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High Mountain Musing, a literary blog on nature, solitude and the search for serenity.

 

Poetry sample

Wind, January 2011

I watch them easily swayed
Tall grasses out on the flats of the Divide
Lush wet land between the peaks
For how many months left to live
Where snow settles and collects and contains
The load of the harsh world around
Seed heads ripe and rich and full of a simple story
Secrets to blow in the wild winds
Seeking a place to settle and belong
How little of their control
Is not unlike how I may stray

How large this land that surrounds me now
Of which we will never be a part
More than the ashes scattered
Spread thin and bare like seeds in the wind
Struggling to grow in the short season
Above tree line how life exerts
Or a rock settled in the river bottom
Tumbling down to lower ground
In the brown waters of May
Violence of the mountain unleashed
In her wet and roaring fury
Here I am but where will I remain

In a strong wind with the storm of winter

Screaming my voice is silenced l

Lost
A child playing in the woods
Tall grasses swaying in a hidden meadow
Seeds left to scatter

The smell of earth in the air
Wind from the west
Where perchance snow has just melted
Leaving moist soil exposed

And beneath the soil a solid rock
I dig down to find this hard place and space

A quiet voice

Wind through leafless trees
A landscape in shades of grey
I blend in smudged like a charcoal drawing
No lines to be defined
No voice above the wind

 

Prose sample

Excerpt from the upcoming book.

At times she holds me like a mother, the mother I wish I had, the mother I wish to be.

Strong, mighty, unwavering, non judgmental and wise. Indeed she is a mountain. I am comforted in her vast command as she enwraps me in firm arms and soothes me with the soft touch of a breeze through my hair.  She allows my silent tears to soak deep into her flesh as she pacifies my fears with the warm fingers of wind and sunshine.

Other times she is my lover, allowing me to lie beside her, naked, raw, exposed, sitting together exhausted, slick with sweat and lost in a dazzling reverie of passion, amazed at the untamed, intense and intimate beauty spinning all around us.

At times she is too big and vast and I lose myself in her wilds.  We learn to let go.   

And then she finds me a place to be, to sit, and ponder, and allows me to find myself again…

 

Essay sample

Beauty and the Beetle Kill, Cover story from the late winter/early spring issue of Creede Magazine.

Once we saw only green. 

Now we see yellow and red and brown and grey.  And still there is green.  A kaleidoscope of color. Rich and full and ever changing. These are not our Aspen of which I speak, though their colored display is something we anticipate each year, something happening right now, so quick and bright and brilliant and brief. 

This change is subtle, slower, and not quite what we were expecting. 

We are learning to see things a little differently.  It is not easy.  Change never is. 

I try to find the beauty in this transforming landscape.  It is not too hard.  It is always beautiful, in rain, in snow, in driving winds and blinding light. We are blessed to live in a beautiful land.  Yet sometimes, our views of what defines beauty must change.  Like the landscape before us, we too learn to alter, adjust and grow.   

The beetles are transforming our view.  And still, I have yet to find a more beautiful vista to gaze at. Only it is different now.  I learn to find beauty in these changes, to see them as alterations, renovations. 

This morning I rode along a quiet trail I have been on so many times before. We travelled in silence, my horse and I, along the trail with scattered needles from the dying branches above us, now below each step of the horse’s steel shoes to silence us even further still. Longer shadows in the soft morning light played on the rainbow of colors before me on the once flat green hillside. This is not what I was used to seeing.  I shifted in my saddle and tried to find a more comfortable place. Funny how uncomfortable change can be… 

  

 

Books

Gin’s first full length manuscript is finished, awaiting publishing.  She is continuing work on her second manuscript while taking time this  year to complete the memoir of another remarkable woman.  Please check in periodically for updates, and stay tuned for progress.