The river continues to rise. A café au lait rush of roaring melting snow ripping down the canyon. The mighty Rio Grande contained by the steep bluff of rocks cut from years of this spring ritual. The island we hop onto in summer is submerged. The plank used to cross the gentle expanse in fall has been washed downstream. I look for its unnatural straight edges and rectangular shape of wood floating somewhere out there in the huge expanse of the Reservoir, two miles downriver. What was large enough to carry my weight across the river will appear as no more than a needle in the haystack out there in the vast still waters of the lake, waters waiting their turn to rush and rip again when they reach the other side and resume the river’s course.

And until we build a bridge or the waters subside, suddenly I find myself trapped here on this side, surrounded by tourists and traffic and in-laws on one side, and the raging river on the other. It’s not that these things are all unpleasant, some are surprisingly wonderful, but I feel myself as a caged beast unable to roam free. The wilds of winter and my room to roam are suddenly taken away. I learn to adjust. It’s not all bad. But I am no longer alone, no longer in touch with the mountain, and a part of me is lost.

This happens every year.

Roaring, rushing, raging. The sound penetrates the windows of the Little Cabin, old windows, old glass, seemingly seeping with time, distorting the view with lines of weeping age from single pane glass probably eighty years old.

The waters will calm. The snow in the high country above tree line is lesser each day, now no more than patches, stripes, pieces of the whole remaining, holding tight, losing ground. Work in the high country calls us, my escape to wilder worlds as my home becomes too tame in summer.

My home. Funny I should still call it such. And so it will be until I find another place to pour my heart into the land, and mix my blood with the rush of another raging river.