a son, and a mother (a good one) will always be there with love, concern, support, care. To nurture by nature.  Relationships, like everything else in life, change.  You figure it out if you try.

And ours has changed.  At 45, I am not the nurturing fresh young mother with filling breasts at the sound of a baby’s cry (perhaps an image only a nursing mother can relate to). I am closer to the age of a grandmother. I am somewhere in between.  I am enjoying the adult son.  Our team has easily evolved into the new classification of three adults in one home.  I’ve tried to treat him as such for a few years now, awaiting his maturity to fill the position, balanced with my poking and prodding (I prefer to call it “encouragement”).  Now I try to reduce the latter.  I have to learn.  It is hard.  I worry.  I get protective.  And still, I must step back and allow.  That’s the big part of parenting that’s not so easy, but so very, very important.  Finding the balance between holding back (holding one’s tongue!) and encouragement, compliment, and support of one another as any positive adult relationship should.  Helping each other be the best we each can be.

Has it been hard to watch him grow and go?  No!  Nothing could please me more, for I take such pride in his success.  I am not sure how to describe this.  It is not a personal pride of, “Oh look at how well he’s doing.  Dang, I must have done a great job as a mother!”  No.  It’s so different.  Rather it is quiet as I step back and observe, and swell with such incomparable adoration of watching the one you love more than your life learn to make the most of his own.

And where does that leave me as a mother of a grown son?  Learning to redefine myself.  Am I no longer a mother?  Perhaps not in the day to day, the chores and duties, the ball and chain and lack of sleep and abundant lectures.  Then what?  I am not sure yet.  It is changing as I write, with he nearby, writing on his own, no longer needing my prodding, direction, encouragement… Not needing?  Perhaps learning himself to do without.

This one is deep.  I could ramble on forever as I figure this out.  It is fascinating to me.  But by the time I figure it out, chances are, the relationship, the players, will be changing once again.  And yes, once again, I do have work to do, duties besides mothering (or just thinking about it) are calling… so…

So this one is personal.  Please allow this of me.  I always wish to try to include you, my reader, but perhaps this one just is about me and mine.  And then again, perhaps it is more than that.  For perhaps you too know what it is like for a relationship to evolve, revolve, turn about, and end up exactly where it should be, which isn’t always where we expect it to be, but hopefully is someplace even better…

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May 11, 2012

Hardened by the season

By Gin Getz

Hiding behind the veil of the softening trees.

I learn to find my place and keep my space as the tourists begin to flock, moving in like the geese soon moving on from the delta flats where they hatched their young.

Swelling of the pussy willows.

Cirrus clouds to breach an otherwise stark blue sky above me.

Soft.  The Aspen are filling with lace of caterpillar like seed pods draping delicately from their softening branches.

The subtle art of learning to stand up softly… when I see my technique is much too harsh.

Soft.  Small as I may be, this is not a word many might use for me.  At times I wish it were.  But life, or destiny, the way I was born, the path I chose, or the way things just turned out had something else in mind.  I’m not saying “tough” is good, but chances are, you’d use that word to describe me more than “soft.”

I guess it started as a skinny little girl when the biggest girl in class was after me.  You know the type. For dramatic purposes, I’ll paint her portrait as a young female version of Lennie Small from “Of Mice and Men.”

Jenny Tole was her name. Big boned and slow witted we said at the time.  Probably an unkind and untrue description.  Children are too often cruel.  She came from the wrong side of town and I never remember her around much past fourth grade.  Don’t know if she dropped out or moved on.

I became the object of her attention, me, the smallest kid in class, always sitting front row center in every class picture at the suggestion of the wide eyed and every smiling photographers, probably so I wouldn’t get lost, and being closer to the lens, perhaps I would appear larger…

It started as a rumor.  “Did you hear?  Jenny’s got it in for you…” And spread like wild fire until the entire class was abuzz with the prospect of the ensuing battle.  And I just remember feeling they all felt I would triumph.  Though half her size and weight, at least that’s how it seemed at the time, they laughed like it was a done deal.  No one would whoop me.  Why?  I do not know.  So I tried to convince myself I could win a backyard brawl, though I don’t believe I had ever hit anyone besides my brothers before then.  And the prospect truly frightened me.

I remember being sick to my stomach, the tangled gut feeling every time I walked (ran!) home from school wondering and waiting to see if she was in the bushes about to attack.  For the first time in my life, I didn’t want the school bell to ring.

Now what I don’t remember is exactly what I did, so probably no big dramatic battle scene must have ensued.  Sorry, I know that would be fun to hear.  However I have these memories of turning to face her, feeling a bit like David against Goliath, though somehow at the time being overwhelmed with this HUGE feeling and imagined myself actually towering over Jenny.  I felt strong, mighty, powerful.  A dark red rage.  I would not be scared any longer!  I remember being in her face, pointing my finger, and putting her back in her place.

No punches flew. Whatever I said, it worked.  I think we even became friends after that, which I guess is probably what she wanted in the first place. Ginny and Jenny.  The mouse and the elephant.

I told myself harshness is how to handle people. Stand up!  Be strong!  I find myself still saying that. I know no other way.  I try to learn, and usually fail.  As one friend said, sooner or later, they’re going to disappoint you.  And I will you. So why do we even try?  Such socially strangled creatures we are. How dependent upon one another.  No matter how I try and fail, try I still always do.

The harsher side of self.  Longing for an internal softening.

The land here, my husband says, is harsh.  A winter away in a softer land has reminded him anew.  There was soft, pink, moist, mild.  Here the sun, wind, air burns, cracks, parches with little comfort from hard rocks and rushing river.

And yet of course it is the people which will always hurt more than the elements. So against them must I don the heaviest cloak.  And the softness that I allow myself alone on the mountain, letting down my guard when no one but nature surrounds me, closes off and shuts down for the season as the sentinel arrives to stand guard and protect.  The inevitable conflicts await, approaching with the season.

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May 9, 2012

Mid week in early May

By Gin Getz

By lunch the snow has melted. The grass is a shade greener. The high country remains frosted and the air that comes over the Divide from the West has a strong bite.

I take off on a quick walk to burn energy that might otherwise drive the boys nuts.  I’m not good at not doing much and the morning snow and afternoon mud has slowed me down.  The dog joins me, chasing off two separate bands of elk along the way. They are shocked that this little beast would run straight up the mountain towards them as they side hill into the trees.  He is courageous.  I cannot say fearless, for the dark of night and high waters still frighten him, and for good reason. But he is bolder than any other dog I have known.  Only now, after almost two years together, have I learned to understand and appreciate his big, brave heart.  He is a lot of dog. Not physically, for he is only seventy pounds or so, but his spirit, his soul.  Yes, my friends.  Dogs do have soul, and this one has a big one.

By evening I am finally tired enough to sit. I pour a glass of wine and visit with my boys on our deck, soaking in the last of the sun before it drops behind the far side of Pole Mountain.  Warmth on the back of my head as I gaze forward across our yard ripped up from gardening mayhem, across the pasture with the horses grazing upon the moist spring grasses while two cormorants that just arrived back in the ‘hood mill about the undisturbed, across the hills which ebb and flow down to the swollen banks of the Reservoir, high with waters retained from cutbacks, making the drought conditions appear so plentiful.  How far reaching our view from the front deck can be if we take the time to consider the reaches and impact of the expanses before us.

Today I am at peace.  Home is bliss.  And yet it is not because of the beautiful place. I am not so shallow to be impressed by no more than a pretty face. It is because of what we bring here, have done here, do here, build and grow here, give back rather than just take.  It’s a love affair. A swirling, churning, mixed up romance, at times still or drowning and other times exhilarating like wild white waters.  And like that of my marriage and relationship with growing son, becomes deeper, stronger, richer with time.

Going away and returning has taught me it is not the place.  For this place is also tainted with some of the ugliest I have seen in life.  I cannot bury these burdens but learn to rise above.

Sherie wrote, “You found home.  Hope the feeling stays.”

I know it won’t. I’ve learned that much. For you’re right, it is a feeling, and emotions change with the wind. They have no substance nor permanence, but impact us so strongly if we allow them to, and too often, I do.  This feeling too will fluctuate with the seasons and moods and events that shape us far more than the mountain. It’s not our surroundings that ground us, but our heart and soul, and yes, our loved ones.  I’m not above counting on and relying upon those I love to help me learn to live with not only where I am, but who I am.

On the outside, you might say a place like this is easier to find that peace within.  But you’re looking only on the surface.  And peace is not so shallow.  Look deep, stir the waters, and see more than the reflection in muddy waters.  The trials, tribulations and traumas I’ve been challenged with here have been harder and more painful than any I have been tested with in other places.  Ultimately, they helped (or rather, are helping, for it is forever a fluctuating process) me learn to find and make peace within myself, of myself, not because of my environment.

Likewise, with Don’s comment, and others you may see from Al, for example:  They are not as obvious, those natural, wild beauties found within city boundaries, but they are there, and open and free for the few bold enough to seek them out.  I was raised right outside and then within NYC.  I learned more about natural peace, beauty and serenity there than I did after six years in the barren hills of New Mexico. Because it mattered to me and I took the time to look.  Sitting silent along the Hudson piers to watch the sun set cast golden orange on the gentle ripples of the then foul waters.  Climbing to the rooftop to find the greatest silence and find a pocket view of the night sky sharing a secret moment with the full moon.  Like Sherie noticing all those things that so many might not see, the frogs, the sounds, the squirrels… the magic and beauty.  I cannot tell you how many near to here are surrounded with so much and see so little. It is more than the environment.  It is our heart and soul and ability to see and feel.  Or not.  For there is no doubt that wide open spaces can craft closed minds. It is always our challenge to open up, see, feel, taste and touch the world around us.  Dive in!  Or skim the surface.  The choice is ours.  Me, I’d rather dive in, fight the currents from time to time dragging me in a direction I do not wish to go.  And deal with the frigid waters, stirred up mud, and scratching rocks at the bottom  just for the chance to float calm and serene beneath the clouds reflecting on the glassy surface supporting me when the wind is still and water and mind calm for no more than a brief but beautiful repose.

(A friend and reader wrote yesterday to mention how interesting the conversations and writing in the comments can be.  Mine, yours, the prompt and interaction. I don’t know how many readers take a look at these, but I do know more of you still prefer to write me personally and directly – and that’s fine – however – sometimes there is a response I want to share or continue the conversation with, and I’ll take the risk to include it in a post – just to be sure you read it!)

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May 8, 2012

Home again

By Gin Getz

We have returned from the weekend away, bringing Forrest home with us. A sense of fulfillment and completion for me, having my family together as a team. The beginning of a well earned summer break for him.  Some break. Building, fencing, digging ditch.  May sound hard to many, but you know we love it all.

He returns to a house that looks the same as it did when he moved out how long ago, when we all moved out, renting out our home and moving to the Little Cabin to increase our cash flow, trying to create a change that seemed so slow to come.  Since then, we moved to around five times, including 1400 miles to northern Washington.  And then back again.  What a lot of work!  And I wouldn’t have it any other way. (Though hiring a moving service seems like a tempting option.) Put super simply, it was all good.

Change. It came, in a big way, and beautifully, and reminds me we are in constant state of change, only sometimes we don’t see it, and other times we may deny it.

And yet, on the surface, it appears we are right where we started.  Same beautiful house, hand crafted, all our years of woodwork and refinement, rough and rustic though it still feels, just the way we like it.  Warm, welcoming. Few come into our home without noting how “comfortable” it is.  The pictures hanging on the wall just where they belong.  Sofas, pots, pans, everything in place as it once was.  Sounds of the woodstoves crackling, one to heat the house against morning temperatures in the teens, the other to cook our breakfast, Forrest’s favorite in a big cast iron skillet ready to be set in the oven. Steller’s Jays pecking at the same feeder even they too remember right where it used to be.

And the view from the window as it has been for half our days here:  white.  For just when we were settling into the balmy spring that felt like flatlands, enticing me to think I might manage growing a tomato or pepper, we are reminded.  These are high, harsh mountains.  And that little bit of snow might just be the reminder we need to show us where we belong.  Home.  Here and now.  We’ll see about tomorrow.

Much more to say, my head seems swirling.  I can’t wait to show Forrest the things that are just as he remembers, and have changed so much. Off to stoke the fires, stir the pot, and wake the boys.

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May 4, 2012

“Call it what you will” Change

By Gin Getz

One advantage to beetle kill.  It’s not too hard to find a dead tree to fall  across the high spring waters.  And then I am on the other side.  Where I wanted to be.  As if I wasn’t far enough.  Not for me.

We are playing hooky from work.  I’m tired of fencing and moving the soil from my garden beds by shovel and wheelbarrow from the old place to the new.  The sun seduces and we are lured by the sound of the creek beside which we tread, as sweet as the Pied Piper calling…

We walk and walk surrounded by last year’s bunch grass, leafless trees and the swelling buds of the willows.  We see old tracks of the moose, set when the ground was still soft and damp.  New tracks of elk in the dusty top soil.  Our tracks.  None others.  This matters to me.

Dry and dusty.  Bogs that we have held our breath crossing horseback for fear of punching through and sinking in are already firm.  I don’t remember when they last were muddy.

The high country looks like early June.  Shrinking snow banks and exposed windward slopes. My husband kicks up powdered dirt behind him on his motor bike. Grass crunches underfoot. The creeks are running rather full but clear and we wonder if the high brown waters are finished for the season.  It used to peak in early June.  Then mid May.  This year it seems to me it was the end of April.

But there is no global warming.  Then what do you want to call it?  Call it something.  For something it is.  I don’t know what it is or why or how.  But I see it.  Look around.  Can’t you see the beetle kill, once green hillsides turning brown, the dried up bogs, the high country already melting, springs and little creeks going dry in early May?

Just a fluke year?  Then how come it’s been progressively worse since I arrived on the scene after the driest year on record, the start of the big drought?  I keep track of temperatures and in the last ten years, we’ve not seen much change.  But we are seeing the springs drying up, the aquifers dropping, bogs turning solid and hard. Birds arriving and nesting sooner.  High waters earlier each year.  This is nothing?

It is something.  You are not blind.

It is something.  I don’t know what, but I’m not clinging to the comfort of a closed mind.  I’m not claiming I have the answers or gripping to ones I want to believe in.  It’s not politics or religion.  It’s real and it’s kind of sad.  And maybe it’s a natural cycle.  Who knows?  But how can you be such a fool to believe that all of man’s raping of the land and burning of fuels to power our ever growing needs and greeds in such a short period of time would have no impact?

Only I believe the earth is stronger than you or me.  So though you may have a hundred years of coal left to burn, have at it.  Then fade away.  The earth might actually be better off without us.

An early summer tourist arrives on the mountain for a stay and I hear a generator being run for a microwave oven while we’re getting our power from the sun and burning dead wood that is all around us. Wood that will burn if not in my woodstove then when?  Or will man be God enough to suppress the wildfires and let the old wood rot.  Which up here where it is high and dry is longer than my lifetime.

And perhaps that’s it. We forgot how to look beyond our lifetime.

I want to leave this world a better place for my child, his children, and the generations after them.

There are consequences to every actions.  Cause and effect.

We are not God.  We are not Mother Earth.  We pretend we are one and think we can handle controlling the other, but I can’t say I’m impressed.  Some say we are stewards of the Earth.  I think we’re doing a crappy job.  We take what we want.  Burn, slash, rip and tear.  It’s all about bigger and better, shiny and slick.

I don’t know.  I look around on a day like today, with the only human trace a small path through the woods or drawn across the hillside, and I think it’s pretty darned beautiful out there. And I don’t think you or I could do much better than that.

What do you choose to do?  What do you believe? And then, what do you see?  There before you.  Not just books and papers and scientific studies and biased reports.  But there before. For real.  Open your eyes and look. And here, in a land you tell me love, though often no more than a week a year if you are lucky enough to fit that time into your busy schedule.

If you can’t see it, your eyes are more closed than your heart.

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