Month: September 2013

And then there was… snow.

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

And then there was… snow.

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snow on pole sept 27x

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Snow!

It happens every year. Lots of it, sooner or later. More or less, starting sometime early in fall.

This year just a little earlier than some. It’s been one of those kinda years.  If you think you can predict it, you’re wrong.  If you’re counting on it, don’t.

In this case, what I did expect, I got.  Here, snow scares people away.  Those that try to remain a little longer hole up indoors.  Or maybe they were there all the time.  They’ll all be gone soon enough.  We’re still the only nuts to remain. Slightly cracked as we three may be.

Meanwhile, the mountain makes her silent transition. This is the part I love. The slow silken slide into Winter. The voyeur without a voice, only the written word within me, hiding behind a tree or out there on a browning withering slope, exposed, watching as she returns to her soft, serene existence.  Sharing her secrets, this intimate time, with those who care and dare to step away from the safety of a dirt road, rattle of trucks and warmth of cabins. Far away.

Coming to life in the snow and ice.  Fifteen degrees in the morning (that’s minus nine and half Celsius) and she only begins her long season of deep, dark blue days of frosty breath and sparkling white nights.

Cold and snow bring the wilds back to life. Wild life.

On the surface, the dormant season begins.

For us, it just begins to stir.

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gunnar on the divide

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boys on the divide

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We head high.

Now is our time to play.

We ride up and across the Divide.

The snow teases, leaves us wanting for more.  I see the boys on their horses and know their hearts and souls are gone, lost in deep powder and blinding sun and wind, fast and wild on the back of a snowmobile, where the white world is theirs and they are a part of it.

Nine hours in the saddle.  Wildlife sightings include eagles, hawks and coyote sitting to watch us on the ridge of the Divide, one moose, more deer and elk than I have ever counted in one day, and only one other human being, a solitary bow hunter probably a little surprised to see us riding down through the snow where no tracks lead up and in.

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crossing a snowbank

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bull elk

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I’m not political, prefer keeping my opinions to myself, wish y’all might do the same, and in general, like politicians about as much as big business.

But today, I let lose a roar.  Why not?  After all.  I am woman…

Our government is again on the brink of a shutdown. Many of us have already shut down.  We have lost hope in a government and people who support and vote in those who think it’s funny to read children’s stories instead of taking charge and initiating change from a place of business and a house of our government.

I am not impressed.  In fact, I think it’s disgraceful.

Good riddance to this government?  If so, then all of you. Does this mean the politicians won’t be paid and their benefits will be frozen?   Or as usual, is it just those of us who vote, not those for whom we vote, who are affected?

I’m sorry for what it will do on the global level and all the jobs that will be lost because of this foolish choice.  As for me on this mountain, all we’ll see are things like this:  No more decorative fences built for the fun of it, or new hitching rails installed beside old ones left in disrepair.  Shucks.

Selfishly, I can hide out up here and ride out the wave and wait for someone who really cares enough to act to wake up.  I’m an optimist.  I still think there might be someone in Washington who will.

Otherwise, I see a nation quick to point fingers and slow to take responsibility.  It’s not just our leaders.  It’s all of us.  Wake up and look around.

What is the excuse the politicians (and perhaps, us?) play with this time?  Fear of change?

Change, damn it.

Some change is better than no change, unless you’re too afraid to let go of the past, and are too dumb to see that past is already gone.

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last light coming down lost

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How silly I feel to allow myself to be down when I see how easy happiness is.

Just do it.  Be it.  Now.

When I was nineteen, the rat race I was born and raised to run in New York City proved to be not that which I wanted for the rest of my life.  I found – or rather, made – a way out, and left.

In time, I built a life that I didn’t know then could exist and that if I wasn’t the one living now, I’d be wishing I was.

It starts with a dream.  And then you have to have guts.

Or not, and be happy where you are and with what you came from, because I look around and know many who actually are.

I wasn’t one of them. So for those of you who are more like me and who had to write our own rules, I recommend this little bit of a reminder.  Inspirational reading.  I read it this morning on line and printed it out and pinned it on the fridge so I read it every morning.

Twelve Things Happy People Do Differently

It starts with gratitude.

Look around.  See how much you have to be grateful for.

Maybe I have it easy.  It’s beautiful here.  Last year I invested in a good camera.  Now it’s even easier. Through the lens, any lens, we can learn to see, to look, and even, to feel.

Harder still is looking within.  And finding the beauty in there, too.

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the head of lost trail creek

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rio grande pyramid

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I leave you today on a happy note.

For all those who have helped to make this dream come true… thank you!  Indi and Carlos are home in Hawaii!!!!

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indi and carlos 2

Farewell my friends!  What a wonderful new life is beginning!

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And then there was rain.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

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seed pod 2
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Days lost in the fog of fever
While rain pours outside silver smeared windows

Another day it rains
Now the feast drowns the famine
Clouds cling to the wet hillsides
Like lonely children
Lost
Trying to find their place
Amongst the blackened moss and fallen needles

The dog stays close
He has never seen me sick
Heard me cough
Remarkable the sensitivity of our four legged friends
How much I have to learn from them
Start by looking
Listening

The sound of the hard rain against the metal roof
The rush of the running creek
That has been silent since spring

Now I am grateful for the beetle kill
In a twisted sort of way
Presently burning in my woodstove
A plentiful supply

In lower grounds
Flooding streets where pavement breaks
And here above the asphalt

We are washed clean

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aspen leaf 4

 

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I remember every person who reached out
During the fires here
And each offer for us and our critters to stay
When it was our time to be at risk

I remember every person who did not

Which do I choose to be
Now that I have the choice
Lest I forget my family and friends
As their time of need
Swells upon them

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aspen leaf

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My first journal was a diary, one of those little baby blue faux leather books with a decorative lock and key in which I put false hope. Paul Proknoun, my boyfriend at the time, stole it, ripped it open with ease as the faux leather was no more than thin cardboard, and inspired by what he read, I suppose, shared wild but untrue stories and a passed a photo around class he must have torn from his father’s hidden Playboy magazine of a woman he said was me. I was not yet in a training bra and although in hindsight perhaps I should have been flattered, I was not. I was mad.

Privacy is not something I take lightly. You see where and how I chose to live, don’t you? And trust once lost takes close to forever to regain.

Perhaps it was this experience and resulting anger and fear that later inspired me to burn ten years of journals and memories of teenage angst rather than risk them falling into the wrong hands. As if anyone would have really found them that interesting.

And perhaps it is because of this infatuation with privacy and trust that I raised my son with my journal open at my bed stand and knew it was as safe as I kept him… and his.

I imagine there was a time or two when in his youthful anger and inevitable mother-hatred stages he may have stolen a peak as I imagine too the weight of guilt that then pressed upon him was punishment enough. Besides, I bet there was nothing there of interest to his then adolescent mind. Middle aged woman angst?

Similarly I have trusted my husband like few I know can. And I consider this an irreplaceable and indispensable element of our beautiful marriage.

Trust.

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aspen leaf 3

 

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In a big plastic storage box from Wal-Mart stacked on a cedar shelf down at the Little Cabin labeled MEMORIES in black sharpie ink are the results of the thirty years since then, that fated year of burning, erasing the past, allowing room for the future, now tucked in a box filled with spiral bound pen and ink recollections that may never be seen a second time. And more than likely, none of those words and stories are worth a second glance. At least, I don’t need to remember them.

There still remained plenty of angst. Writing about loneliness from a moonlit desert with my head and shoulders sticking out of the tent in which I found myself alone, escaping another failed relationship. Frustration, poverty, hurt, confusion… Finding nature while scouring the New Mexico mountains for the elusive magic mushroom and seeking solace in the solitude found on the top of a wild mountain with my dogs on each side of my skinny tanned legs sticking boldly out of my levi jean cut offs.

Maybe someday I’ll read them over. Do something with them. Maybe not. Maybe someday my son will want to read them – I told him he could – though I think he knows me well enough and respects my past as… past. Over and done with. Maybe a curious grandchild, a little girl who sees me as the strong tough woman I am now (or will be hopefully when and if she comes into my life) and finds comfort in knowing that I wasn’t always this way. That I too have weaknesses. Faults. Soft mooshy spots. Insecurities. Problems that exist only in my head, but there are pretty weighty. That life isn’t always easy, and probably isn’t meant to be, because easy for the most part is pretty dull…

To date, I can say my life has been neither.

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aspen leaf 2

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I don’t know why I am sharing this with you now
I guess I’m just feeling reflective
Thoughts swirling on the shifting surface of brown waters

Imagination flowing
With the waters rushing down our dirt road
Chartreuse green pasture
And wild waters of the Rio Grande

Writing from a state
In which I am living
But from which I may never belong

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seed pod

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Today.

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

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sun setting in the window

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Today.

Another week passes, with rain on the laden heads of grasses rich and bursting, waist high and ready to spread their store, and frost out on the flats along the Divide silver sparkling in first morning light,  and clouds white and heavy and full of mischief enwrapping the stoic mountains that keep their stone face in spite of the teasing and tickling of the continued rains that drip and cover and pour and wind little ribbons of silver down charred matte black hillsides and let you know really, it will all be ok.  Some day.

Some day.  Today.

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a ditch on the divide

 

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dog on the ditch on the divide

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And now the water flows.  In the ditch we have so carefully tended.  It’s not our water, but we watch it, mesmerized, dancing down the course we have cared for.

A rare occurrence for this time of year.  For our ditch.  Perhaps it is the rains.  Work is disrupted.  A bittersweet parting.

Dare I complain about that which I so longed for only months ago as the moss cowering beneath the barren branches of the stripped spruce trees shriveled and dried and the grasses wilted and browned and my spirit became still in the wake of the winds that stirred mighty fires?

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the ditch flows

 

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ditch on the Divide

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Today.

Now what? I ask myself as I stare at my hands held before my tired eyes. Eye lids drooping over a once solid steel grey stance. Do I already have too many years of squinting while working in the strong high sun?  Too bad.  I’ll take the wrinkles I have earned and hope my husband finds them as enchanting as the wild ride of a life that produced and continues to feed them.

My hands.  I see calluses I have worked for.  Only to watch fade away for now their work is done. For this season at least.  What will the next one bring?

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aspen leaf

 

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mushroom

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I hate to be done.  For where does that leave me, what must I do today?  Only that which I seek out and find, not that which is pressing and forced.  It’s a matter of choice.  And is that not often a bit more than we can bite off and chew?

Unless I knew the answer to the riddle for which I am always stirred to dance.

“What’s next?”

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going through the grass

 

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Weminuche Pass on the Divide

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What’s next?  Let me tell you as I try to figure it out myself.  Make it up as we go along.

We leave camp, leave even our Little Cabin by the Big River.  Leave silence, simplicity, hauling water, listening to the river roar brown and milky about the constant rains and the mud slide up river.  Leave the outhouse, the bunk beds, the cabin twelve by twenty which we moved, for those who remember when, by snowcat away from that which was to that which will be.  We’ll build some day.  Soon enough.  Bigger.  Fancier.  With a toilet and a kitchen sink.

As I move back up to main camp and luxuries like solar power and flushing toilets and washing dishes in the sink, I wonder.

Better?

Today.

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rio grande pyramid

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