Author: Gin Getz

Wide Open: An Ode to the Wild West.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Somewhere along the way 

of this long, quiet ride that life is

a calling becomes lucid.

Maybe even glaring. Too big to brush aside.

Listen. Deeply.

And if you dare, heed the counsel:

Throw open the gates that define and confine you

and set the wild horses of your spirit free.

Open. This is the initiation. The invitation. Again and again. Over and over. The eternal unfurling. A boundless break to something far bigger than you and yours. You feel it out here in a land raw and vast as the shades of sand and stars and a transient autumn storm and the rugged landscape passing between the rapid beating of the windshield wipers offering temporary clarity to the road ahead.

Open. To something you cannot tame, you cannot hold, you cannot confine nor contain, but you can be with, a part of, like one more star in that starry sky. Some complete connection of space in a land so vast it does not separate us in these distances, but allows us each to be. Each of us. Those who dare to be out here. Together, though not too close. We come here lusting room to roam. After all, some of us weren’t made to fit in. We’re made to step out. This is the land of black sheep on the outskirts of a field of white ones bunched in a flock of concrete and pavement, chairs in a row, drawing within dotted lines. Out here, even the misfit fits in, between the sand and stars and amongst the wild beasts that we are, just enough feral and free. 

We’re driving across the Wild West. Once again on Highway 50. Nevada. Eastern Utah. Between sorrel earth and stormy sky, corrugated mountains and swaths of seemingly endless basins in between. 

It is a land that coincides with the opening of one’s soul, synchronizing with the opening of time and space, all of which out here appears unbridled. This is the land of freedom. unable to be tamed, conquered, claimed and branded. Not a place to set your plow, build to code, and remain safe and sound. No, it is a land that will rip open your armor and test your true strength, of body, mind and soul. 

Opening as we drive across this Wild West where I am reminded how to breathe.

I am driving the 25-year-old van decorated with chipped paint as camo-covering and a window replaced with roofing screws holding tight a piece of a plastic tote in an attempt to keep out rain. It works. The van is where we and the two big dogs camp at night close enough to our horses to see them in the big moon that this last week afforded, rising later each night, lingering longer into the white light of morning each day.

Bob drives the flatbed with racks. My people use racks. Showing our true colors. Red may be our necks. White may be our trash. Blue may be our collars. Black may be our sheep. As brown and tan are the landscape that allows us a place to be.

The West opens to us. Not holding us in, but letting us be. This is the way of the Wild West. It is not a land to contain you, confine you, though in that freedom, it may define you. It is a place to let you be.

There’s lightning in the rearview mirror. To the side, a band of wild horses with wind swept manes stirring up a dust devil in the distance. Yellow blooming rabbit brush and the soothing scent of sage speckling silver across the sunburned auburn ground framing the pencil straight road ahead. Sunflowers burst in between tumbleweeds along the road that leads into a view that goes on for a hundred miles. Tan earth, dried grass, the color of dirt, of the desert, of mountains, high and harsh and ancient, changing into autumn bronze as it weathers my skin and fades my hair and turns my blue jeans brown.

Ahead the only lights are the taillights of Bob’s flatbed and the horse trailer loaded down with three horses, a flock of chickens, a thousand pounds of garden plants I can’t help but try to grow (indoors) at ten thousand feet (thank you Bob, for allowing this of me) and another thousand pounds of a wide assortment of home-canned jars of home-grown produce, since where we are going is not like where we were.

Opening. To what feels like home. Coming home like the Joads, the Beverly Hillbillies, with everything but the rocking chair where laughingly I would like to be; for there’s no person, no place, I’d rather be than in the true grit of this Wild West. How could you not fall in love with these wide open spaces? 

In my reverence of this land, I may be blind to assume this wild vastness is what everyone’s soul longs for. It is not. It’s not for everyone. Certainly not for those who prefer to remain held, helped, where they fit in, conform and are confined as they cling to the comfort of their castle walls, not seeing the shackles they have chosen to wear, or so those things feel to me.

Out here a person feels stripped of those restraints. You may not be safe, but you are free. Safety is a myth we cling to like the search for the place where we belong, until we wake one day and realize that where we belong is where we are, who we are, and no matter where we are, we are a part of this big bright beautiful world. 

Open up and strip yourself of the burden of fitting in with the flock and keeping up with Jones. And in that nakedness, freedom is found. 

What do you choose? 

The only right answer is what your soul says. Listen deeply to what she says.

Mine calls for freedom. 

That is what I choose.

I choose this rugged land and life. 

Somehow in my forming, conformity was not a thing.

Out here in these wide open spaces, with every breath, an opening, calming, welcoming, home. This is my Wild West. This is my home. A land where outlaws and outcasts have room to roam beyond confines of social media and social norms; a land where black sheep remain untamed outside of the fluffy white flock.

Opening into the Mountain West as we move onward. Opening like wings unfurling, catching air,  rising high, soaring upward, as we move from outside one small town to outside another small town and along the way is this big wide open space like the endless sky that rips open your fears and you realize you have been holding your breath for too long.

Open. Open your heart, your mind, your eyes. Soften your gaze and let the magic in. Magic can’t be found staying safe in your box. Open the lid. Have the courage to step out. Magic is there waiting for you. The invitation. The initiation. It doesn’t appear suddenly while you’re still sleeping in the same old box.

Opening to the ritual of moving, in our case across Hwy 50, from the far North of California, back to the Southern Mountains of Colorado. Opening as our convoy rumbles eastward with the sound of down-pouring rain drowning out the chugging motor and scratchy western ballads on a distant FM radio station and the snore of sleeping dogs as I drive down the loneliest road in the mesmerizing trance following the horse trailer’s taillights.

This opening is a return to grit and gusto, high and wild, cold and harsh, rough and rugged. 

And yet into this landscape, I soften. My heart opens. My spirit soars.

And now…

Opening. To a new life, a new world, a new homestead waiting to be created. Roll up my sleeves. Get to work. There’s lots of work be done. Starting over. Again. Building from scratch. A home. A homestead. A dream. A fiery passionate way of life not for the mild mannered, yet nor for those needing to be heard. Not when the nearest neighbor is eight miles away.

The open road ends, horses unloaded, chickens and dogs and a stray cat picked up along the way find their way, settle in, heels and hands grounded in black soil while spirits soar into this wild open starry sky as never before though something I have always been.

Writing has been bumped to the back seat for a while. Social media too, but admittedly I am enjoying the distance from that distraction while enjoying the reality of face-to-face, one-on-one, real connection, real touch.

Beginning again. There is always a before and after. And in the middle, there is the real-deal cliche of blood, sweat and tears. There is tending. Nurturing. Caring. Stewarding. Giving. And a good dose of dreaming.

Beginning again. Starting over. It is hard, but I’ve always said easy isn’t always good. Security is a false hope to hold fast to. Stop clinging. Leap. And if you don’t find a net at first, get to work; start weaving one.

And so I weave. With calloused hands and soiled jeans, dusty boots and windswept hair blowing like the tails of those wild horses.

And a fear arrises as I see how far I am, how far I have come, how far I have yet to go. Can I do it all over again?

I imagine myself someday in the hopefully not so distant future when we have a hot water tub and a safe chicken run, a warm barn for the horses, fencing for cows and the garden grows.

I will be standing there, strong, leaning into the wind. Hair ever wisping like that of the wild horses. The brown a little grayer. Arms and legs a little more wiry. I hope to stand proud not against but with, into the elements as I wear the weather with the roadmap of my wild life etched across my face. 

And one day years to come I will think once again of before and after, knowing that in the middle there is seemingly endless work, dirty floors and dirt imbedded in the skin, bruises and sore muscles, broken tools and re-framed plans, using the outhouse and stuffing insulation between logs – all of this and more along with a good dose of dreaming and laugher, awe and love. Always, always, love.

For now I am there. Here. Deep in the Wild West. In the transition of ever opening. Into a new world. A very old world. A world we are only beginning to bring to life.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

The Good Life.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Thirty years ago, I moved here. Not to Riverwind, but to this mountain. A single mom with a three year old kid and two big dogs. I knew nothing about living like this. Didn’t know how to bake bread, grow a garden, fix a pipe, saddle a horse. I had patient and generous teachers. Phil, Honey, Becky, G&S, Pat, Paul, John, Bud, and so many others, to whom I bow in gratitude.

The one who taught me to make that bread, as well as a hundred other essential skills like milk a goat, make cheese and strawberry jam, also made sure I read. A former librarian, and like me, grew up in and around NYC, Emmy believed in books, and passing them on. Books as not only a source of pleasure and relaxation, as reading most certainly is, but a source of potential wisdom. You can learn a lot from books. As a start. Then get out there and do it. If it’s just stuck in your head, you may be smart, but you’re a long ways away from being wise. You gotta get out there and live it.

The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing was one of her favorites. Remember how inspired so many of us were by the iconic DIY couple and the self-sufficient and sustainable life they built and shared? Their intentionally simple life was formulated to be balanced and full. Full, but not full of clutter, which is the common way. Consumerism, bigger and always hoping for something better, more more more, and the never fulfilled hungry ghost. Rather, the Nearings showed us that full could be full of values, intentions, and ideals they were willing to work towards. They reminded many of us that, well, actually, less may be more.

My neighbors got me thinking about this again because they live a similar life. They make it look easy. I know better than that.

How full is too full?

Looking beyond, there’s a world filled with people rushing around every day, finding identity and meaning in habitual full-ness and busy-ness, then stressing about fitting in time to relax. Ever searching for more-more-more. Forgetting about what is found in less. Seeking fulfillment and security in things like benefit packages, paid vacations, travel to exotic places, cocktail hour and dinner out, the ease of flipping a switch to power on, having your nails done, stopping to buy a Starbucks coffee, and scheduling plenty of time for Netflix.

There’s nothing wrong with any of those, or all of those, but they are not me. I’ll stick with gratitude for simple things. Tending to land, animals, art, creativity and contribution.

With Bob away more than here this season, I have been working double time, doing stuff he usually does, like tractor work, and irrigating. Even the dishes. But I got it.

Long days. Full days. That’s what summer is.

Full. At times, my cup runs over. Then I try to remember, sometime near the end of a hot day, to bathe in the river, lay in the sand, listen to the rush of the water for just a moment or two.

There are the hundred-and-one one-more-things that this simple life requires. (Definitely one of those, “if you know, you know” things, as those of us who do know are so often asked, “What do you do?” To which we don’t responds.)  Social media is not one of them. And though my absence online leaves me at times feeling somehow out of it, it is one more thing I can not do.

Allowing me more time for this:

Being happy.

I think happiness is built by this: Acceptance, appreciation, action, awe.

Happiness includes love. Meaning. Contributing and being a good person. Doing things for others. I am not happy when I’m a bitch.

Shedding the skin of the Mean Girl, nurtured from a lifetime of believing I had to be; instead allowing myself to be vulnerable and open and real, maybe even soft, something that has come on with age. All in all, one of the big lessons learned on A Long Quiet Ride. Something worked.

There is not a day that passes that I do not count my blessings now.

I ended up with more than I ever dreamed of. Thing is, I haven’t stopped dreaming.

Though I love where I am, I am not attached. I question how a person can be. I am not where I am, but who I am. Today. Because tomorrow is always a new day. So allow it, appreciate it, accept, evolve.

In the past thirty years, I moved on, returned, and will move on again. I did not have the privilege to remain in one place. Not everyone is born where they belong, nor finds the place that holds them. On the other hand, not all who wander are lost, you know. Some of us search. Or maybe we flow like a mountain stream, blow like spring winds. Not better nor worse, just what it is. A life rich and full and wild. And if you think I’d trade mine in… well, I think you know me better than that.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

It’s what I do.

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Today it rains. It is like an exhale, gentle, letting out, letting go. A soft, easy rain, like tears, not from grief, just from a heavy burden. And sometimes you simply need to cry, to stop holding it in. The sky understands, offering just enough to dampen my dirty jeans, but not darken the earth into which I dig with calloused hands.

Yes, I am still writing. Still. I am ready to be done with this book, but the words are not there yet. Finish what you start. I do. Slowly.

I am not fast, can’t sit still for long, have other things that call me like irrigating fields, growing food, baking bread and working with the horses.

Distractions. Balance. Completing the bigger picture that paints my world.

That bigger picture. I look around, and at my empty hands, wondering what I have to contribute, to give, from this simple quiet life I live, and see that in my palms, I hold wonder.

Words. Giving. Receiving. Listening. Sharing. Holding space sincerely.

Is this enough?

Are we enough?

The simple life is never as easy as we make it look.

I live along the river yet have yet to take time to swim. Things don’t grow looking like this.

“What do you DO?” they ask, a question we smile at, rather than respond to.

If you know, you know…

Some days its more complicated than I can handle, at least, that is how it feels right now, weighing heavy, that burden, those tears, when what I want is to feel light and expansive and free.

Life as a worker bee.

Entangled with the soul of a poet.

And with the sometimes turbulent tossing of two sides of the coin that is me, I look around and within and still see I wouldn’t want to trade my life for anyone’s. So if it means I’m slower, I’m slower.

And the other side of my coin says: yes but… I am ready to finish what I started. It is time.

And so I hole up, bring my gaze back from the river and garden and horses, and with a dog on each side of the stool on which I perch to write, I dive in. Leaping. Weaving my net along the way.

And I remind myself as I braid my life, of the expansiveness of creativity. To have the courage to choose that which over-rides the constriction and restriction of fear, insecurity and anxiety. Creativity by its very nature is expansive, inclusive. Rather than shutting down and out, it opens to and of. Creativity is the radical act of awakening imagination and inspiration.

Create, my friends. Create. Maybe it will be beautiful.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Next!

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Sharing some deep thoughts, as I’m known to do – and a slew of photos as I’ve not taken the time to check in for a couple weeks. Three years since getting my first phone and setting up this Facebook account, and I can’t say I’m really rocking it. Nor especially keen on it yet.

The last few weeks found me polishing up the proposal for A Long Quiet Ride. Now it’s time to kick it out of the nest and see if it can fly… time for magic and prayers… while I move onward, back to burnishing the rest of the manuscript.

What’s next?

For now, I intend to have my cake and eat it too but I’ll explain what that means when I figure it out.

What’s next? I don’t mean what adventure. What move. What I’ve got planned. Or even what horse. If you’re curious, ask me. Though I don’t know if I have the answers.

What’s next? What I want to share is that deeper thing. A thing about life, or rather, stages of life.

How’s this for a stage?

I read recently that menopause is going from taboo to trendy, so hang in there while I bring it up. (Still feels like forbidden fruit to me, and maybe just as dangerous.)

What happens after you step out of the stage of life that was the transformation from The Mother to… The Matriarch? Or is it the Crone? Or is it something else entirely?

Call it what you will, it happens. Thank God. You do leave menopause behind. At some point you look around, with an unfamiliar sense of brilliant clarity, and realize you slipped out of the sticky skin the She Dragon had enwrapped you in.  

And then… who are you now?

That is a lot of what ALQR is about – trying to figure out who the hell I am and the how the hell I got here.

We go through stages of life like that – stages that shake us up like an Etch-a-Sketch, and when we’re done, the screen is clear and it’s time to draw ourselves anew.

Am I there yet?

Do we ever arrive?

Where I am at is where I want to be. But here and now is ever changing.

If in fact we do only have this one wild and precious life, I intend to make it very wild and very precious. So far so good.

What do I choose? Do we have to choose? Either way I win.

And yet, I wonder why at nearly sixty I still feel so far from… what is it? Grown up? Together?  Settled down? Mature – at least in the way that word held meaning when I was growing up?

Well, at my age I can make my own definition, thank you very much.

I’m not much of a practical, stable, sensible shoe sort of gal. I color outside the lines.

At the same time, I look forward to being the old wise one – when I get there. The crone being the stereotypical model of that woman. Long gray hair, deep wrinkles, gnarled fingers, and soul seeped in her eyes. I am getting there. But I am not there yet. I am not her yet.

In the meantime, where am I? Who am I? What I see when I look around makes me smile. This is good.

Perhaps it is another stage. Or is it the time in between? The ever living Bardo of transformation that life seems to be.

There’s more to many of us than maiden, mother, matriarch or crone. Simplified by the triple goddess moon like the tattoo inked on my shoulder at a shop in El Paso when I was working at a midwifery clinic, where helping women birth brought it all together with pain and bliss and blood.

Whatever it is, it’s a good place to be. A good stage of life. And sure as hell beats the last one.

We are left to create ourselves and define our lives, beyond the constricting parameters of labels and title and roles. Define ourselves. Be ourselves. Not based on others opinions, judgments, assumptions, or social norms. I’ve never been big on normal.

Why must we be defined and confined? Rather than simply step from one neat and tidy box to the next, get messy. Have fun. Play around with your life. Kick the cardboard, set your spirit free, and soar beautifully. That’s how we each can make the world a more beautiful place.

Have the courage to create. Your self. Your dreams. Your life. Your way.

Begin and watch the universe unroll before you, welcoming you to your true nature, your highest and best self, the best you can show up with and bring to this beautiful world.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Where I’m at.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

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.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Seeing green.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Simply sharing the view back home from our big back yard.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

The view from outside the circle.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

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.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Simply silver and gold.

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

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.

In blue nights

White washed over in shades of grey

I dream of blood red days

And yet I awaken

Finding myself held

In a sea of dazzling green

Lush wet grass from last night’s rain

Into which I plunge

Letting it permeate my rawhide skin

As I lay back in damp darkening jeans

And heavy rubber boots

While over me fog hangs molten silver

Until sky is pierced with a golden sword

And emerging through steel mornings

The vibrant verdant bowl that holds me

Is suddenly awash in flaxen light

Though maybe my mood remains magenta.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Ode to the soil.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

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.

Oh, the beauty, bounty and blessings of soil!

Alright, woman… go back inside and get to work…

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Unfurling.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I’m trying to keep this short and sweet. But lo and behold, you know my tendency leans towards long and deep. And often a little dark.

It’s a section I’m working on from A Long Quiet Ride.

Something I was going through then.

The motivation for that journey. Kinda like the cattle prod or kick in the butt that drove me down the road.

I didn’t really understand this then.

It’s hard to have clarity when we’re fully fixated on just trying to stay afloat.

It takes time, safety and love to look back and figure thing out.

And then… write about them.

Alas today in the still dark morning at the kitchen table by candle light, the pen poured red across the journal page.

A few thoughts emerged from that mess. Bare with me as I untangle the fragile, sticky thread.

I’m at that threshold, facing transformation.

It is the day that breaks me down. One of them. There are a few.

Tomorrow I will mop up the pieces. I get a lot of practice with that part, too.

In the meanwhile, I’m standing there, vulnerable, exposed, naked if you will. Torn open from the soul.

Wondering how many more layers of the onion must I peel. What else can I release? What else will I lose?

I want someone to peel the skin from my snake, crack the shell open and let my chick emerge. But we both know part of the process is painful.

If every day we die, some days more than others, than every day we can be reborn.

Birth isn’t easy. It’s messy, you know.

Transformation can be painful.

Leap, the story goes.

The first step I took toward facing who I was becoming, was almost my last.

Like Alice, I fell, and fell, and fell.

Finally finding myself on solid ground, barefoot I stepped onto the frigid deck in the tenebrous storm.

The only light was something still within me, scarcely flickering.

And then the wind stirred the spark, barely bringing it to flame.

And slowly, something within me raged. Transformation ignited.

Rising, somewhat slow and feeble. Nothing powerful and profound like the Phoenix I would have liked to be.

More like a delicate butterfly recently emerged from the sticky cocoon

Slowly unfurling damp delicate wings

Waiting for first light

To see what the net she wove, her chrysalis, did.

~

The birthing of the Crone.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin