The past couple months have found me at Riverwind, grounded, silent, content. Humbled before soil and seeds and starts in the ever blooming garden. Humbled before the cold blue screen upon which a story breaks ground and grows. Both need nurturing, tending, feeding and weeding, digging in and turning entire sections over. And then it begins to come together. In the garden, glimmers of hope seeing every bed brought back to life with a new season of beauty and bounty. On my computer, the story begins to fold to close (though the editing process remains ridiculously consuming still).
The security and stability I have spent much of my lifetime searching for, figuring I would find the answers I longed for in a place. As if place defined me. Instead it confined me.
The radical act of lifting boundaries and flying free.
And the paradox of finding freedom in place.
I am challenged to find the answers within, crafting my own, rather than clinging to an outside source.
Oh yes, I soften my gaze. Look around and within while remaining in place. Until your wings have dried and spread and you feel what wind can do to them. Then you soar. And that’s okay too. You can’t see the bigger picture from inside your box.
Fling open the door wide and set the gates of your spirit free.
Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one out there, on the outside, looking in, and you wish you could be in there too. In the circle. A part of it all. Accepted. Allowed. Included. Embraced.
But maybe that’s not where you belong. And you remind yourself it’s okay. And that you’re not the only one. There’s a lot of us satelliting society. Not quiet fitting in to the norm. Maybe that is the norm.
Remember, stars were born in darkness, creativity sparks in stillness, passion takes root in the void. Some of us need silence. That’s the only way our souls can sing. Maybe being on the outside isn’t such a bad place after all.
Somewhere out there, beyond the circle. Apart. In your own unique space. Loving the time, the place, the peace and calm, the beauty and space for the imagination to roam wild. And maybe that’s where the circle extends after all.
Since completing my Long Quiet Ride, several people have shared links to other folks who are doing or have done long rides. Seems like lots of folks out there are doing it. Maybe what I did and am writing about isn’t so special after all, though it sure felt huge at the time. And as I am deep in the throes of writing about it, it is not feeling any smaller.
Still it was a long, quiet ride. Quiet was a prevailing theme. Most of it was not shared. I couldn’t share it. First because I didn’t want to get in trouble for being where I was and going the way I went. Second because I chose to remain present, with my horses, where I was, with the people I was meeting – not distracted by a screen. But most importantly, it was not something to be shared at that time. It was an inner journey as much as an outer one. No, even more so. It was a pilgrimage more than an adventure. Something not meant to be shared until the trip is behind you and has settled into your weary bones and weathered skin and well-earned graying hair.
It is tempting to compromise one’s trip for recognition and financial support – but that is a different trip. I was encouraged to make it a TikTok challenge – and though the idea of being “something” and “someone” tempts us all, truth is, dancing center stage is not my trip and so I bowed out. I think I’m one of those who dances like no one looking because I believe no one is. At least most of the time. Bob looked. And I’m glad he did and still does.
The story I’m writing about and will share with you soon is something I did for me – proving myself to myself. I’m too old to still be trying to prove myself to others. At least, I should be over that. By now I should have learned to live without acceptance and approval from family, community, society – though I think we’re hard wired to want and even need those things. It’s survival. Fitting in. Being a part, not apart.
Some things we never outgrow.
Some of us never did fit in.
The outlaw, outcast, outliner, drawing outside the lines, living outside the circle.
It’s not what we want, but at some point, we accept who we are, and learn to revel in the freedom it brings.
Those of us outside the circle dance in the stars rather than with the stars.
What if there were no boundaries? Nothing to contain us, define us, confine us? What if it was all open space and we were all in it together?
Opening the circle.
We see the same moon.
We breathe the same air.
I am not separate from you.
I will not turn my back, close my eyes , close my heart.
May I forever be the curious child. Reveling in the sovereignty of days before assumptions, separations, road blocks and blinders closed my circle.
May I always be able to open a conversation, a harmonious song, a melody blending notes, a whole composition, as a holy act. Dare to dream of a life exempt of boundaries and barbed wire, locked gates and closed hearts.
Instead, having the courage to craft an open circle big, broad, wild and free.
Call me simple – and indeed, I strive to be – but I’m not a colorful gal. Black and white is more my thing. Give me a gray sky any day when aspen are turning gold or I just stand there and stare overwhelmed.
This week has been colorful. Oddly enough, or so it still seems to me, inundated with the color green. Something you get a lot of here in the far northwest of California. Nothing I’m used to seeing in southern Colorado since the beetle kill decimation fifteen years ago or so. I wish I could capture it better in images to share with you now, but my camera doesn’t work well in the rain. And rain remains a prevailing theme. Rather I’ll try to capture it all in words.
I’ve spent more time than usual sitting the past few weeks, the only way to gain momentum and leap ahead with progress on a book. It’s working. But you know what they say about all work and no play.
I reward myself with time in the garden. Sipping hot tea while wandering through the rows, touching and talking to tender growth. Tending to spring crops, watering the greenhouse, planting cover crops, spreading wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of compost and manure – manure that has been ritually shoveled every day without exception that I am home, for the well being of the horses and health of soil. This is why the garden grows.
Most days it’s hard to tear away and return to work.
Right now I lay on the grass with my fingers penetrating the soil like little rounded trowels, pulling a weed, disturbing an earthworm, connecting with soil and space.
Soil is humbling. A basic need. From which it all grows. Life, hope and dreams.
Funny how one learns to love their soil.
The dogs traipse it in after every rain. It lingers under my nails, between my toes and the creases of my soles are emblazed with it. It also grows my food and feeds my soul and brings the community of life, wild life, together.
Digging deep into the soil now, I pause to watch the earthworms wriggle around wanting to return to the cold, moist black gold they have helped me build.
Couldn’t find one worm when we moved here. They may have been there hiding, but in my haste I ordered a bag online (yes, you can buy live worms) and got the magic moving.
Couldn’t find a garden either, of course, because there wasn’t one back then.
Now, nearly seven years later, I look around and can’t say I created this unless I am some magician – though often it feels like there’s magic here – I simply helped awaken it, brought it to life, and moved a helluva lotta dirt along the way.
I’m grateful for the experience of witnessing the awakening of the land, as if it were waiting, just waiting, to be tended to.
It is an honor to be steward of the land. Growing respect and responsibility to leave land better – healthier and more beautiful – than how it was found.
It all pays off – not just in ways you want and what you can get out of it. You must ask yourself: what can I give the soil, not just what can I get in return.
And oh, I get so much.
A beautiful place.
A healing place.
A sacred space.
It is far beyond the food it provides. It’s the nourishment it brings body and even soul, feeding the collective realm – beneficial bugs and birds, earth worms, grass that welcomes bare feet and rolling dogs, and clover that will shine all summer to feed the bees and reaches down into deep dark places, sharing some secret goodness with the soil.
And yet, it does provide. Bountifully. It might not be a gourmet grocers produce dept all year, but it is plenty. We eat simply. Seasonally. I am hardly lacking. I may not have a tomato in April but my artichokes have already started, the asparagus are almost obscene, there’s onion and garlic greens and last year’s leeks, lettuce overwintered in the greenhouse, spinach just about ready, kale left from volunteers that reseeded in last year’s cover crop, cauliflower cabbage broccoli fresh chard and kale nearly ready to be shared, and last spring’s chard has yet to bolt.
And then the crown jewel of the soil, of the garden. Next week begins the show. Well over thirty rose bushes will begin to share their abundance. The symbiotic relationship with soil in all its glory, ever growing.
This old photo popped up online recently. Always liked it. (Thank you, Bob, for taking it probably 18 years ago.) And always loved that horse. Quatro. I used to call him my Marlon Brando. My bad boy. In a good way. He could step out like no one’s business. And flip around faster than a flapjack if I got the pack line under his tail.
He is long gone. It happens. We grow. We age. We die. Our horses even faster than us. Our dogs even faster than horses. We hold them all dear in that box found beside our heart, maybe a part of our heart. A secret place no one knows but you. Mine is full. So full. Too full it feels at times as I cram more pain, more heart ache, more loss and regrets, and always more love, compressed with time and tears and a tinge of bliss.
I imagine mine to be a small metal box, with lock and key, perchance like an old diary I had as a young girl back in the 70s into which I poured out my pre-teen grief. That diary turned out to be no more than cardboard and was easily torn open one day in fifth grade by Paul Procnoun whose desk was right behind mine. I still remember his name. A wanna-be boyfriend. It didn’t charm me. What do we know about love at age ten beyond if you are loved, or loved not enough? This was his way of expressing a crush on me.
I was crushed.
It ripped open a part of me.
Sharing is still hard to do.
I’m sitting here trying to write A Long Quiet Ride. This morning started my third re-write. Is turned out to be harder than I planned (most things are), and taking far longer (most things do).
Sharing.
How do I share what I saw out there? What I did? Who I met? How I felt? Stories of the kindness of strangers. And the blindness. And the often unorthodox way we made our way through.
Stories.
That is all I have to share. And yet it frightens me at times to do so. Like ripping open your head, your heart, the past. It hurts in a place I cannot see but from which I cannot tear myself free.
As Ernest Hemingway may or may not have said: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
I am bleeding.
And for those of you who are writers, you’ll understand this: My darlings are bleeding too.* I am killing them. One by one. They disappear from pages, screaming with a light bright blue highlight on their way out. Vanishing into a sky of white screen.
So begins re-write number three, in a pool of blue blood as mine pours forth forever fiery red.
I guess this is called a teaser. From “A Long Quiet Ride”… words in the works.
I lay in bed, sheets warm and worn, pacified by gentle wind from open bedroom windows. I’m listening to the song of the river and my husband’s gentle breath. He lays beside me, still asleep, limbs still intertwined, back to belly, belly to back. My nose in his neck taking in his familiar scent of sawdust and hay. The lullaby of crickets and tree frogs slowly fades into the chatter of early awakening birds, wrens and robins, phoebes and flickers, as the sky begins to take on color with fomenting light, and the honey fragrance of flowering madrone find its way in moving air through yawning windows.
Here I am. Sleepless beside my sleeping man. Listening to white noise drifting up through morning’s breath. Serenaded by the ever background murmur of flowing water over anchored rocks, reverberating with the promise of perpetuity.
Somewhere already out there, my thoughts ramble though my body remains still, savoring the familiar. This bed. The wind. The warmth. The fragrance. The old dog, the young dog, both in their beds on each side of ours. Even the view of familiar curves like broad, ample hips as are the hills peering between waving oak leaves out the open window. I hold a little tighter to Bob and he lets out a dreamy sigh.
Ah, the carrot that lures the horse back to the barn. And the rider.
Above the glow of the candle and illuminated table upon which my pen scratches passionately at the invitation of open space on empty journal pages.
Shifting focus. Softening my gaze. Opening up. Looking around.
Seeing beyond safe and assumed. Seeing not what I expect to see but rather what is really there. So much more than quick glances and linear judgments reveal.
I am rewarded with this gift.
Three geese lurking silently through shallow silver water by the rocky shore in the dark of early light before color awakens.
Soften your gaze.
That was something I once read when learning about riding, and an expression I shared often when eventually teaching riding. It was the reminder to stop looking at one point (usually down and directly in front of you). Instead, look around. Try to take in the whole picture. Where are you going? What obstacles lie ahead? What’s lurking in the woods? Who is behind you (or not)?
Soften your gaze.
It’s also the reminder I often need, riding, walking, or just being, to stop clinging tightly to what I expect to see, and open instead to what is really around me.
One of the greatest draws of courage (and thus hardest things to do) is to open. The act of opening wide exposes the soft underbelly of your being. We are hardwired to protect that. We are also hardwired to let down the armor we hammered in place which separates me from you.
Vulnerability.
I’ll show you mine. Not the naughty game we used to play. But the big wide worldly expansive and uncontained game of the wild soul.
This is a courageous act. The act of opening. Of seeing. Really seeing. Understanding what we see.
Peering from behind the lens of a camera safely teaches me to open. I then can take that vulnerability onto the pages via my words.
When we first moved here, I was not able to take photos. I couldn’t find beauty. The land was dry and ragged, burn scarred and overgrown by brambles, broken branches and scattered dreams.
Now I wish I had my camera with me all the time, like sitting in the garden yesterday afternoon, sipping mate and soaking in the sun, as a hummingbird comes and pokes its needle beak deep into one of the first open vibrant pink blossoms of a peach tree. A peach tree that had yet to be planted in a garden yet to be created less than seven years ago.
Most of my peach trees were started from pits, and many of those pits were saved for ten years by my dear friend John after eating what he said was the best peach ever. As usual, I believed him, for the most part. One of those peach pits turned out to be a nectarine. Okay by me.
This one beginning to blossom at which the hummingbird dances in the air grew from a pit as most of my peach trees did, but not in a place that I wanted it to. It volunteered. I let it go the first year. By the second, I saw it could be a problem. It was growing under my solar panels. So I wrapped my hands around the little trunk and pulled and pulled and pulled but that tree refused to come out. Now it’s a bonsai peach tree. Big fat trunk and the top gets chopped off twice a year which doesn’t stop it from blooming profusely and producing, you know it, the best peaches ever.
On a walk up river with the dogs yesterday, camera strap tugging on my neck, I thought about beauty. Beauty, magic, wonder, awe, call it what you will. That which rewards the effort of opening the heart and soul. That which makes vulnerability worthwhile. The more we dare to look for it, the more of it we will find.
How many times have I been out walking, in the city or in the mountains, and I look up and say, “OMG, how did I get here already?”
It was one of those times. I was lost in rumination. Thinking about what I could have, should have, would have done or said that would have been oh so much better than what I actually did do or say. That sort of thing. Completely useless and closing me off to this magic that’s all around. Ruminating is like a default state. I have to work to drop it. Work to be present. Work to see what is really around me, where I really am. And when I do, I am rewarded. It is a beautiful world.
Wake up, Ginny…
I remind myself to slow down, let things soak, look around. If I’m going too fast I’m missing the view, too busy looking at the rocks I’m trying to avoid stumbling over, not looking ahead or around. If I’m lost in rumination I’m missing all of it in this myopia of tunnel vision. I’m not seeing the rocks or the view.
I stop. Stop worrying about rocks for a moment. And the stupid things I said or did. And for a moment, I lift my head, soften my gaze, and soak in the bigger picture.
Sun splashing on oddly aqua waters. Soft wind through tall dark timber. The shrill whistle of the redwing blackbird.
Beauty. Magic. Wonder. Awe.
There’s also a scattering of tiny bones and orange feathers from a recently killed flicker. A big blow down of an ancient oak tree I sat under only a week ago. Bear scat in the middle of the trail full of fur, and fox dropping left precariously on top of a protruding rock. It’s not all peaches and cream. It’s a package deal. The real deal.
The vulnerability of receiving it all, unfiltered, unadorned. Real and raw and rich and wild.
One day snow. The next a river of rain in the sky. And then we’re out working in shirt sleeves while it’s 75 in the sun.
The river slowly settles after the dumping of warm rain stripped snow from the hills and even the mountains appear bare.
Early morning, robins speckle the pasture along with horses, chickens and the backyard covey of thirty or so plump round quail that scamper for shelter in still leafless blackberry groves when the dogs and I walk by.
Five geese, newly returned for their breeding season down by the shore, bickering over who will claim this prime nesting ground with green grass and guard dogs.
The chirping of the phoebe that spent winter nights tucked in under the eve over the porch door is finally met with her partners whistle, having recently returned from who knows where.
This morning all remain enveloped in a veil of heavy air, a layer of thick fog separating us from the sky.
The inevitability of change.
And the reluctance, at times to the point of refusal and denial, to change.
In an hour or two, the sun will shine. The air will feel lighter. The geese will settle. The chickens and quail will stay in the shade as the red tail rests on the tip of the tallest snag and the almond blossoms will lure honey bees with their heavenly fragrance that enwraps me as I turn fresh soil and scatter seeds nearby.
Shine, sister, shine.
Sometimes it feels like the last spark is petering out.
Gin Getz 