Heart & Soul

Finding Familiar.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

A whirlwind weekend flying from here to there and back again. There’s a lot of folks out there doing a lot of that on a regular basis. I’m not really wanting to be one of them. I’m no jet setter and don’t care to be. I’d rather be home. Wherever home is.

I try to remember that thing about searching for beauty where you are. Every day. It’s a challenge to find satisfaction, fulfillment, beauty and awe with what’s in front of you, rather than chasing rainbows, shiny and new, thrills and the latest greatest. We can run around the world seeking something else, but are we able to appreciate what’s right before us, and find beauty and magic and awe without taking one step?

Yet travel, even a short trip to visit family as this one was, is always a step outside your box, outside your comfort zone, an opening of mind and heart – seeing what is truly there, around you, not just what you expect to see. It’s humbling. You’re no longer king of your castle, or that big fish in a little sea.

For some, the best part of travel is the view, things you see, fun things you do. For others, it’s the food, drink, and apparently shopping is a thing. For me, it’s people I see when I’m out there, and those I meet along the way. It’s an opportunity to taste a small slice of the world with every person I speak with, a flash view of humanity in every story that is shared.

Four days “out there” opened me to the badass beautiful marine who signed up for service to pay for her college degree. The mother of six struggling with homelessness and physical abuse and a blinding sense of faith. A man from Venezuela who moved here twenty five years ago, still feeling like an outsider, sharing his “outsider” perspective on politics. (Yes, I love to ask!) The haggard woman with deep lines and signs of old habits she battled and won, and the raspy cough of the smoking habit she has not been able to shake. And the forty year old born and raised in Trinity County who would rather sit on his front porch and smoke his doobie than worry about such things, comparing pictures of rescue dogs, rivers, gardens and cannabis plants

I kid you not. I can’t make this stuff up. Well maybe I could, but I don’t have to. I just have to be willing to hear.

Learning to see.

Beauty.

In every one, everywhere, everything, even within ourselves.

Every day.

With little progress on all those things I could and should (but didn’t) work on here this week, today’s rambling takes an inner turn.

Spring?

It’s happening here.

So is that mounting pressure that engulfs me this time of year most every year.

Spring is the season of emergence. And at times, along with the awakening, the melting of ice and snow and bursting forth of new life, there is often a sense of emergency. Pressure and stress and the feeling that it all needs to be done all at once.

This year as every year, this time of year. It’s hardwired into the season. All those years of starting seeds, preparing ground, and growing. Of serving as mid-wife for farm babies being born, or grim reaper for the profuse, prolific, infinite and overwhelming wealth of weeds that call my garden home. Of brushing winter’s coats off hot horses backs and amassing mounds of dog hair as they shed. Of spring cleaning tasks that have changed over the years, from preparing a camp for kids or a guest ranch for families.

As we dust of cobwebs after months by the fire, or shake off melting snow and listen for the sound of rushing water as the encasement of deep ice begins to melt, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement and anticipation of the season.

I want to sit with the season. Feel it. Hear it. Smell and taste it and roll around in it, celebrate it for what it is, not just what I expect it to be, demand from it, and think others want me to make of it.

Today. As every day. Seeing what is before me. Right here, right now.

Wherever here may be.

Here.

Now.

Early morning.

A morning like so many in the nearly six years I have been here.

Familiarity grows like the pear trees planted along the side of the creek, an amaryllis started at Solstice still blooming on the window sill, blackberries and poison oak that promise to sprout and spread even in places you wish they would not.

In the quiet hours with new moon and stars nearly black behind a lavish shroud of fog, I wake with arms and legs around my sleeping man. I am comfortable with his earthy scent and even breath and a little reluctant to rise. I slip on sweats, pull the covers back up around him, then quietly find my way around in the dark.

Stepping over snoozing dogs, lighting the wood stove, filling the coffee pot at the kitchen sink, all as I have done so many mornings before, I feel the ease in knowing where I am and what to expect. What time the sun clears the mountain to the east. When to hope for the last frost late spring and when the first frost of fall will arrive. What bird belongs to the flicker of wings that distracted me from my work or the song that rises each morning around the same time I wake. When to turn the soil, start the seeds, when to water, and when to drain or cover pipes. When to watch for leaves turning gold and brown and blowing down, and when to look for new life at the tip of each naked branch, swollen and slowly unfurling in fertile subtleties.

Familiar. Is it the place or the pattern? For I have done this here. And I have done this so many place I have been, and still will be.

This place, this pattern, has become familiar; intimate and expected as the view out the kitchen window which as the sun comes up and chores are done, awakens to an ever green pasture where horses graze, chickens free range, dogs play, and a brave cat or two may creep cautiously not too far from the house.

Familiar too is the sound, the ever present prevailing sound of the river, which ebbs from summer’s gentle roil over smooth rocks ever shaped by the ever movement of the ever changing flow – to winters rage and roar. A sound so familiar I often forget it is there.

In this semi-silence I am able to hold the world, embrace it like a big bear having found a honey hole, and my heart feels full.

Comfort in the familiar.

The same worn boots left by the back door. Same old truck parked out front. Same cast iron pans beside the wood cook stove. Same table, same chairs, same sofa, same rug. Same silly jokes that still make me laugh every time.

And comfort in accepting change, as the road map of my life unfurls on my face, stories embedded within wrinkles and every graying hair. I can laugh at my own fleeting vanity, because truth is, though I’m not thrilled with how I look now, I can’t say I ever was. Good looks are not what got me where I am. I’m more of a guts and grit sort of gal.

The inner landscape has changed, too. There is a calmer storm blowing within me now. Muddy waters have stilled and settled. Menopause, depression and drinking have been left behind. Hot flashes and explosive emotions have subsided. I sure don’t miss them. Neither does my husband.

Some days I look within and expect those frightening facets to surface again. But they do not. It’s not that I slayed those evil beasts. Rather, they just faded away. (One more good thing that comes with age.)

So it is into this calmer, quieter space that I feel myself finding a new familiar. Settling in. Not that I’m settled down; it’s more like the gradual un-letting of the belt cinched around my jeans. You can only fight it for so long. Then you stop holding in, exhale, let it out a notch, and realize it’s not such a bad place to be.

I am getting there. Closer to that place deep inside that whispers, “Welcome home.”

Connection comes, with land as with people, in time and age and stories. It comes with living through droughts and floods, fires we fend off together and snow storms that keep us apart. It comes with seeing our children grow and our parents age and our dreams emerge and somethings fall and fail while others take root and grow.

Some of us are seekers. You know, always looking. For something. Usually ourselves. That’s what I think I’m finally finding.

And in the meanwhile, I will settle in some days, and move around on other days. I will try and sometimes fail. I will give and sometimes falter. I will work and tire and wake again and get back out there again and again. I will tend and plant and nurture. I will dream. I will love. And I will live. Not like my parents wanted me to. Not like society expected me to. Not like I thought I would have, should have, could have. Probably not like anyone else. But finally in my late fifties, I’m growing my own skin, comfortable with my bones, able to look in the mirror and though I may wince for a moment at what I see, for the woman looking back at me is much older than I thought I’d ever be, I’m learning to feel at home in that skin and bones that is me.

I am growing up.

That does not mean I will suddenly be serious and stern. I will not wash up and get a desk job. I will not be that boring, stuffy, straight, sensible-shoe sort I used to think all grown-ups had to be. I don’t plan on cutting my hair nor keeping my fingernails clean. Chances are I won’t ever become the one to say the right thing at the right time, and certainly won’t ever have all the answers. Nor will I stop making mistakes, dusting myself off, and trying yet again. Maybe I won’t ever settle down.

Okay, so… maybe I’m not there yet.

Maybe we never arrive.

Maybe this has all been growing pains, the changing of the tides through the turbulent sea of having the courage to feel life fully, as I furiously worked my way out of one shell and built a new one around me.

We all have a story. This is mine. Chances are, you have felt this too. It’s a simple tale, old as time. A story of seeking, forever seeking, some sense of belonging. And getting to that place of realizing what we’ve been running after is within us all along.

Finding familiar.

Within.

A cooler kind of fire.

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

Snow melts.

The rain forest returns. Warm, wet, heavy air held suspended in undulating gray skies. Electric green moss wraps around rugged oak limbs. The roar of the river through open window where we sleep at night drowns out the cadence of heavy rain on hard metal roof.

Here in the far north of California, spring makes her first intimation with the return of the robins dappling the meadow, Canada geese flying in formation low along the river, Pacific bluebirds and several other songbirds I have yet to spot even in the nakedness of leafless giant oaks, all gracing us with joyous chatter. I imagine them happy to be home. Discernible leaves of shooting stars emerge on damp soil, new life awakens on the gooseberry bush, and the first daffodils of the season promise to burst open in what may be a matter of days.

I’m not ready for winter to end. Yet. Yet…

It’s hard to figure what to do next when I don’t know, like drawing straws, it all needs to be done and soon. Some days it feels like there’s no way we’ll get it done. Other days we remind one another: we’ve done this before. We can do it again. Yes, yes, please remind me that again and again and again.

Some days I get scared.

Can we do this? Again?

Not yet old, but already, I feel it. We’re older now. I don’t have the energy I had in my twenties when I built my first two hippy houses in the desert south of Santa Fe, stacking and stuccoing straw with a baby on my back.

Nor do I have the energy of my thirties when building the first of several Colorado cabins while guiding horse rides in the morning, peeling logs in the afternoon, and evenings spent cooking for the crew. All the while trying to impress my new lover and somehow sort-of home-school our son. I guess I did okay with that lover because he’s still by my side. As for home-schooling, God knows how he learned so brilliantly because it wasn’t my doing.

Nor do I have the energy found in my forties when we built what was meant to be the forever house, from the ground up. Falling trees in deep winter, deep snow, hauling logs across frozen river by snowmobile, and again pulling on the old draw knife day after day after day as my husband and son raised the walls.

Now I’m nearing sixty and though I sure feel far from old, I no longer feel that infinite fire and limitless energy I felt in younger days. Maybe that’s not all bad to let it simmer.

But the reality of facing the formidable task of building a cabin tight enough to winter in, putting in off-grid systems, setting up shelter for the horses, a coop for the chickens and something to keep plants alive… all this (and more) at an elevation of 10,000 feet which means high, harsh and wild…

It’s a lot.

I could use that infinite fire right about now.

Some days the stress of what is not getting done weighs heavy.

Some days the grief of what I’m leaving nearly paralyzes me.

Some days the excitement of what we’re starting electrifies me and takes my breath away.

Time

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Things change. I changed. I shall continue to change.

Yet as stand here with my hip against the kitchen sink, holding a warm cup of coffee between hands weathered and worn by time and place, darkened by sun and soil and years, something within me feels this sense of peace of the familiar, something I need, we all need. That need feels pressing right now, that knowing no matter where we find ourselves, even when the world seems upside down, inside out and backwards, so much still remains the same. Solid. Grounded. Sturdy. There is comfort in that knowing, soothing as the hot black liquid I am slowly sipping.

At this very moment, as I gaze up from dirty dishes I’m pretty good at ignoring, my attention scans outward, across pasture. Horses head down, chickens underfoot, bare branches of sprawling oak with tips not yet swelling, last years leaves still scattered across the patchwork quilt of ever green grass and tenacious wet snow.

What I am looking for is not yet there. It’s still early. Wait. It won’t be long. The 18th of February. That’s the date marked on my calendar. It is not only my mother’s birthday, but the date I begin to listen for his call. Then, or soon after, like some primordial clockwork that does magic of seasons and cycles of the moon, I will hear his song. I listen, for I may hear him long before catching the sight of his orange flash in the otherwise still winter scene, a landscape drawn in shades of gray.

It’s often later. A few days. A few weeks. But my stirring starts early and builds, always excited by these little harbingers of changing seasons. Sure, I can wait. I have waited before. Here, there, other places I have been, have lived, have looked and listened. He always comes. As the bluebirds when aspen or oak buds begin to swell. The pair of ravens that gather the shedding horse hair just in time to build their nest. The geese at river’s edge, hoping for a place safe from rising spring waters. These things come.

And so too will the unassuming Redwing Blackbird come, sharing his shrill whistle as I lean closer to the window to hear. Perchance he’ll rest on a branch of the sprawling oak that in summer shades the house from midday sun but now stands still with bare branches extended like fingers of an ancient witch; or perch on the stalks of willow that bend and sway with lessons in learning to give.

And even while I wait, anticipating what will come, the song bird, the change of seasons, the change of view from a change of kitchen window over a change of sink, for now at least, I am here. And right here, right now, there is no place I’d rather be.

Winter’s going way too fast.

The greenhouse is alive with spring starts of broccoli, cabbage, kale and chard, keeping company with overwintered geraniums and that sprawling avocado tree because I swore I wouldn’t buy the fruit, but man, I do love them. Seedlings spouting on the kitchen counter: tomatoes, peppers, basil, snapdragons, marigolds, all leggy from lack of sun.

(“How can you garden,” you may ask,”when you said you were moving on?” And my response, just as you’d expect: “How can I not?”)

Ten inches of rain one week, snow the next, then a clear spell long enough to dry our boots, but not those logs waiting to be milled before the next storm arrives.

You know that feeling of having to be indoors but so dying to be out there? Yeah, that one. Me, I can keep myself occupied indoors between writing and drawing out plans for the new house. And there’s always cooking, cleaning, baking, herbal crafts, little inside things I love to do, like happy sappy 70’s songs remembered from my childhood, distracting me from the longing of wanting to dig my hands deep in dirt, which right now, is not happening. The soil is either to wet to walk on or hard from freezing temperatures.

It won’t last. Nothing ever does. Give it time. It will change. And before you know it, I’ll be back out there longing for these languid days, which likely I won’t get again until next winter rolls around. And geez… hard to imagine what next winter will be like.

So don’t.

As for Bob, he’s making the most of it his own way, as he does. Indoor arts and crafts are not his thing. His way of having his boots dry out is hauling the first load of milled lumber to our new place. California to Colorado and back again. Three days driving, each way, taking the loneliest road, or four when you run into truck troubles and weather, both of which he did. Then back to me just in time for Valentine’s Day. At least I hope, as another winter storm has settled in.

Why mill and haul from here when there’s plenty of logs to build with in the mountains of southern Colorado? A seemingly endless supply of dead standing blue spruce killed by the beetle infestation that washed over those hills like a tsunami. Enough of those trees will hopefully still be good enough for using as full logs, but they have not the integrity, heft nor girth, we want for posts, beams and dimensional lumber, counter tops, shelves, ceiling and floors.

Meanwhile, here in northern California, the beetles hit too, but not as hard, fast and heavy. At this point, the damage is just the right amount for giving us dead trees to clear from our property; and all the lumber the Old Mill, my old man and I, can crank out. Beautiful lumber. Doug fir. Still hard and strong and perfect for what we need.

So, we do it here, bring it there. It may seem inconvenient at best. And yes, Home Depot is an easier option. But that’s not ours. Or us. Making the most of what we have.

Which right now is a forced break indoors, while the “wintry mix” outdoors keeps coming down.

We’re pretty hearty, but we have our limitations. Milling in these conditions is a big NOPE. It’s a nasty, sticky, soggy mess. I’d rather get covered with sawdust on clear afternoons when the wind blows my way. That time will come.

You know how it goes. One thing waits, while another happens.

Ever changing.

Some days so slow you feel stuck in stagnant waters.

Other days, hold on to your hat and brace yourself for the wild ride.

Time changes.

Changing times.

Like seasons.

Take time.

Time to stare at flames in the fire pit, or falling snow.

Time to slip on your boots and run out in warm rain.

Or slip off your shorts and immerse yourself in the river.

Time to smell orange peel, chocolate, the warm dry pup.

A new baby, damp rich earth after a summer rain.

Time to feel the sensation of that summer rain wetting brown skin burned by yesterday’s sun

or winter sun like a gentle hand on red cheeks, the only flesh brave enough to be exposed.

Time to celebrate last years leaves fragile as fresh eggshells crumbling beneath your boots

or cheer for melting snow if you drum up the courage to step out in hot bare feet.

Time to hear that river, that endless river, the never ending background sound of this land

or that sleeping dog’s heavy breath.

The inhale. The exhale.

The pause in between.

Time to rush around.

And time to sit.

Still.

Put the damned devise aside and see the magic you would have missed.

Time for solitude and socializing.

Time for reflecting and planning what is next.

Time to let go.

And how about, “time to get your ducks in a row?”

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

You know, ducks will do that. It’s what they do.

And in a way, that’s a good cliche for what I’m trying to do.

Figure things out.

Things.

I dunno. Writing. This blog. Where we’re going. How to hold onto here. And there. How to afford it all. Life. That sort of stuff. Big stuff.

Right, at my age, shouldn’t I have that figured out, my ducks all nicely lined out?

Don’t kid yourself.

You never stop.

As long as you’re living, you’re learning.

At least, that is what I tell myself.

Makes me feel a little better when I realize how far I’ve come.

And how much farther I still have to go.

Thank you for listening.

With love, always love,

Gin