Author: Gin Getz

An open letter to my son

/ Gin Getz / 11 Comments

To my dearest Forrest,

And here it ends.
And here it begins.

I leave you in the arms of another mountain. Listen, if I may ask, for a moment to me. And then to the mountains. The rush of her rivers. The hush of her winds. You will never be alone. Let her embrace you.

This mountain, your mountain, a grand mountain indeed. She will always be there for you. She is yours. You chose her. Turn to her when you need to. She will listen. Some days she will shed tears of freezing rain or hail as your heart opens and breaks and mends. Other days she will enwrap you in her bliss with warm lazy sun to allow you a brief repose, or soft deep powder and invite you like a tempting muse to come and play. Enjoy it all; she has so much to give.

You found her. I see who you have chosen as your own for the first time and she has taken my breath away. She dwarfs our dear San Juans and the entire state of Colorado and the most dramatic mountains we have intimately known and lived on to date. And now, she is yours. She has lured you. And she has earned you, you wonderful and true child of the mountains.

You chose her. How brave and mighty! Do you see how you have grown? Perhaps I did not really see until now, until I turned one more curve in the road of these last two weeks driving together to be here, and there she is before us, grand and mighty and eternal, still and calm and old and wise, and my heart beats faster for her beauty is profound and she feels so right.

I am proud of you. Incredibly proud. You are a brave and bold (though quiet) sort. Your wild child side is strong!

You have earned your place here; you are worthy of your next great stage in life, the next opportunities, challenges and adventures. I watch this tall bright fine man standing next to me speaking for himself and I shine with such delight and honor. On one hand, I can say eighteen years of work paid off. This job is complete. And yet, I know parenting is never complete. It only changes and evolves. I guess I’m enjoying our evolving relationship as I am enjoying you as a growing man.

Everything changes. We do all we can to make change positive. This, my bud, is a dream come true. A wonderful, positive, beautiful dream.

To this mountain I now give you. I will leave you here. That is the hardest thing I have ever said.

For four years she will hold, include, support and nurture you. Accept her embrace. Revel in her fresh waters and unending views and powerful presence of jutting slopes, and delicate array of swaying wild grasses with jewels of seed heads ripening to full blossom in their short growing season that you understand so well. Remember to take time to notice the little things, the simple things, the quiet voices of the mountain you’ll hear only when you’re alone with her, quiet and still, touching and listening. Find a new rock to sit on, your place, a place to allow you to look within. Turn to her when you need the comfort that only the mountains can allow, only a mother, our mother, the mother of us all, Mother Earth.

And then I, your mother of this earth, shall turn her back to hide the tears as she steps into the truck and turns back to a home that is no longer hers. One we built together, for each other. I never meant to bring you this far only to leave you in a foreign land two thousand miles away. I shall keep our family together and shall be closer soon.

In the meanwhile, learn, study, grow, live, play, work, and enjoy all the wonder and beauty and richness that life has to offer and still thirst for more.

May her rivers never go dry, and may your thirst never be completely quenched so that you may always be open for more.

I can say no more. This is not good bye. You know I hate good byes.

And so I leave you to this mountain. But I leave you not in heart and soul.

I love you.

Beyond the surface

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Beyond the surface
Dragonflies, big and blue and about the size of hummingbirds
But mute, mysterious, and yet somehow, more real.
There are no red plastic feeders here
Wild and silent and shimmering in the otherwise flat grey light of dawn
Leaving big ripples on the still forest pool
Perfect circles expanding
A bull’s-eye.
It is different here
New and as such, slightly odd.

We are camping beside a large pond with cattails taller than the camper on our truck and lily pads the size of dinner plates skirting the edges. Earlier this morning the largest bull moose I ever saw splashed in through these lilies and swam to the other side, his huge and heavy rack held above the black silk surface in the haze of first light like a burdensome and looming ship crossing a medieval mote.

At our camp site is trash, always an unwelcome site. Local trash. Tell tale signs of broken beer bottles, cigarette butts, shotgun shells and business cards from a shop in the nearest town about a half hour down the mountain. Little pride in their beautiful land. I’ve never understood that. Does it form from a sense of helplessness or ignorance? In any case, I call it a bad sign.

I am looking for signs. Signs that tell me “this is the place.” Home. I’m not finding it and it’s somewhat scary since I am committed to make this move and soon, yet have not figure where this move will take me. And depressing because I keep hoping to find it clear and simple, “Eureka!” there it is, and am disappointed each day as I sit in the back seat of the pickup and look out the side window at the landscape rushing by, hoping something there will call me, tell me I belong here. But I hear nothing beside the rush of the motor and the blaring music of my son and the regular outbursts of silly humor of the three of us telling jokes and stories in our funny and familiar way.

I lose faith in myself and wish I had faith in higher powers. But higher powers haven’t got me where I am. Hard work and a strong sense of daring have. I have no blind faith. My eyes are wide open. I know that will upset some to read. The same few who might admire my life and keep praying to live where and how I have lived. I would like to believe prayers will get you as far as grit but haven’t seen this first hand.

Funny though that I still keep praying, asking for a sign, asking to be put where I belong and do what I can to best serve this beautiful world.

And the truck rumbles on, and another day passes as fast as the view outside the side window, and in a blur I remember the answer but it’s not as clear and comforting as I wish it were.

Make it happen. There is no red carpet laid out for the journey of life. Weave it as you go along. And weave it yourself. All the velvety red ribbon is already inside you. It’s not the place; it is you. All you need to do is get to work and weave the path yourself. Believe in yourself. I’ve heard those words before.

There’s more to it than that. I’m listening for the answers. But I’m learning to listen within.

A familiar place

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Does it matter where I end up, or only that I’m going somewhere?

Somewhere else. Away. Changing. Leaving.

I’m not one to hold onto the past, I say. But letting go is hard.

If only I was a tourist, I say, but I’ve never wanted to be one. I want a real life, solid, working, not a make-believe-for-a-week one. A point and a purpose. Does this make sense? I am rambling. In words. In miles. I might lose you. Leave you behind. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to fill your place. Your space in my life. But I will fill it with new life, novel adventures, fresh views. Can we choose what we carry with us?

Change. Only a blind man does not look back from time to time. I can look, but try not to touch. Sometimes, I’ve learned, we also must let go of that rope. It’s binding. Holding us down when it’s time to fly free.

But, dang, it’s scary flying among thin clouds. I’m scared. Permanence, grounding. These sound so attractive. A friend once told me she was firmly planted with her feet in the clouds. I understand and now feel the same. It’s not a new feeling. I’ve been here before. A familiar place. At once recognizable and so uncertain.

When do we touch down, stay down? Or maybe is there more to life that settling down and staying.

Something about leaving… What is it that draws us onward?

Leap!

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

We sat in the tent, my son and me, as the light withered.  The horses were in the trees for the night,
the little stove hissed, dinner was done, a candle or two were lit in preparation
of the darkness that was swelling.

Everything changes, but some things remain the same.  He will always be my son.  I will always be his mother, and be, give,
create everything I can for him.  I will be
there for him if he needs me, though “there” may have greater physical distance
between us.  And “needing” may not be as often.

We talked, just the two of us, as two adults, two individuals
with big hearts and big dreams, together in one quiet tent in the middle of the
Wilderness.  I gave one last
lecture.  No, there will be more.  He knows.
He’s had them his whole life.  He
knows I speak because I care.  I worry, I
want to give him all I can.

I reminded him of the Cowboy Way.  Rules to live by, each of us, as he heads out
to make his own choices without me near to intervene.  Probably better now.  He knows plenty.  He is ready.
He may not always make the right choices, but he will probably know when
he is wrong, and hopefully do what he can to amend.  He will be hurt from time to time, too.  That is life, but as a mother, that is a hard
one to accept.  We wish for a perfect,
protective bubble.  Yet we know life
doesn’t work that way.

And I reminded him of what matters most to me, for I see
these things matter to him, too.

  1. Live
    life passionately.
  2. Let
    yourself, allow yourself, or make yourself be spontaneous.  Plans are necessary, but sometimes you just
    have to do.
  3. Be
    positive in outlook.  Life IS beautiful
    and amazing, and so are you.
  4. Find
    a purpose in life that is giving, not taking, and do what you can to make the world
    a better place.  Strive to leave
    everything and everyone a little better for having had you there.
  5. Be
    yourself.  There is no one more special.

These are the words of wisdom I send my son off with as he
leaves tomorrow to begin the journey to college. The road trip begins.  The adventure begins.  A new world unfolds.  He is leaving behind the world and home he
has known for more than half his life.

He shows no regrets, sadness, loss or remorse.  Only a calm excitement, which is basically
how he handles life. He’s better at that than me.

I compare his reaction to the negative ones I hear too often
associated with change here.  I am tired
of hearing what it means to the tourists who come here for but a week a year
when humbly my job has required me to listen.
My son, for whom this has been not just a fond memory but a solid and
real home with all the ups and downs that a full rich life are built on, has still
not whined.  And I know he will not.

Tomorrow our life changes.
Just like that.  I don’t know the
answers yet.  Maybe some of them.  Like Forrest going to college.  That’s awesome.  I’m proud of him as a proud parent could ever
be for working as hard as he has to allow himself the opportunities and open
doors he found and created.  His choices.  His life.

As for me, for us, a family, a couple now, moving, changing,
growing, starting something new… I’m ready.
Bring it on.

All the same

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Can I still see it new, feel it new, when time and again was it the same rain that fell light and cold on my face, and the same tall grasses that soaked my jeans and leather boots?

I reach for my camera then put it away. I have taken the same before. This is not a child forever changing and growing though I have amassed as many photos of the mountain as I did my child in his early years.

How do we know it is time to move on when the land calls us so strongly, the quiet muses tempting and taunting in the song of the late season trickle of the creek and twinkling light of the plump Aspen leaves. If you listen, you’ll know. She is not calling us. Perhaps, only perhaps, she tells us to leave. She too would rather dance alone.

A tingle like nearby lightening when riding over the Divide. Too close, and exposed. Without protection of the trees.

We could run back for shelter. Where it is safer, it is known.

Or hunker down in the saddle and move on.

Even when we don’t know where “on” may be.

Such a wide and wild world. I wouldn’t want it otherwise.

Subtle signs

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

The birds are boisterous in the early morning, silent mid
day in the heat, heat still lingering, a heavy burden remaining from the peak of summer.  The intensity of the seasons in the high
mountains.

Summer is ending.  Longer
shadows even at noon with the sun arcing lower in the southern sky.  Crisp outlines to every object in the
landscape before us.  Signs of
change.  Promise of change.  Subtle and certain.  There is great comfort in knowing what to
expect as the seasons unfold one onto the next.

I am here listening through thin walls of the tent and
realize how separate I am. Connections to nature we created. Threads in our own
minds.  But the longer I am here the more
I understand:  we shall never be a part.  We are but observers, trespassers in the
wild.

The sound of a hummingbird zipping by, way up here on the
Divide, seemingly a world away from where you might expect such a fragile
creature to choose to be, and I think of how displaced we are here when most have
only known these delicate birds hovering around red plastic feeders and it
somehow doesn’t cross our mind they might survive without us to feed them.  Do we forget at times how the world might
manage without us?  We choose to intervene.
And deem ourselves important as we stir
the sugar water.

Am I jaded to the wilds around me as I turn my back and
prepare to leave?  Or can I learn to take
with me in a secret place inside the vastness of the time we have shared
together unlike anyone else?  Such is a
relationship ending.

They tell me I may never find such a beautiful view, as if
that is what matters most, and I consider their ignorance wondering if they
would base the quality their marriage on the most beautiful bride.

What I want beside me when I wake each morning is deeper and
richer than a pretty view.

Leaving the ditch

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

An intimate involement.
To a ditch?  Yes! To the
land.  To the wilds.  My family, nature, hard work, solitude,
silence, space.  You see?  It all fits together.  It includes me.  I am a part of her.

Room to breathe and a reason to breathe deep.  Dirty jeans and sweaty shirts and blistered
hands and shoulders and a back so sore in the morning it’s hard to slip socks on.

And I can’t imagine leaving her forever.

I know her like no one else.
Her curves, shallow spots, rocky places, weaknesses and strengths.  Where her wildest flowers bloom, and where
she sheds the silent needles of her dying trees.  Morning rains and evening shadows, how they
spread across and change her. Just a ditch.

No different than a farmer who tends the land, I have seen
her flow with plenty, break loose where she should not, given her an extra push
when I thought I had no more in me, and leaned on my shovel and done nothing
more than watch.

As with all wilds, this is a relationship one sided.  I will tend to her.  She will let me.  She will not stop me.  But she will never care.  Somehow, the nurturing is enough.  I need no more.  I am satisfied to work, to give, to tend to
her and ask for nothing in return.

For look how much she has given me.

A wild strawberry under frosty leaves

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Heavy rains, a comforting wrap about the shoulders of the
mountain.  I walk the ditch tucked under
the wide brim of my hat and the soft canopy of trees with fewer needles than I
remember each year.

It has been a while since I could walk with her alone, in
silence and peace.  Who would guess the
disruption of a puppy would have such an impact?  He’s a different sort.  Still after a year, we don’t fit together
like Alan and I did.  I miss the silent
old dog always by my side companionship.
It will be hard earned, but it will come.

Or perhaps my feeling of separation from the mountain on
which I walk it is more than that.  Now
that I finally know we are leaving.  I
separate myself.  I don’t allow myself to
hold on.  It is not mine.  Then again, it never was.

Without a new land, a new plan, a new place to be connected
with, I am incomplete.

Have I ever been complete?

 

And now August.
Middle of the month already.  I
have trouble keeping track of, keeping up with time this time of year.  I wonder if it matters.  Subtle signs show me where and when.  A change of winds, of season, of
sunlight.  Mid day and the shadows are
already showing.  Longer, sharper,
crisper.

Morning and the first frost settles in and across the open
meadow of the Divide, replacing the weeks’ worth of fog and cloud I became so
accustomed to seeing upon waking, walking through the tall grasses soaking my
pants to above my knees as I lead the horses, two by two, from the comfort of
the highline tucked into the trees to their early morning feeding on the lush
mountain grasses.

The hillside is sprinkled with tiny gems hiding beneath frosty
leaves.  Wild strawberries.  I watch every step, often end up crawling on
hands and knees to harvest a handful.

Sweet treats.  How
easy to overlook when we’re too focused forward to look at the ground before
us.  Changing ground.  Changing lives.  Reaping the harvest while it blooms.  What a pity if I had missed this.

Evening rain

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Evening settles into a downpour.  Deep and grey and heavy.  Rain and hail, loud on the thin walls of the
tent.  We are in here, dry, protected by
no more than thin canvas.  More than
enough.

Lightening touches down above tree line across canyon.  Our horses are out there with their heads
down, ignoring the massive blasts of thunder that heave onto the walls of the Divide,
rumble and roll around the peaks like water shaken in a glass jar, round and
round it seems while we sit cradled in the center, in the shelter of the tent.  Yes, the tent I did not want to bring because
it somehow seemed decadent to have anything more than a tarp to crawl
under.  Me, who likes it simple.  Sleeping under a tree this month would have
left us wet and cold.  We’re here to
work.  A good night sleep is not a bad
idea.  I conceded.  I confess the boys were right again.

So here we are under a canvas roof with a small woodstove
hissing against the seeping sides of the stovepipe, water pouring off outside
walls filling buckets half full with sweet clean cold bounty free from the
generous sky.  Allowing me one less trip
to the creek with sloshing buckets in each hand.

I sit by the open tent door and look out at the horses through
the shroud of heavy misty rain.  They
remain seemingly unaffected.  This has
happened to them before.  Seems like
every night for the past few weeks.  And
when we lead them into the shelter of trees at night and offer them a simple
handful of treats and a gentle touch, I smell deeply the musk of dampness on
their steaming coats that appear already to be thickening with the first hints
of winter fur.

Thunder begins on the other side of the tent now, the other
side of the Divide. Rain lightens and sky attempts to brighten, a brief flight
of sunlight through a weak spot in thin clouds.
And then the sun will drop down beyond the Pyramid, the high point on
the mountain we know is there but cannot see.
Blind faith.  Like knowing we’ll
see the sun and be warmed and dried when morning comes.

Now our vision is limited to the valley and the foothills of
the mountain across from us, a familiar face hidden behind a veil of heavy
clouds, hardly demure, but strong and powerful.
Comforting in her solid feel. There, a mother and baby moose cross
between our horses and the trail that leads up and away into the clouded
shrouded horizon.  The little fellow
scampering with gangly legs only partially in control, playfully ahead of
mother, who nervously runs to keep up, ahead, protect, do what a good mother
should do.

They are unconcerned with our horses who out there now remind
me what a giant step closer to wild they are than me.

Me, safe and warm and sealed off from the elements by
nothing more than a tent.  Which too
often, is enough to separate.  And I feel
the growing rift when what I want is connection.  How we fool ourselves to believe we too are a
part.  For only a never lasting moment.

Simple words after a storm

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Oh for peace of place

I seek around me

And all the while

Forgetting to look within

 

Calm and quiet after stormy skies

Have spent their fiery passion

Leaving moist grass in the dramatic evening sky

And let me be still to listen