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A time of contradictions. Harsh and raw. Revealing, emerging, exposing. An open wound. Healing from the year before.
She has lost her hiding places. And suddenly, she dances.
I wrote this describing spring. But somehow it feels personal. Maybe it is. Interconnected as one becomes, our selves and our land. Changing with the seasons.
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One day she melts, then next she is covered again as a furious spring storm blows in, lets lose its load and leaves, only to return an hour later.
Up here, we expect it. Heavy, wet spring snow and the choice to remain indoors comes as a relief, maybe, just for one day, part of a day, and already I’m itching to get back out there.
I see now the innocence, perhaps ignorance, of my intentions. The intimate view of my first book, exposing an open wound. What was I thinking in sharing this? Two more of a similar vein completed, and now I find myself bled out. I’m starting a novel now. Nothing about me. I’m making the damn thing up.
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Trying to keep my head above water when some days I think it would be easier to just let go. In my dreams I can breathe beneath the surface.
Yesterday the mountain lets loose in a wild rage of passion and fury and brown waters, melting snow, exposed earth like pale flesh, and the first fertile signs of sprouting green.
The great big wash that is the great big melting of the mountain began gushing down pasture between the top layer of slushy pink snow and a bottom still of ice, a fine line from cutting deep trenches through our fragile sub alpine soils and stealing it down river.
Sun burn and sore muscles as you can’t call it quits when the air finally feels so good and the long days are hard to leave when the sun still shines.
Morning muses as the mountain thaws and soft pink spreads from the top down as the sun light emerges in the mornings. Geese on the reservoir flats, though there is little open ground. The air is alive with birds and their songs as I feed the horses in the morning, and hear though never see those owls in the evening as I go out with the dog under brilliant stars and growing moon.
We press spring and push back her snows with Bob’s Cat and there we have mud and we’re not sure it is better or worse but it is spring and the change is always exciting. Preparing to break ground. Forgive me, Earth, for cutting into you as we do our best to live with you, lightly beside you. May we not take but give to each other in no other way than letting each other be.
Out on pasture with a couple of curry combs, one in each hand. I’m going for quantity, not quality here. Get off some of the dang mud. Their winter coats are just beginning to shed. Out in the wind, it becomes an inevitable pig-pen dust storm around each broad back blowing into my squinting eyes.
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Gin Getz 
Spring in Indiana is much more gentle. It moves forward and then retreats, everything happens softly. Your mountains do everything in a big, dramatic way! They are “young” mountains, while our southern Indiana hills are old, worn down by time.
What a wonderful thing to ponder – the older mountains, Sammie. Softened with time and wisdom and how much more have they seen and been through and hold within them? The bones worn to soil in stories. I think of these mountains often as rough and raw – masculine – and at times year for the more feminine.
Loved the first book and would love to read the “made up” stuff, too! I hope I get a chance to read that novel one day! The photos are wonderful…all your boys are so photogenic and that one of Forrest jump-falling into the snow…well, that’s just plain living life!
I was going to send you that one last night to cheer you up, Karen :)
Today as I read, I’m with the horses. I wonder how their bodies have transformed to meet the mountainous personality of Nature. Do they get pissed off when another dump of snow comes? Or are they, as I suspect, giants of acceptance and adaptation?
Funny you mention that, Amy, because indeed they do get pissed off. They know the routine well enough and know when spring is due – or overdue – and have expectations of the earth as they do time of day that I should magically appear to feed them. Clockwork they rely on, as true horse people learn to live by. When a late spring snow comes, they get pissy, run around, flinging their heads and kicking up their heels at one another. Not very nice, indeed. I think in fact that it is the lack of blind acceptance – and their sense of expectation – which shows deep desire on the stretched out sense – is one of my favorite parts of living with these creatures. We all can adapt – but they, like you and I, will let you know when they’ve had enough for a while. Bravo to the ones strong enough to do that!
I love your “Spring” poem. It’s funny, I never thought of spring as a raw, vulnerable, unpredictable season until reading your book and your spring time words over the past year+. And yet, I wholeheartedly relate to your take on Spring. We hardly have a spring here, so I hope you don’t mind, I do enjoy living the seasons through your words.
Carrie, last winter we went to work in the southern hemisphere for a few months – and although we didn’t miss the whole winter, it felt incomplete for me. I realized not only how I love my winters, but how I love the change. Here, the change is extreme. I am happy to share what I see, and only hope my words do this world justice.
I have longed for a full deep winter for a long time. I live vicariously through your words, as I am sure you know. There is something to be said for extreme change. Sometimes it jump starts your soul into a new beginning :) And, in my humble opinion, your wilderness shares its glorious presence with you because of how deeply you care. Enjoy the break up (that is what Alaskan’s call springtime anyway)
You may call your opinion “humble” but I call it brilliant, and most welcome, always, are your words. Break up. I like that… I may have to borrow that!
Losing my hiding places was the best thing that ever happened to me. My life is now authentic. Your Truth is speaking to you.
Beautifully said. Authentic… Like looking into a mirror, unadorned. We don’t always like what we see, but learn to live with what we have, and if we can, love it. I’m still frightened by what I see at times, and need to turn away.
You’ve exposed the inner world of your perception and intuition because at some level you felt yourself ready. Must you wound yourself to liberate creativity? Expose yourself to the elements of reception, to the risks of joy and criticism, of course. But we readers grasp your breath, not your blood, for you are merely naked, not hurt. You have cast off protection to step into the open, and for that you have my admiration.