Author: Gin Getz

Projects

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We return.  Settle in.  New found passions and a sense of commitment stirring stronger than I realized were possible.  My marriage?  Well, yes, that too.  But something else. With the land. We tended her, struggled, built upon her, fought for her, won her, turned our back and walked away… and now have returned with a sense of dedication and duty greater than ever.

As I wrote a distant friend yesterday, “I am only beginning to understand.”  It’s like waking up from a long sleep, or finally feeling well after a dragging sickness.  A shocking clearness like evening light on pasture after a heavy rain.

And with devotion comes obligation.  A sense of duty.  Work.  The more we love, the more we care, the more we want to do.

So, this brings us to the projects.

Now when all you have are seventeen acres, and five of them are across the river, of course you need to get over there.  It is usable land, and more important, good grass, and chances are you have hungry horses that otherwise don’t have enough. So how do you get there, get your stock there, take care of fencing and grazing and tend to your land without wading, swimming or skipping over thin ice?

The idea is quite simple.  Just a little foot bridge.  For years we’ve toyed with ideas, for months we fine tuned plans, and finally for weeks we began to work out logistics and gather the material.  It’s really no big deal.  Just a couple timbers across the water faced with rough cut planks.

Now, all we have to do to start is get the materials to the river.  No big deal, right?  Just a stone’s throw away.  But that stone would be dropping down a cliff.  Almost two hundred feet.  Steep, rocky, stark and rough.

Seven days later… putting in over ten hours a day of excavation, digging, ripping, smoothing, grading (and definitely some shaking in our boots, because this one was more than a little scary, and I’d betcha not OSHA approved)… all while perched on the side of this precarious cliff… the little trail is complete… and we’re exhausted.

Ready to put in that little foot bridge?  Ah!  Another complication.  For with the early melt out and heat wave, high water has come early.  This is no time to be dragging timbers across the river rushing brown as chocolate milk.  So, we get a break.  From this project, that is.  Time to work on a few of the others while waiting for the run-off to subside.

For most, this is a place to get away, to rest, kick back, sit around and just watch the clouds go by.  A vacation place.

Somehow I don’t think it will ever be that for me.  And you know what?  I wouldn’t want it any other way.  It is the blood, sweat and tears that have made it mine.

It is that sense of commitment which both allows and demands that we remain.

Back to the bones

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I just want to be with her.  Hikes, explores, photos, projects galore (more on this later), I can’t get enough of her.  I stop and stare to catch my breath, and sometimes I just can’t believe this beauty.

Alone on the mountain, just me and my dog, we walk to Brewster Park, up along the Rio Grande, the back route, the horse trail.  No one has set foot on her bare ground since autumn.  I want to be by the river, wild and untouched.  Hear the rush like blood through my veins.  Enriching, reviving.  Soul food.

There, I am fed, drunk, giddy. Intoxicated by a river.

We walk back along the dirt road and there we find the pile of bones.

A cow, probably a bull.  It is big. Was. Slung on the side on the mountain.  Stripped clean by coyotes, crows and snow.

It’s harsh to see.  It’s harsh to think about.

For I think about this:  someone may have found a pile of bones years ago from the bull I left for lost in the mountains of northern California.  And I cringed to think I could have done this.  My ignorance, foolishness, selfishness.

Yet this bull here, perhaps I could have saved had I stayed here for the winter.  We would have found him earlier in the season on one of our inevitable explores up river.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.    I’m glad I wasn’t.  Leaving was the best thing we could have done at the time.  But…

There are few regrets for having our winter away.

One more.  Minor in comparison.  Damaging only a hidden hillside in the trees as the first of the spring run off floods and silts up our little water diversion that feeds our “spring.”  Early season run off is muddy, silty, fast and furious.  It’s not what you want running in your ditch. Yet someone unaware of the ways of the mountain seemed to think it would be just thing to have feed our ditch, and diverted the full head of water our way last fall.

Here at least I can clean up from someone else’s ignorance.

The price we pay for a winter away.  The mountain sighs indifferently as spring winds chill over the Divide and stir up the dried grasses and leafless Aspen.  Only I am troubled.

Stirring up a pile of bones

/ Gin Getz / 13 Comments

 

Otherwise known as, “So who says ignorance is really bliss?”

 

Where does the water end, the ice begin?  Water turns to ice turns to water turns to snow, and still the air up here is dry as my fingers crack and lips feel parched and eyes are burning red.

Such is spring on the mountain. Such is life.  Hard to define boundaries.   Harder still to define oneself.  And are we really so different from one another?

I’m forty five.  Mid life.  There’s a lot of self definition going on now.  Then again, I suppose there always was.  Just trying to figure out my place in the big picture. And always feeling more than a little out of it.

When it comes to politics and religion, I tend to keep my mouth shut.  My beliefs are just that.  Mine.  I’ll keep them to myself and usually wish you would do the same.  Please do hold your beliefs dear and strong.  But don’t except me to feel the same. Diversity is a beautiful and exciting part of life, and if I’m so insecure I can’t tolerate a conflicting opinion, or need you think the same way I do, well, it’s a shallow world we live in.  And you know; I’m all about diving in deep.

Challenging the assumptions that one might be best holding ones beliefs deep within as personal truths, I also am learning to be true what I’ve always heard:  Life is worth nothing if you don’t stand for something.  What do you stand for?  Tell me if you’d like.  I don’t have to agree.  But I enjoy knowing what matters most to you. For with that, I learn who you are.  Though I consider another quote I read recently:  You are not known by your beliefs but your actions.  I’m not sold on that yet, but thought I’d throw that in since I’m stirring the pot today.

What do I stand for? If you don’t know, I hope my words speak true and you’ll figure it out if you stick around and read a while.  In the meanwhile, make no assumptions.  Because I don’t know about you, but when I do that I tend to be wrong.  So this much I can say is true:  A person is only proven by the actions I have known them to take.  Stories don’t count.  And for that, you can read:  rumors and gossip and third party tales.

Here’s a grand example of one who stands for what she believes in, and isn’t afraid to stir the waters and create a little mud in the process.  Tricia Cook stands for the wolves… and coyotes.  (See her most recent article from the Mountain Gazette HERE)  Both of which I relate to, as I live beside the coyote day by day, and roll my eyes to hear of men “hunting the problem coyote.”  You got a problem?  Because my coyotes don’t.  Not here at least.  In fact, chances are they are a lot less of a problem on this mountain than that ignorant hunter might be.

Oh, excuse me.  I’m often a bit gruff on Fridays.  And tact, well, tact has never been my forte.  I’m working on it.

But really, what I meant to get to in writing this post, I’m a long ways away from.  Something about that pile of bones. And it’s nothing to do with coyote hunting, though I wouldn’t be surprised if coyotes are in on the picture somehow or other.

Well, until Monday!  I’ll share the rest with you then.  Have a wonderful weekend.

From where the water flows

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

Some say everything happens for a reason. Nothing is chance. It’s all meant to be.

I can’t say I’m convinced. I believe in free will. I believe in taking responsibility for my own actions, even if it is my actions that bring me to the wrong place at the wrong time. Which has been known to happen.

About as often as… I find myself in the right place at the right time.

Free will and free spirits.

Meeting friends, lovers, the family we choose to keep and create, in that perspective, is no more than coincidence. Two free spirits meeting with an instant recognition. Connection. Just like that.  Or not, because sometimes it takes a while, you work at it, and your first impressions aren’t so great.

As adults we have the right to choose our family, don’t we? I have seen too well how damaging holding onto ties and obligations of a dissolving family can be when we blindly cling to what we’re born with.  I’m not interested in living out of the pages of someone else’s story.  I’d rather write my own.

Free choice. Sometimes we must choose to walk away. Open up your eyes and see! What will you choose?

So I walked. No, more than that. I drove. Alongside my husband in our well worn flat-bed pick-up truck towing a twenty-four foot horse trailer loaded down with three cats, a dog, a half a ton of horse tack and two ton or more of personal items we just couldn’t leave behind.

Fourteen hundred miles to Washington State to start anew, and get away from the burdens of yesterdays repeating themselves over and over like unwelcome rain tapping the roof when you’ve already got enough mud outside the front door.

It was only five months away and already we chose to… what should I say? Leave? Or return? We left there, returned here.  Home.  Our Colorado ranch. There’s business to take care of, obligations, responsibilities, commitments. And an oddly deep connection to the land.

Powerful is the draw. The attachment remains in silent dormancy in some secret place deep within.

The mountains are mightier than the people who claim them. Being away gives one a new perspective. I don’t need to own them. I just need to be there.  And not sitting around staring, but out there, working with the land, a part of the elements.  Wet when the rain falls and cold when the temperature drops which more often than not up here it does.

So begins a journey like the path of an untamed river.

A new twist in a old river.  Happens all the time.  All it takes is a log caught in the flow, and the course is redirected.  Nothing stays the same.   And the river never stands still for long.

 

Signs of spring

/ Gin Getz / 11 Comments

It snows. A heavy fat white wet spring snow.  The next day the storm clears, clouds are blown away, and so am I.  We are slammed with the blinding, beautiful intensity of the mountain painted bright white fresh wash and that crazy blue unreal high sky of these Colorado mountains pinned up over head and I forgot how tired my cheeks get from squinting because I refuse to sport sunglasses as I want to feel it all, soak it all in every last pore, make the most of it and not have the world before me subdued by some tinted plastic barriers before my eyes.  I know, not so smart, perhaps, but for today, whatever, it just feels good and sometimes feeling good is a plenty enough motivator.  To hell with practicality.

Ah, but I am practical.  Sometimes.  I try to balance it.  Passion usually wins out, but practicality keeps a strong hold.  Things like doing chores (caring for the animals is the grounding of my flighty soul), stirring up breakfast on the old wood cook stove, cleaning house, and… making a living.

Dang, what’s with those practical responsibilities?

Oh come on, how long do you think the honeymoon could last?   The haze lifts.  Reality sets in.  Work.  Money.  Bills.  Life.  It is easy to enter one’s own simple dream world, but impossible and impractical to remain there.

My dreams seem at war with practicality.   Why can’t I, I ask anyone who will listen, and on most days that doesn’t usually entail more than the ever willing to listen dog, attentive with his perked ears and head cocked sidesways.  Why can’t I take care of my house and homestead, then settle in to write for the rest of the morning, and work on the mountain or build something new in the afternoon and not have to worry about food on our table and fuel in our truck and hay for the horses?  Well, I do have to worry. The pressures of the outside world seep in. And the stresses of realizing our truck isn’t getting any younger and neither are we and mechanics and doctors and vets aren’t free, and credit card bills really do have to be paid, and if one actually pays them on time it’s a little less painful in theory. And in theory we’d have money to allow us to do that. But in reality…

How does one balance dream and desire with day to day? Without giving up.  Because that is simply not an option.  Living a dream, if that’s what you call the way that I live, is what I’ll continue to do. And if I have to go down, damn it, I’m going down kicking.

But somehow, I’ll betcha, I’ll find a way.

A walk in the park

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

Room to breath.  I need that in this thin mountain air. And I find it.

Out there miles and miles from phone, power, people.  Following a trail I have been on foot, horseback, snowshoe surely a thousand times or more. Different every time.  Now soft moist earth beneath my boots as the winter’s load is lifting and a spring storm falls on us, just me and my dog.  Only the occasional track of elk, moose or coyote crossing our path.  I see the signs well now with my head held down to reduce the resistance of the horizontal snow.  Tracks highlighted by fat white flakes on the leeward side of their impression.

Raw earth.  Umber, sienna, soil and seed.  Awaiting new life, growth, a melodious yielding, more comfortable for the eye to see, now too harsh to behold.  As the tourists await the softening of sunshine, ground cover and leaves , I am allowed this time alone.

Slowly we reconnect.  As a long lost familiar lover, knowing her secret places, her touch, her feel, her scent.  No words need be spoken.

My appetite is back as well. Those fancy dinner salads that did us fine at three thousand feet are replaced with cravings of meat and potatoes.  And still my thigh muscles shake like a washing machine on spin cycle, and my head is dizzy from the thin air as I push myself up switchback trails because flat land is no where to be found for too long round these parts.  And it feels good.

I stop again to capture another picture. An excuse to catch my breath.  I consider how many times I have stopped right here, and how many pictures I have of this view.  But it is different this time.  I say that every time.

There’s this little yellow flower, plain and simple, nothing fancy, rather rough and ungraceful.  The first flower of the season.  As wild as they get.  I see a few out there, only three or four, remaining upright in the wind though dusted with snow, as I I make my way over strewn rocks in the open park, head tucked in and down against the biting sky.  I don’t stop to whip out my camera.  My fingers are numb.  I enjoy the simple, subtle gift of color and continue on my way.

Impressions

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

What matters most?  People?  Place?

I tell you I am in love with the place, but you know how I feel about the people that this land represents.  My husband and my son.  They are what make this home, beautiful, safe and warm and welcoming, and complete my wanting to be here.  They are indeed what matters.  Otherwise, would the view from my window be of no more importance than a random pretty picture hanging on my wall?

Consider the roots my son has here, strong and silent and unseen to the observing eye. Though he has lived elsewhere (twelve “homes” in his first three years, then several years settled in a place he no longer remembers), this is home, where he was raised, schooled, taught life’s lessons, and had room to grow tall and straight and sturdy.  How much of this is due to the family that we three became here?

I once heard a person say everyone is replaceable.

“See how long that drop makes a ripple in the bucket of water? That’s how long our impression lasts when we’re gone,” he said.  Was he really shallow enough to believe that?

I don’t see life that way.  Nor would I want to. Instead, I am saturated by the many drops of water that soak into my skin and become a part of my flesh and blood.

I am affected by people. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I am fed, nourished, satisfied.

One of the greatest persons I have known was a man by the name of Bud Jackson who was herding rouge cattle in the mountains last I saw him at ninety. I have a couple of old posts about him Here and Here.   In case you didn’t or don’t read those, I want to share this with you. The quote chosen for the celebration of life upon his passing was one attributed to the late, great Jackie Robinson:

“A life is not important except for the impact it has on others.”

Words to live by.

I remind myself.

You do matter.  You do leave a lasting impression.  Make it a good one.

I, for one, have a long ways to go.  I hope I am allowed the time.  Better yet, I hope I learn to make the most of the time I am allowed.

Remember how fleeting life may be.

 

 

I bow my head in blessings and respect for the family of the youngest member of our community who left a beautiful impact before ever breathing of this fresh mountain air.

A good place to be

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Huge moon lights my world this morning.

I swear it’s these mornings when in such silence the depth of the world is found in surrounding snow covered peaks glowing in the moonlight that allow, if not develop, the profundity of my own thought and imagination.

I read a quote yesterday – in Western Horseman magazine of all place, written by Joel Nelson, a wonderful cowboy poet – which holds true for any artist, scientist or philosopher:

“You must allow yourself the luxury of thinking deeply. To be a great artist, you have to submit to the muse.”

Ah, my muse!  The mountain!

My son writes last night (or early this morning as the case may be for a nineteen year old caught in the throes of college) he’s looking forward to returning to Colorado though he is enjoying British Columbia and his university.

He says, “… seldom it is the place that’s special.”

For years I tried to convince myself the same because of a deep rift between my intense love for my family, home and mountain here and the accrual of painful conflicts surrounding us.

I reply:

“Seldom… but sometimes… the place is special.

I think perhaps it is possible to be in love with the land.  Have a dazzling, passionate relationship.  And then, even, if we work at it, settle into a long lasting love.

In any case, a place is as special as we make it, as we hold it to be in our hearts, and in balance with the positive energy we put into it.  There again, just like a relationship of people…

Hmmm… interesting to consider.  I need to ponder this one more….”

I am in love.  Madly, wildly, passionately, and at the same time, settling into to the commitment of long term.

A good place to be.

Soft storm

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

We awake to our world wrapped in a swathe of white.  And I consider how familiar I am with this.  How our world is, has been, for nearly half my days here.  A frequent view.  Almost expected.  As expected as seeing horses from the kitchen window as I sit and savor my morning coffee.  As expected as smelling their sweet musty scent on my hands, finding their hairs clinging to every shirt and sweater, and hearing their heavy footsteps upon frozen ground as they run to greet me in the morning.

And now they are there.  Completing my view. Fulfilling my life. I have missed them in ways I do not quite understand but may come to realize as I spend more time with them again. Feeding, training, first rides of the season, polishing tack, brushing off their winter coats and allowing their fresh spring sheen to surface.  Familiar as close friends or family.  Those I choose to have around.  Each with such a great variation of character, defining myself through relationships with each.

I must head back out to work now.  Boxes still unpacked, shelves calling to be filled, a world in the process of returning to what I expect it to be.  Same as it was?  No, thank you.  Better indeed. For I am not fool enough to hold onto what was, but am learning to carry with me what I chose as I forge my future with those stones from the past I care to stack into the foundation I am building for the future.

Snow and ice and rushing waters

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I find my way up a road laced with crusty snow and last year’s grasses still pressed sideways from the weight of winter’s burden.  Silent it would be were it not for my loud-mouthed dog, barking, sweeping both sides of the road before me, keeping me safe from wildlife.  Funny, though, for I have never feared wildlife.  People, perhaps, but never a wild beast.

How many miles separate me from another human being, here and now, except my husband still asleep in the cabin he built with logs he felled and dragged?  There is something about home.  I walk in the cold wide open crisp sweet untouched air of early morning before the sun has even met my trail and my thoughts wind back to home.

Home.  It is odd how happy we feel here.  We have earned this it, this sense of home.  Built it, fought for it, left it, and returned.

Paw prints of the pup cross before me again, brown on white, easy to trace the joy of his freedom and energy, now dropping down to an open creek running clear and quiet before the inevitable mid day warmth lets loose the fury of melting snow.  Snow and ice and rushing waters.  Spring in the high country. The elements blending together.  A blur of passing clouds and melting snow and the shrill whistle of a pair of blue birds lighting the top of a nearby spruce tree.  Subtle harmony of earth and sky.

I stop atop the highest hill before the ribbon of road drops down to the river.  The pup joins me, sits tall and watches.  He has learned to accept and perhaps even enjoy these still moments.  Our heads face west into a charcoal grey horizon portending another storm.  And below the metallic sky juts up bright white peaks, royal crowns above tree line probably nine miles away.  I remember trudging through the snow on the far side and dropping down that face one April years ago with Bob and Forrest on an adventure I said I’d do alone if they wouldn’t join me.  Which of course they did.

Memories swell with the brown waters and are washed clean and clear as melting snow.  I am left with a barren hillside as the sun now shines upon it, sending me home to wake my husband and stoke the fire in the old iron cook stove on which I’ll fry up breakfast.