Author: Gin Getz

Graduation

/ Gin Getz / 12 Comments

Sand between my toes. Not what I have felt in years, living in a land of snow and wool socks, jagged rocks, boggy pasture and cowboy boots.

I have painted my toenails for first time in over twenty years, borrowing “city clothes” from my mother, sandals straight off her feet to be here. It is special.

Sand pours through my fingers, back onto the beach, limitless possibilities of patterns in the sand, forever changed by wind and water and my footprints which will last only until the tide returns.

I think of sand filtering through the confines of an hourglass, slowly shifting, piling, only to be turned again as we watch the next section fill. This is how we tell time.

Changing times.

Times of growth. Always growing. Nothing remains the same. Only now we take the time to acknowledge and celebrate.

Graduation. My son’s achievement of completing high school. In his class of one, he is here to share with others who have achieved similar. The balance of education and life.

It’s been up to him. Alone. I don’t teach him. He has learned to learn himself. His mind has not only grown with knowledge, but with the self-discipline and skills of directing, focusing, motivating and empowering himself. He has learned at eighteen what I seen some still don’t know.

And he understands the power and passion of work.

Where will his dreams lead him from here?

A new beginning.

As my greatest dream to date is being fulfilled.

Only to have more dreams, new dreams, variations on a theme, or beginning to sing a new song.

I love you, Forrest Nile Getz.

Work

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

When I was a little girl, my daddy told me to make sure you do what you love. Then “work” is not a negative, but something you live for, something that makes you better and complete. Something that fulfills you on one hand, and on the other, enables you to give a part of yourself back into the world, hopefully making it a little better place along the way.

I don’t care what that work is as long as you make it a positive thing. It could be serving a better burger, or at least a warm smile with a bad burger. It could be designing better roadways and transportation systems, as my dad does; or education and assurance of voter rights and practices as my mom does. Or me, cleaning cabins. And maintaining a trans-continental water diversion ditch in the Weminuche Wilderness, as we do. Among other things, yes, I am a self professed ditch digger. And I love it.

I believed him then, and have held his words of wisdom close throughout my life. As my daddy taught me by example, so I hope I have taught my son to have his passion be work, and work be passion.

Yesterday was one of those defining days. This is what work is all about. I was horseback, with my husband in the beautiful Wilderness all day. The horses and dog were perfect, the weather as good as it gets, our mission at the ditch a success, and we returned to the trailhead after fifteen miles and not another human in site or sound. My kind of day.

This is what work should be. Doing what we love. Loving what we do. It’s not always perfect, not always ideal, some days it’s pretty cruddy, and all those challenges make it that much richer, and me that much stronger.

Lessons my parents taught me. And they still continue to do so. Both well past the age that most have chosen the state of un-work. And both still living for their work.

And each other, I might add.  Which I see brings life its greatest balance.

This happens every year

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

The river continues to rise. A café au lait rush of roaring melting snow ripping down the canyon. The mighty Rio Grande contained by the steep bluff of rocks cut from years of this spring ritual. The island we hop onto in summer is submerged. The plank used to cross the gentle expanse in fall has been washed downstream. I look for its unnatural straight edges and rectangular shape of wood floating somewhere out there in the huge expanse of the Reservoir, two miles downriver. What was large enough to carry my weight across the river will appear as no more than a needle in the haystack out there in the vast still waters of the lake, waters waiting their turn to rush and rip again when they reach the other side and resume the river’s course.

And until we build a bridge or the waters subside, suddenly I find myself trapped here on this side, surrounded by tourists and traffic and in-laws on one side, and the raging river on the other. It’s not that these things are all unpleasant, some are surprisingly wonderful, but I feel myself as a caged beast unable to roam free. The wilds of winter and my room to roam are suddenly taken away. I learn to adjust. It’s not all bad. But I am no longer alone, no longer in touch with the mountain, and a part of me is lost.

This happens every year.

Roaring, rushing, raging. The sound penetrates the windows of the Little Cabin, old windows, old glass, seemingly seeping with time, distorting the view with lines of weeping age from single pane glass probably eighty years old.

The waters will calm. The snow in the high country above tree line is lesser each day, now no more than patches, stripes, pieces of the whole remaining, holding tight, losing ground. Work in the high country calls us, my escape to wilder worlds as my home becomes too tame in summer.

My home. Funny I should still call it such. And so it will be until I find another place to pour my heart into the land, and mix my blood with the rush of another raging river.

Almost summer

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

Some days we wait, other days we run to catch up. I forgot what it feels like to sit back and wait for the world to catch me. Or is it only in moments of foolish pride that I feel that could possibly be the case?

Summer. The calendar says it’s still a week away, but I say it’s here now. The ranch is filled with laugher of children, and if there is one sound that fills me with joy after the sounds I’m used to of the mountain’s silence, children’s laugher is it. Many children. Last I heard, there were sixty or so. The pup thinks they are all here for him, and revels the attention as he fetches his football tossed by many an eager child unwinding in the soft light of late afternoon.

And in the middle of the laughter and ball playing and sunny city smiles letting loose in the high mountain air, we’re banging away as usual – never the sorts to sit back and soak and take the summer off, but more comfortable with our role of building, providing, creating the place and space.

And tired as I am some days when a bath and bed seem so attractive yet still out of reach, I look around at these smiles, and the ensuing smiles of my own boys, and I’ll stick with Forrest’s expression: sleep is overrated.

Oh, and for Karen and those waiting news on Forrest’s mare, well, we’re still waiting. Now into her seventh day of “waxing” when I’ve never seen a mare take more than two. But waiting is a wonderful thing in this case, as it brings me alone and silent, with the pup at my side, staring up at Pole Mountain illuminated under the cold deep glow of the setting moon in the otherwise darkness of the frosty morning.

The comfort of clouds

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Intimacy is lost in the noise of chatter drowning out the rushing brown waters I hear only now in the wee hours as I step outside to soak in the chill of early morning silence. Mid day and everywhere I look there are people, signs of people, lights, motors, movement. I am used to being alone. The vast rift between alone and lonely. I am lonelier around people.

I no longer feel the mountain and long for the tender touch of falling snow which is the mountain as she allows herself to be, gives herself to me. I am lost in the walls of my own home, no longer mine as we move out once again. And yet somehow I feel lighter without the encumbrance of clinging, claiming. I am moving on, transforming, and that feels as good to say as it does to accept as I look around my world once again in boxes and shrug off the confusion, too busy still to focus on the future. Probably a good thing, as I am rather uncertain where that will lead.

A heavy grey sky hangs over our greening valley this morning, closing us in with the mountain. It does not burden but frees, providing a sense of place and space, completion, connection, a still peace.  For just a moment, I am allowed to slow down and do no more than breathe.

A contradiction to the pressures of the day.  And the day begins now.

Morning moose

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Early morning as the sky begins to lighten. I’ve been looking out regularly (and throughout the night) at my son’s mare due to foal today. A young female moose steals my attention now. She is lying in a patch of yet unopened iris out on pasture not far from the gate. The same pasture the moose have claimed for the past two weeks, and probably the same moose I’ve been cussing for grazing heartily on our already too limited pasture.

There, now, she is resting so close to my unconcerned herd. The horses, once so quick to spook and snort at the sight or smell, have become conditioned to their regular presence and mill about at ease. I watch her through the binoculars and the sky brightens and my vision improves. For the first time, I find such beauty in these otherwise awkward animals. She is a soft charcoal grey, I imagine touching her neck, stroking soft and silky, with the wavy hairs along her back like the mane of a horse, and her long nose, almost regal. I see a different side to her this morning, a shared familiarity, as she lies there. The female side. I’ve never seen their beauty, but nor have I shared this intimacy of a peaceful morning rest.

She’s up now, trotting off to meet up with the two young bulls she’s spent the spring with that must be lower down the pasture beyond my view, told by the direction of the horses heads, all turned in unison in that direction. The horses do not turn to watch her rise and leave. My attention returns to the expecting mare.

Connections

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Sometimes it seems it is all about connection.
Connections growing, holding on to established ones, clinging to the ones we had and fear are slipping away, and longing for ones we do not have.
Connection to each other, our family and friends, our dreams and goals and aspirations, the land.
It often comes back to the land, though our society seems less connected; a void left unfulfilled.
And suddenly we begin to care from where our food comes, or about the change of color of a once green hillside now red and brown from beetle kill, or recognize the subtle sound of a single trout upon an otherwise still evening pool after catching the last fly of the day.
A forgotten connection on the surface deeper than we will ever erase.

And letting go

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

And then it
is over

Winter
tucked away so neatly for the season

Not unlike
the box of shiny ornaments in the attic from the Christmas tree

The white
peaks surround, a reminder like left over wrapping papers and ribbons

Scattered still
in the corners of the room.

Somehow we
sense she is finally through

What we have
known

The givens,
assumptions, the safety of knowing

Is suddenly
gone

The bottom
dropped out from under

Searching for
solid ground

When we were
so used to walking on feet of snow

We are left
empty

Surprised to
find ourselves suddenly without

The habit of
heavy boots and zipped up parkas

As I head
out in morning to feed the horses

Who too are
finally letting go of their winter coats.

We leave
behind the wilds of winter

Easing into
summer so civilized with folks living for cocktail hour

And we may
never see it again.

Holding on

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Winter won’t let go.

Seems like snow most every day.  This morning, no more than a soft dusting across meadow and hillside, fine white lace along the still bare branches of the Aspen and the needles of the Blue Spruce.  Temperatures are only a fraction below freezing.  My peas still have not come up.  I wonder now if they will.  Or are they no more than a gift to the soil, a trial run, and will I start anew in another week when the forecast promises more sun.

Winter, but a memory, lingering, holding on, grasping to what was, what could have been.  My last one here. I find myself caught between holding on and letting go.

A snowball tossed from the morning snow onto bare ground where the sun has already touched, only to melt before mid day.  As if it never were.

Inside looking out

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

The world returns to white. 

The view out my window is soft and heavy and wet and white.  I slip on my boots and down jacket and head out to feed the horses.  The boots I thought were retired for the season, now brimming with snow, deep snow, dampening my jeans because the boots aren’t high enough snow.

Ten. That’s how many Mays I’ve been here.  Ten. And I’d never seen snow like this in May.  “Back in the day,” my husband tells me. And even then, he says, snow like this was a crazy thing.   You just never know.  The mountain is mightier than we are.  The best we can do is work with what we she gives us.  She gives us plenty.  And this spring, that’s plenty of snow.

It’s crazy, alright. The robins are perched on the fence post looking down at the white ground and wondering what went wrong.  The chickens hide under the shelter of their coop and can’t figure out what cruel joke was played on them this year, just when they started laying regularly again.  And Norman, dear Norman, the new guy – his training continues in spite of the snow.  Perhaps he’ll learn to pull a sleigh before he has to pull a slip and plow.

Ten Mays.  I came and said I’d stay a while.  Now it’s been a while.  Some days, it feels like too long.  We were ready to leave long ago.  A friend wrote yesterday, “How do you like your new mountain and your new ranch?”  He can’t believe I am still here.  I can’t either.

Ten Mays and still it is not mine.  I knew it never would be. Not because of the elements, the elevation, not even the snow.  Those things are in way mine.  I know them, feel them, am with them intimately. Those things we can work with. It’s something more.  Deeper.  A connection.  Was it severed, or did it never grow? 

A land that is both a mirage and memory for most.

I seek something fuller and richer and deeper than that.  Hands immersed in warm soil, toes buried in sand.  Seeds scattered, roots spreading.   A connection.  A place to live and die and toil.  I’m not looking for a place to get away but to remain. 

It seems so simple.  Basic.  A good place to start.  Funny it should take me so long to find. 

And so, where will my mornings find me, with what view out my window in the lightening sky as I sit here and write you?

Ah, the view before me. White and muted behind the veil of falling snow.  I have been glad to be here, am gladder still to leave.

I’m not big on retrospect, too often filled with sadness or anger.  Let it go.  I’ve seen too many hold onto a lifetime of resentment, hurting themselves most of all.  A bitter pill swallowed every day.

I’d rather take my chances, spit it out, and see what lies ahead.  Or right now, for that matter, because now is a wonderful time too.  A time of change.

Change. To where? Where am I going?  What will I be doing? What adventures are we creating?

For now, our hands are full, tied.  Tied to mops and window cleaners, to reins and driving lines, hammers, saws and moving boxes. 

And that’s just the beginning. But I guess that’s enough for now.