Heart & Soul

Sitting around eating bon-bons.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

If only. Only that’s not how the simple life seems to work. Or at least, I haven’t figure it to work that way. Not yet at least.

Funny thing is, a lot of us striving to live simply find ourselves explaining that really, no, it’s not about sitting around eating bon-bons. We just make it look easy.

It’s one of those things. If you know, you know.

But a lot of folks don’t.

Simplicity is a lot of work.

“Don’t you get bored?” we’re too often asked.

Bored? Really? When?

When we’re kicking back tilling the garden, pulling weeds, pruning trees, moving sprinklers, mowing meadows, kneading bread, feeding chickens, fixing fences, flushing out lines of our water system and maintaining batteries of our solar system. And then, figuring out what to cook for dinner from all those eggs we gathered and fresh veggies we just harvested when we’re so dang tired at the end of the day, and hopefully sitting down to eat before 9pm (after being up, of course, at the crack of dawn). Oh yeah. And we’re building our own homes. All the while, kicking back with those bon-bons.

This was something the Old Man used to laugh about often. He had spent the greater part of his 95 years hard at work for the “easy” life. Up till 2am canning, starting seeds, grafting fruit trees, splitting wood, caring for critters, and somehow, caring for his community as well. He was still planning on planting potatoes and garlic until the very end.

There’s a lot of folks out this way living that way. Simple, but not easy. My closest neighbors are primo examples. They’ve got that off-grid-pioneer-self-sufficient spirit mastered! But I’m not gonna talk about them since they might be reading this ;) Just know that if I did, it would be impressive and inspiring.

It’s tempting to sit down and write a whining rant about what felt like a set back, or at least a week of slow progress. Between the sudden heat wave and learning how well sawdust sticks to sweat, the frustration of rot in the beetle killed trees coming on faster than we can cut out, a wave of bugs hatching out of bark we’re peeling, crawling in my shirt and pelting me in the face as I mill; that mill breaking down requiring us both to spend the day deep in grease and gears instead of whipping out (okay so, it actually never happens that fast with our old mill) boards and beams or getting the garden that feeds us in; and the looming dread of thinking there’s no way in hell we’re going to get this all done.

But no, I’m not going there. Why bother whine?

Because at the same time, there is grass growing greener and more lush than I ever remember seeing, a young hen hatching new chicks , apple blossoms blooming thick as cherries, the puppy reminding us how joyous every day should be, and my beloved garden providing so bountifully even though I *whine* that I don’t get enough done. As I’m serenaded daily by tree frogs and the first of the crickets and the Redwing and robins and always, always the soothing hum of the river, I am very well aware how sweet life is. Most days I can’t believe how lucky I am. It’s a beautiful world and a day does not go by without my appreciation and gratitude to be right here, right now.

Even when I’m covered with pine beetles, sawdust and grease.

Instead, what I’ll tell you about today is the Old Man.

That’s what some of my friends and family called him, but to me, he seemed almost childlike. After almost a century of life, John had retained a sense humor, wonder and awe, still open, willing to learn, with a deep heart rich with wounds, sensitivities and insecurities like the rest of us.

For years, I had the honor of visiting him on Tuesdays. Kind of funny to note that we started with Mondays, but he changed the date, inspired by the wonderful little book he loved, “Tuesday’s with Morrie.” So Tuesdays it was with John!

Tuesdays became the big day for me that the rest of my week sort of revolved around. Mondays were spent in preparation of actually leaving the homestead – harvesting, washing, sorting, boxing up produce, gathering eggs and picking bouquets, Then Tuesday morning I’d load up boxes and a dog or two and head to town.

All I had to do was show up. Sure, I’d bring him flowers just about every week, almost all year, produce in season, and sometimes, homemade biscuits to go with that packaged breakfast gravy he’d like to share with my husband and me. But mostly what he wanted, and what I’d do is listen. Just listen. Without judgment, and with humor. Yes, there was a lot of laughter.

Just showing up, consistently.

That was enough for him. And enough for me.

When I returned from my Long Quiet Ride, his eyes swelled with tears as he said, “I was afraid I’d never see you again.” He never asked about my trip, or anything about my life except my garden, fruit trees and chickens. That never mattered to me. I was there for him. It was an honor. Just listening. His stories would fill the hours. My favorites were tales of his childhood in the suburbs of Indiana with immigrant parents who worked their way through the Great Depression while raising three boys with a sense of goodness. Goodness. I don’t know if that’s something people care about much these days. But it’s good stuff.

Just showing up.

Being there for someone.

Listening.

This I learned was the greatest gift I could give. The greatest “community service” I could offer. I didn’t need a title or join a group or be a part of any clique or club. After all, I’m not much of a potluck, community center, PTA type of gal. But nor am I a lone wolf. I’m just a quiet sort who has more to give one on one, face to face, than in front of a crowd or enmeshed in a group.

Just be there. For him.

Some folks thanked me for taking the time for him.

But you and I know better. It was still for me. The honor of caring for another – not your kids or your parents, your partner, your dog or best friend – just a person. A human being with no strings attached. No ulterior motives. Someone who just wanted to be heard.

And me, I got the gift of almost endless stories, insightful wisdom, and a lot of ridiculous jokes thrown in there, just because.

Initially, he said he was going to tell me the story of the property my husband and I moved to. Well, after five and a half years, I never did get the whole story, but I got a lot of other great ones. About life. His childhood. Growing, canning, pruning, grafting, building, all these things he did so well. What ever he wanted to share, I gladly received.

The greatest stories and greatest lessons he shared were based upon these three things. I called them The Three C’s.

Care. Connection. Contribution.

He’d lecture me (and the other handful or two of dear friends he had that were a regular part of his life) with this wit and wisdom:

“Take care of your health. Your loved ones. The land.”

“Connect with your people – friends and family and community.”

“Contribute to the community or society in whatever way you can, in whatever work you do.”

That was his formula for a good, long life. When I look around, I’d say he got that right.

And when I stop to think about it further, I see that John’s Three C’s is the formula for finding that sense of belonging I’ve been seeking too.

Belonging is a balance of the Three C’s. The place or state where you care, connect, contribute.

When I moved here 28 years ago as a single mom to serve as caretaker at a kids camp I could never have otherwise afforded to attend, I didn’t feel I belonged (well, sometimes I still don’t). But John accepted me and my son, and embraced us unconditionally. I’ve seen him use that open heart quality with so many folks. Forget your story, your past, what others might say. John would give you a chance.

Back then I had moved here with a couple dogs and a three year old kid but no tangible skills to speak of. I figured I’d figure it out. How hard could it be?

Learning was hard. And slow. And most of what I learned came because of the kindness of a generous community full of folks who knew how to do all those things I was hungry to learn in order to, yes, you got it: live simply. Garden, grow, can, tend to calving, raise chicks, milk goats, make cheese, bake bread, fix pipes, clear ditches, plane boards, skin bears… There’s a lot to it, and a lot to learn. First thing I learned was that it was a lot more work than my romantic notion made it out to be.

The season we first arrived was right before winter, and that full shed of firewood I was promised was empty. I was gifted a chainsaw instead. I looked at the damn thing like it was a feral beast and battled with it just the same. Remember, I was from New York. Chainsaws don’t really exist there. Well, John got news of this and though still a stranger to me, put on his angel wings and got to work. He arranged for me to get a full on lesson in chainsaws. Like taming the wild beast, John set up a friend to take the time to teach me the basics, from sharpening, cleaning, caring for and using – and (most of the time) even starting the damn thing. Then to the woods we went, time to fell my first tree. It was just a little ways up off the road, easy to get to, and easy to see. I’m shy so that wasn’t ideal. Cars stopped along the country road to watch the newbie cut a tree, which really got me scared because this tree (at least in my memory) was HUGE and I’m kind of small. I got this, I thought, and tried to fluff up my feathers and look bigger. I went to work with my new found skills, made my face cut, and then the back cut, and then tapped in a wedge, and there the tree began to fall… slowly… falling… looking pretty impressive… I’m really puffing up now… until… that darned tree got snagged up in another even bigger tree. It stayed stuck there for years, reminding me that this firewood thing, and the simple life, ain’t always easy. And humility is indeed a prerequisite.

Later that winter when I ran out of firewood (so much for my chainsaw skills!), John got wind again. And again, angel John quietly came to the rescue. He asked me if I’d come meet him on this back road because there was a tree that fell in the way and he could use some help with it. Of course I’d be glad to help, but lo and behold, when I got there, that tree was cut, blocked, stacked and ready for me to load to take home.

These kinds of stories happened all the time with John as so many in this community know. It’s what he did. Cared about people. And did something about it.

When I had to move away, John convoyed with me, driving all the way to Colorado to help me get to my new home and start my new life. And when I returned, nearly twenty years later, he made me feel like I was never gone.

He’s not really gone. Parts of him are all over my house and garden, not to mention my heart. From the white daffodils blooming along my garden fence beneath the peach trees started from pits he had saved, to the bird house box in which the swallows are nesting, and the pie tins and bakeware and all these silly little kitchen gadgets that I said I didn’t need but funny, I find myself using them all the time.

The last thing he said to me was something he often said so often to anyone willing to listen:. “Follow your bliss!”

Thank you, John. I am!

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Held in place.

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

On the intimate connection of person and place.

Considering the land as lover.

Some of us, admittedly, have loved a few.

And though we are not our lovers, we are more whole for having loved.

And so you see this need to choose one place becomes as complicated and complex as being torn between two lovers.

~

Like leaving a lover on one hand.

And with the other, holding onto your hat as you lean into the wind

trembling with the thrill of what lies ahead.

~

Here’s a rambling I’ve been working on a while yet have been slow to share. If you have time and want to read it, grab a cup of coffee, kick back, and enjoy the ride. It’s still rough, but I’ve been having fun working with it, so I thought I’d share what I’ve written so far, and one of these days, maybe I’ll get it figured out and share the rest with you.

I was not an apple that fell close to the tree, but one that rolled away.

The roots of that tree did not hold me, nurture me, nor call me to remain. Yet we are hard wired with that longing to belong, and so I set out, seeking.

In the search for finding belonging, always somewhere outside myself, I thought I found it many times.

Thus there are places I have fallen for, fallen in love with, where I wanted to belong, to be held and where I wished to remain forever. Places I wanted to wake beside as with an intoxicating lover tangled in rumpled sheets still hot and musky as dawn’s first light reminds us it’s time to move on. Or places soothing and solid and comfortable, as when with the lover you’ve slept beside for what feels like forever. She may no longer hold the thrill, but she holds you still, and when you are with her, with that sense of contentment that cannot be compared, there is no place you’d rather be.

Are we not more for each one we have loved? The lessons they shared, the memories we learned to laugh at, the scars on our heart and soul we cannot shake off, all of it cultivating us deeper, richer, wiser for having tasted forbidden fruits.

As with person, so with place.

Me, I have moved. Every time, always yearning for forever.

It’s not how I planned it to be. I was not looking for greener grass (there is none greener, for example, then where I am here and now). But responding to how life unfolds at times, and sometimes that means you gotta move on. Other times, it means following my heart for some calling I thought I heard somewhere out there, only to realize it is found only in the quietest, stillest moments when I allow myself to listen.

Still, I look back on all the places I have wanted to call home, wanted to belong, wanting to be so captivated and fulfilled and content… and yes, always hoping to find these things outside of my self rather than within.

Yet each place we settle into, each one we are with, we say to ourselves, “This is the one.” Until it is not, and then we move on.

I have been many places. Each like a lover, teaching me how to be, how to feel, how to grow, how to leave.

Sure, I could be shallow, pick one and remain. Just tell you I’ll let go of my dreams and “it’s good enough” knowing it’s safer to stay put where it’s easy and simple, and simple is good.

But that is not my style. I tend to dive deep.

Growing up we thought and were taught that New York City was the center of the universe, and for many of us in the suburbs a bridge or tunnel away, it was. My childhood was defined by the sense of not belonging – not to my class nor my peers, not to my family nor my home, not the town where I was raised nor the big city that loomed a mere thirty minute train ride away. It should have been easy to hold onto what is right there before you, and what everyone (but your own inner voice) tells you is true. It was not.

Sure it was a city full of energy, excitement and diversity that kept my younger self entertained. But the prevailing mentality is the same as you’ll find in any small town: where you are is where it’s at; what you see is all there is. Looking beyond is taboo.

I was accepting of that until I left and felt something else, something open, expansive, vast and wild, tearing my heart open as it burned into the once narrow view of my pale eyes and pasty white skin. It was intense, somewhat violent in a way, the process of being ripped free to the wildness of open spaces. Yet that sense of space held me all the same, wrapping around and capturing me. And once I breathed in that spaciousness and had my breath held in the bigness of it all, the search for where I belong began.

Odd that we use the term “deflowering” for the end of virginity when for so many of us it signifies the beginning of so much more. It can be a blooming, blossoming, flourishing. It can be more of an awakening as the floret unfurls, rather than a plucking of petals as in the childish game of, “He loves me; he loves me not.”

Though my innocence had been lost years before, heading to the Greek Islands at nineteen felt like the first awakening. Standing bronzed naked on the cliffs over the Aegean Sea while gazing out into what first felt like forever (though cheap pink wine and an oddly bewitching man probably had something to do with that) my soul expanded into the horizon; that urge to remain in that moment, that place, that ethereal bliss forever overwhelmed. And I realized we could live somehow limitless, boundless, ungrounded as my imagination took me soaring over arid cliffs and ancient stone walls and into gentle, saline waters that held me in her womb, softly singing into my ear, like a temptress snake hissing “Yessssssss, you belong here.”

Until of course there comes the day that you wake up from the daze of the dream and get dumped or somehow shaken or stirred and find yourself moving on.

The calling started then and the voice of wild spaces continued to lure me, like the Pied Piper, leading me out of town.

From the mountains north of Santa Fe with magic mushrooms, dizzy from high altitude and giddy from clear light – to the desert to the south, where we sought to unleash our inner Carlos Castaneda with sand in our sleeping bag and scorpions underfoot.

From the stark vastness of the Patagonia steppe where my heart soared like the condor that I swear called to me – to the high country of the San Juan Mountains where the snow and cold and a culmination of a painful past whipped me like spring wind.

~

The sky appeared above as

a familiar lover I have not slept with in years

but still haunts me in my dreams.

spread out on top of, over, next to, entwined with me

I vaguely recognize the warmth against my back,

wind like lazy fingers through let down hair,

a familiar sweet musky dusty breath.

swelling wide above me was

Colorado high and wild

~

And then there is here, the gentle embrace of this nor Cal river and hills. This is not the California I knew of or heard of and tried to avoid with sunsets cafes and volleyball beaches, strip malls and silicon valley, Hollywood and parking lot traffic. Really, did you think you’d find me there? Trinity is a different sort of state, in mountains and in mind.

Here I am held, softly, gently, kindly in a matriarch’s embrace. Wise old woman arms around me, healing, nurturing, tending the land as I tend to my soul. Nourishing me, not to remain safe, sound and secure – but building courage and vigor to leap once again. The crone’s craft with a basket of herbs, potions and remedies to create a resilient soul. She allows me time to weave my web, the net that will catch me when next I leap, as invariably I will do.

Held, embraced. A womb or cocoon. Wondering what will emerge when I leave these protective walls that confine and define. What is beyond the hills?

Look inside your cells as you look within your soul and tell me what you see? A sense of wonder, awe and curiosity?

Quiet as my voice may be, it whispers of this wisdom: I am more than this space, bigger than one place.

~

Roots unfurling

soaring through deep earth

grounded in the stars

she breaks free the shackles of solid ground

as a whale bounding from the sea for air

finding her breath as if for the first time, each time

finally understanding what wings were made for

ascending into spaciousness.

~

Slowly I fell for this land, with each shovel of dirt moved, brush mowed, branches burned and tree planted, Time sweating in the garden, sleeping beneath the stars or bathing naked at the beach.

Things grow here. Maybe even dreams. Apple trees, pears and plums, even peach trees I have planted. And already their branches bend with abundance.

This land gently grew in me. Her roots spread beneath my flip-flopped feet. I wonder how deep they have sprawled. The garden, full and lush and bountiful enriched by horse droppings I shovel each day. The upper meadow in early evening adorned with long golden shadows and a rolling view of distant hills. Sharing space with deer and turkey and a pair of ravens. Turtles at the swim hole and osprey hunting a shallow pool. The eagle on his daily pass down river as we watch from the kitchen table and the heron gracefully rises as I throw the ball for the dog too close to the bank of the river where he silently stood. The big bend in the river with sheer south facing cliffs above that heat from the sun and in kind warm the water below. The chattering chorus of evening frogs and the full moon dancing behind undulating waves of clouds. And rapids close to the house sing like voices I try to understand as we lay in our starlit bed at night after the wind and crickets have quieted and listen. I still do not know what they say.

It is a gentle land, pastel and creamy. Here is the good boy, fine and nice, the high school sweetheart. Here is not passion, devotion and fierce attachment as I have felt other places, and likely will never be. Yet here holds me in a state of contentment I am not familiar with, cannot describe, something that comes I suppose with age.

Comfort is new for me.

Do you know what it is like to hold the land as dearly as you do a lover; to be seduced, enthralled, captivated by the scent of rich soil and vanilla bark and the feel of wind and light and approaching storms? Go ahead and lose yourself in the embrace of a sudden updraft of high mountain air, or the fragrance of rich earth stirred by heavy rain, or the ecstasy of endlessness of open plains sprawling wide before you, or the soothing sound of waves as tide ever so slowly moves in.

If you have never loved land this deeply, I hope one day you will.

Let yourself be seduced by place.

But, my friend, be warned.

This kind of love is one sided.

For land remains indifferent.

And the connection we feel is that which we create.

I have fooled myself into believing I was embraced by place.

The stories we hold to are ours.

At best, the land allows.

At worst, she’ll chew you up and spit you out.

Likely she’ll do nothing at all but be as she will be, while we hold tight to a sense and security of the familiar, wanting to find ourselves in her rocks and trees, our stories in her wind and waves, wishing her spring rains to define us, and her generous load of winter snow to hold us tight.

So be it. Let it go. The attachment it all ours alone.

Really, that’s not a bad place to be.

Reflecting back, would I have chosen to forfeit the pleasure and pain and played it safe?

Commitment comes. Some of us are late to settle in. Settle into place as I settle into self with the softening of time and age and the perspective of experience.

Am I not all the richer, wiser, more resilient and complete for having frolicked with the land?

Though at times I tumbled, falling for place has led me to soar.

As at times we must lose our self in order to be found. Not only in place but in spirit and soul.

Are we willing to be lost in place order to find the essence of where we belong?

The land has held me, holds me, lets me be.

What more could I ask for with a lover or land?

Places that have called. lured me, seduced and tangled a web within my heart and made it into a place unto itself.

I have been held in place, by place, and that has allowed me to know the land, intimately and intensely, as I have learned to know my self.

Yes, I belong with the land as fiercely as I connect with my lover.

I am not the land, though I will love her, bestow upon her my wild passions and commit to her as long as I am there, wherever there may be.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

On Seeing.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Seeing clearly.

Finally, sunshine. Things should dry out just in time for Bob’s return so we can get back at it. Milling the next load of boards and beams. We guessed the last load to be at eight thousand pounds, but when he drove onto the scales, it was over ten. Probably twenty more to go. Houses are heavy.

So about that sunshine…

The land, the animals, the garden and me… all seem to be emanating this collective exhale. (I think I hear you too.) Yes, this generous rain is something to be grateful for. But feeling the sun on our faces and watching puddles dry out and finally taking blankets off the horses?

Yes. (said slowly with a soothing exhale)

With Bob on the road heading home (yes, this is still home), I’ve been grateful for the break in the rain to get caught up in the garden, knowing that side of work gets back burner on milling days.

Funny how easy it is to lose yourself in there. Not because it’s wild and lush and abundant with colors and fragrance on overdrive as it tends to get late summer. In fact, early spring is neat and tidy and orderly with seedlings and transplants all lined up like little soldiers. Yet when I’m working in there, time stands still – freezes – or disappears.

After this spell (or was it a season?) of drenched and heavy, today the air feels fresh and light. Maybe even a little sparkling, filled with the intoxicating honey fragrance of madrone beginning to bloom. Suddenly trillium grace the hill below the barn, and in the shadows of tall timber, fairy slippers shyly rouse.

Wild beast within

no longer

licks her wounds.

Now she runs her tongue

along unmarred wet wings,

drying them before

she flies.

You know how clear the air is after a good rain? It’s as if the sky is cleaned, as is every branch, stone and blade of grass.

“Like looking at life with the eyes of a babe, where everything is fresh and clear and bright.” That’s what a friend of Bob told him when he was going in to have a cataract removed last month. Can’t say I remember what things looked like when I was a baby, but I get what he was saying. I see it…

And that’s what I’m seeing today.

A lot.

And everything I look at seems especially crisp and clear and vibrant.

I didn’t get my eyes fixed, but I did get this.

A new lens. A new-to-me camera lens for my old faithful SLR camera. (Thanks, Dad!) I hadn’t used the big boy for a couple years. First of all because the old lens crapped out and lenses aren’t cheap but I am. Second, because two years ago this month, I got my first phone. Yes, my first one. On principle, I wanted to refrain forever, but I didn’t want to take the big beast around my neck on my Long Quiet Ride. Though it had made many miles around my neck in the saddle over the years, the elements and endurance of that trip was more than the camera – or my neck – would likely have weathered.

Above and beyond being a handy pocket size camera, the phone ended up providing me with countless other tools, from voice recorder to map apps and occasionally (in fact, rarely!) cell phone service. Though I learned to take pictures with the phone (still seems strange to call it that), it never felt the same for me as the real deal. A real camera.

It’s going to take me a while to get in the groove, but I’m going to have fun getting there.

Getting behind the big lens again was oddly awkward at first. It’s heavy. Cumbersome. A big deal compared to that little flat thing that slides into the pocket of my work pants.

Yet something about having the weight of the camera in my hands, taking the time to actually stop, peering through the lens, focusing, holding my breath and click… yes, this feels good.

I’m seeing again. Really seeing. Deeply. Closely. Intimately.

And what I see is beautiful.

For me, there’s something so mindless about taking photos with a “phone.” And when you’ve got a lot else going on, mindless is okay. But the big boy, the real camera, is kind of mindful. You are present. Focusing on what’s before you. It slows you down. Slows your movement, your attention, your breathing, maybe even your heart rate. I swear it even slows your monkey mind.

Behind the big lens, you become more keenly aware of your environment. You look around more. Searching for subjects. Moving closer. Bending low. Leaning in.

Depending on the subject, you alternate between honing your attention (say, the variegated greens of the trillium leaf) to widening your gaze (noticing our little bit of paradise along the river below the long ridge of South Fork Mountain).

Move in, shift your weight, look closer still, then hold your breath, pause, press… and exhale.

Seeing.
Same thing everyday.

Look around.

Same place. Same view. Same meadow and garden and mountain.

Ah, but look closer.

Can’t you see those ever changing subtleties: sharp shadows that dull as summer forges forward, swelling tips of expansive oaks as leaves tease to open, a sensuous curve of a distant hill swathed in evening light. Electric green grass after a rain. Light. Seasons. Birds. Motion. Clouds. Colors. Always something different, new, unexpected. Or just what you were looking for. Dynamic. In flux.

The challenge of finding beauty right here, right now. In everything. Every day. And in everyone. Finding connection. The good stuff. Let the bad shit go. Really. Why do we focus on that stuff? That’s not what I’m taking pictures of.

What is the good stuff?

When I look closely, it’s all good. Or maybe it just is. No judgment. Just seeing. Challenging myself to find inherent beauty in whatever is before me. Last years rotted leaves. A morel poking through crushed needles. Shooting star blossoms leaning heavy in the rain. A fallen branch covered with old mans beard. A scattering of iridescent feathers from a dead blue jay. The tiny globe of a universe within every iris if you look someone deeply in their eyes.

I think of the phrase (and book title) coined by the remarkable writer, Terry Tempest Williams: “Finding Beauty in a Broken World”

I don’t think our world is broken. Just a little cracked.

Ever seen Raku pottery with its cracked glaze finish? Or what about Kintsugi, the Japanese art form of repairing broken pottery with gold? It’s more than making shattered dishes whole again. It’s making them exquisite.

It’s about finding beauty not in spite of but because of those flaws.

It’s all about the beauty in being at least a little broken. Imperfection.

Why do we still believe in the perfection myth? Perfection of person, place, relationships, self, what we’re seeing, feeling, the natural world. Most of it is beautiful. None of it is perfect. Unless we embrace the perfection of imperfections.

Looking through the lens reminds me to see. All of it. Flaws. Defects. Scars. Fractures and faults.

Looking for beauty helps heal the cracks. Holds the scattered pieces together. Heals the broken parts.

This camera encourages me to look closely. That’s where beauty resides. In all those crazy wild wonderful imperfections.

So I look.

And I see it’s been there all along.

The gradual unfurling of damp wings has only begun.

Wet and shiny in diffused morning light

no different than that of the nearly

twenty thousand mornings before this one

and yet so different than even yesterday.

Until next time.

With love, always love,

Gin

Here or there?

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

And wouldn’t you know. The biggest tree that fell in the latest storm crushed a shed we built two years back.

A friend once told me I had the best luck of anyone she knew.

And the worst.

So Bob’s on the road and I’m trying to get stuff done while not tied to the mill (and kitchen) which feels like how my days have been spent the past few weeks.

Good news is he’s hauling this beautiful big load of lumber, a pretty impressive nine thousand plus pounds of beams and boards we milled, to our high-mountain-Colorado-one-day-will-be-home.

Me, I have big plans of my own. Tilling the garden and getting the last of the cover crop seeded before the next rains. Putting in a couple more rows of spring crops. And mowing the waaaaaaaay overgrown grass. With a simple push mower and somewhat steep hill, this kicks butt even when the grass is manageable. The lawn seeks revenge for neglect.

Of course it doesn’t turn out as planned. What does?

See, I was planning on cheating from my “no till” stance by getting the old Troy Build rototiller fired up. It’s about as old and a helluva lot heavier than me, but man is this a beast of burden and it gets the job done. Guess I’m gonna have to get that spading fork out after all (or wait for Bob to return if my ego allows) because after pulling, pulling, pulling only to realize it’s out of fuel, I pour in gas only to watch it pour out some tiny little hole I’d never seen before. After putting a coffee can underneath to catch that spill, I call Bob on the road.

“Turn the tank off,” he wisely advises. Duh. Mechanics are not my thing.

So I do. But then I can’t turn the rusty dial back on when I’m done doing some other procedures Bob talks me through to try an fix the beast. And then that shut off, well, it’s gonna be shut off for a while because the damn thing breaks.

Well, I did manage to get the spring crops in and mow before the rain, but the cover crop will have to wait.

In the meanwhile, I invite you to take a tour of the garden, humbly as it was yesterday without a fresh tilling, is today in the rains, and then bragging on how it was in the bounty of last summer if you care to see one of the reasons why it’s so hard for me to leave this place.

So that thing about place.

I finally figured this out. You probably did long ago. I’m slow. Slow living. Slow learning. Whatever.

Our place is where we belong.

It may be a physical place, person, community, a state to live in, a state of mind.

But here’s the thing:

It all comes down to connection.

Connection, as in joining, being a part, somehow linked, united or bound together.

Connection determines our place.

Connection defines where we belong.

Whatever we feel connected to – close friends, your place in community, the old family farm, a mountain, the sea, the school where you have been teaching for thirty years – these things give us a sense of belonging. Different for us all, and always changing at least a little bit because that’s how life goes, that sense of belonging that connection creates helps us feel stable, secure, grounded. And we all need that.

There’s also that thing about connection being intertwined with commitment, contribution and care. but let’s talk about that another time, because this already threatens to be way too long. That happens. Especially when Bob’s not around, the rains force me indoors, and I find myself talking to the dogs and my self way too much.

Okay, so here’s the interesting twist I’m finally figuring out. Connection with others (the “where ” and “with whom” we belong) begins by connecting with self.

You know. It’s that “home is inside” wisdom my old friend used to say.

No, it’s not selfish. It’s still means giving more than you take, because end of the day, what we do for others is still what matters most and gives us in return some sense of meaning (and yes, belonging). But it’s about making sure you have something to give to begin with. Starting with the basics. The foundation. Figuring where (and with whom) we feel safe, and can be ourselves. Where our soul feels nourished and nurtured. For me, that means my husband, our son, and a strong sense of solitude, spirit, simplicity, and the natural and animal world. It’s time writing, growing food, working with horses, and luckily, yes, even building! Because these things make my inside shine. They may not define me, but they do define that sense of place I’m trying to find.

You know the feeling. It’s that place, space or state where you lose sense of time and feel safe and have trouble leaving. The place you long for, where you long to be. It’s more of a feeling than a physical person or place. It’s that knowing we are where we are meant to be, doing what we’re meant to be doing. That is belonging. We all long to belong. All of us. We are hardwired to want to belong. And when we lack that belonging or feel we don’t, connection is broken, and we somehow feel broken too.

It’s that happy place.

For me, the physical place has changed and may continue to change, as long as it contains an element of rugged and wild. But the essence remains the same. Like my core nature. It’s what feeds me, and in kind, allows me to feed others even more.

With that, I am starting to see it need not be so much “where” we are, but “who” we are that allows us to figure out where we belong. And somewhere in the equation, to notice the difference between “belonging” and “clinging”. Clinging holds us down. Belonging allows us to soar in place. Not to hold on because of fear. But because of freedom.

Maya Angelou famously stated, “You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The price is high. The reward is great”. 

It sounds paradoxical, but I believe it’s all true.

Sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball or could read tea leaves or somehow figure out answers to those big pressing questions, the easy way. But life isn’t easy. And easy isn’t always good.

When people ask me, “Where are you from?” it feels like a trick question. I hesitate, look up and off to the left, and try to come up with a clever response. It’s complicated. Might be easier if someone asked, “What do you do?” (That sounds so 80s and 90s. Do people even say that anymore?). Can’t say I know how to answer that one too.

You know that expression about the apple not falling far from the tree, right? But that’s assuming the tree has solid roots. And what if it does not? If I stayed to close to my rootless tree, I’d still be in Jersey. Nothing wrong with that, just not where I was meant to be.

Surely I’m not the only one out there trying to figure this out.

The answers will be different for us all, but maybe the process is the same.

We gotta listen to our heart and soul.

We gotta listen with our heart and soul.

My research is based on life, living and learning to listen to the wisdom of that quiet heart and soul.

I don’t have the privilege of a college degree. I left high school at 16 and learned to make do, make up and do without.

I learned what’s real based on what I saw, heard and felt, NOT what I read or was told.

I am still learning.

As for place, this much I know. Finding my place has been the trip of my life.

I’m still not there.

On one hand, I long to belong to one place, to remain long enough to watch trees I plant grow big and fat and fruitful, to have it all built and done and be able to kick back and watch, tend, and care for lovingly, to sit on the front porch with a cup of coffee and my honey and look around with contentment and know we are finally done building and need to build no more.

On the other hand, I’m not ready to settle down and do the same thing year after year just yet. I’m curious. Adventurous, in a quiet, simple way. I want to experience and try and do more. Not big fancy elaborate things like trips around the world and luxuries that aren’t my thing. I want to know what it feels like to break ground and get to work and feel the pride of creating a family ranch that holds us – my self, my husband, our son, our pets and livestock, with gardens and trees (yes, I’m going to grow at 10,000 feet!). I want to be bundled up and see the expansive sunrise on Winter Solstice from the front deck we will build, or the summer sun rise as the full moon sets from the top of an unnamed mountain behind our ranch.

I know. I want a lot. Simple stuff, but a lot of it.

But most important, I want to be at that place of belonging that is not a place out there, but a space in here. Within me.

It doesn’t matter where I am. It matters who I am.

I am not the land.

There’s more to me than the mud on my boots and under my nails.

Though that is how I chose to live.

Here or there?

California? Colorado?

I won’t be losing either way.

Why can’t I have both?

Maybe I can. For now, that’s what I intend to do.

Here and there.

But of course, there is this. The cold hard reality of affording your dreams. Money. Geez, I hate talking about that. I have always believed I had enough (though my son can tell you stories of the poverty we lived with) and things just work out. Kinda. Sorta. More or less.

It always seems to work out. Not always as we plan. Sometimes even better.

In the meanwhile, as I try to figure out how to make this all work, I’ll work on finding that place inside. The place where I belong.

Sometimes that is hardest place to be.

At home in my own skin, being okay being me.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Hear. Now.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Last night just past midnight I woke expecting the full moon to guide my way through the otherwise dark cabin. It did not. The lunar eclipse! Amazing how magical these things are, and note to self to never stop finding magic well taken.

Stumbling over sleeping dogs, I stepped out onto the front porch. There was a cold, light rain, somewhat soft and it felt good against my bare feet and naked skin. I wanted to see if I could see the eclipse. Hard to see what’s dark, and even harder when it’s hidden behind clouds.

I returned to the warm bed in awe none the less, for the reminder of the magic this little event stirred in me.

Later I woke again and listened. The gentle patter of rain on metal roof turned silent. I know what this means. More magic. The rain had turned to snow.

Right now I’m sitting here writing to you by candle light inside while the snow continues out there. Yes, I could flick a switch. We have solar power (though it’s true, not an abundance, and certainly not in this weather). But the simple life comforts me. The peace of stillness and silence soothes me. It’s easy to find here. And sometimes easy is good: a lot less wires and bells and whistles and high tech stuff that’s inevitably going to break down. Yet at times, it’s harder, too. If we want food (and of course we do), we grow it, at least the majority of it. If we want heat, buck and split wood, stoke a fire. If we want shelter, build it. If we want light, we strike a match and light a candle or oil lamp.

Yes, this “simple life” is work, and a lot of it, but it’s a direct life. If we want something, we work for it. Want a home, build it. Food, plant it and tend to it for hours each to day to allow it grow with abundance. Want water, bury lines from the spring to the house. Rather than working for money to pay for these things, we work for them directly. See? Simple. And yet those of us that live this way so often hear, “What do you all day? Don’t you get bored?” Smile sweetly, say nothing. It’s one of those things. If you know, you know.

It’s getting light out now, though the snow is coming down harder than ever. Time for me to bundle up and head out to do chores. Feed the chickens that lay the eggs. Let out the horses that make manure that enable the garden to grow… that sort of thing. Simple, yes?

But before I go out, I just wanted to say this. Since I started writing here again, the words have been flooding. I’m drowning in incomplete ideas. This, today, will be no different.

See, what I wanted to share was about belonging. How maybe it’s more about care, connection and contribution – what we do for others – that defines the place where we belong. At least that’s my latest idea to mull over. And I wanted to share about courage – the courage it takes as a writer (as any artist) to open your soul and pour, then put it out there for the world to see (alas, mine is but a little world). And I wanted to write about passion for place, the intimate connection between person and place, comparing land to lover.

But I’m not going to write any of that today. I’m going to go out in the snow with my dogs and take care of what needs to be done to make this simple life worth living.

~

I wrote this yesterday. Maybe it’s still relevant. Maybe it’s old news. But to prove my point to myself, this thing about care, commitment and contribution… things that really matters, that I’m trying to work out, trying to write about, but I haven’t figured out “how” just yet, I’m going to muster up the courage to share this (and hope I don’t wince at my foolishness afterwards).

Rain. Snow. A little sun.

Today in the far north of California it’s a southern Colorado spring day. A little bit of everything. Wait five minutes, and it will change.

Hats on and off, zippers up and down.

Speeding up the season.

Slowing down progress.

When what we need to be doing is falling trees and milling timber, we’re inside keeping the wood cook stove going to keep the cabin warm. Go ahead and bake another loaf of bread and more cookies we don’t really need ’cause when what we need we can’t have, might as well make the most of where you are and what you got. Right now, that means time inside to chill, and a wood cook stove that’s hot.

Truth is, it’s been a good excuse to stay indoor and to work on plans. Floor plans. Spread across the kitchen table like breadcrumbs and a splash of black coffee. It’s all part of the process. Last time we built from scratch involved submitting fourteen pages of detailed plans, hand drawn on graph paper yet still technical and precise, for a log cabin inspected and built to code. That’s a big deal for us hillbilly cowboy sorts than didn’t go to school for this stuff, just figured it out as we went along. This time ’round, hopefully a clear idea of what we’re building should suffice.

With drawing close to complete, it’s time to get back out there and at it. Falling, hauling, milling, stacking…

We are ready. The weather? Not so much..

No matter the weather, spring comes. In spite of fresh snow on the hills behind us, the almond blossoms open and peach trees are close behind. A few brave asparagus have burst through moist ground, and last season’s kale is going to seed.

The first bed of spring crops is in, new kale, spinach, broccoli and chard, carefully tucked under row covers to protect the small plants from the still cold elements – and the dogs.

With a break in the rain, we go to the garden. Milling can wait. Growing our food cannot.

The dogs lay in freshly turned soil. My husband lays on the grass. Me, I lean into the shovel, and smile.

Meanwhile and always, water flows.

Here, now, as before and will be, a river calls us to sit beside and listen.

Listen.

A shrill whistle cuts through the air.

The call is simple. Familiar. Stirring me someplace deep within.

Emanating from branches of dark timber, the song of the Redwing, piercing through the dun of hard rain on metal roof and an ever swelling river.

Listen.

Hear.

Here.

Now.

You cannot outrun the past. The past is the path that led you to where you are today.

Yet in moving, you leave where you were behind. In a way, you leave a piece of who you were behind as well. A part of you left in the soil you fed with countless wheelbarrow loads of manure gathered each day from the horses. A part in the fruit trees that may feed only bear and deer when we are gone. A part in the people.

That can be the hardest thing to leave.

And in that void between what you have left behind and what you are crafting anew, you become the blank slate. The clay upon the potters’ wheel. You are both the clay and the hands that shape it.

We are not moving back nor backwards. We are moving forward towards a place that feels familiar with the clear crisp air and intense light and breathtaking endless horizons. A place where we’ll recognize the flash of mountain bluebirds and the bloom of showy cinquefoil. the fragrance of fallen aspen leaves and the soothing balm of winter snow. We’ll leave parts of that past behind. Time has healed trauma. Stories carry weight only if force fed as a mother still fattening a grown child. There are better things to nurture now.

Now is the time for re-writing. Not based upon where you are, but who you are.

The answers are not found out there. They are found in here. Within.

Where I should have looked all along.

Here and There.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Sounds of silence.

Oddly loud.

The puppy’s paws on crunching leaves. Frogs. Horses shifting in their close-by covered pen. The ever present song of the river still strong from this winter’s rains.

It’s dark. Behind me, there’s soft light from candles on the kitchen table. Before me, just enough to see shapes in shades of charcoal gray from the waxing moon still up over in the western sky

I’m sitting out on the deck as I do most every night before turning in, letting the dogs out one last time.

My nighttime ritual of taking one small bowl in a pipe filled with my special blend. Home grown tobacco, mullein, and mugwort. I’ve never been much for smoking anything altering, and my days of smoking the bright red box are gladly far behind me, along with my dreams of being the Marlboro woman. I breathe better now. I no longer fear my son will watch me drown in my own lungs from my own doing. It’s over twenty years since I left that habit behind. Over six since I left drinking behind. But still a gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do. I’m not perfect, know I can’t be, and well, not really interested in being completely vice-free. So it is for me with this little pipe, my little smoke, my little bad habit that brings me out at the end of most days and allows me to sit on the deck in relative silence, often under the eve while the rain batters down, and just sit, just be.

It’s clear tonight. Cold. Cold for here, but not for there.

Here, stars twinkling through bare oak branches above me that connect the earth to sky.

Trying to just listen. Not to think. Quiet the mind. Loose my thoughts in the rumble of the river and the bits of infinite space above.

Can I just watch the tiny glow from the tip of this little pipe, the smoke wafting softly from my lips, the big dog laying still beside me?

Isn’t that enough?

How hard it is to simply be?

Not all of us were born where we belong.

Maybe I am not there yet. Maybe we never arrive. Maybe it’s all just an endless journey passing through places and time.

Somehow it feels close. That sense of being where I belong. Only it’s not what I thought it would be.

Is it “where?” No. Because I am where I thought I’d be full. And something still feels empty. Though it’s filling. At an oddly calm and gentle rate. Like a slow inhale, exhale, and the pause in between, time and time again.

It’s not about place. It’s something so much more.

It is a filling from within.

I thought place would define me.

Or does it, I wonder, confine me?

It has.

Not here. Not now.

I’m starting to feel free. And starting to feel comfortable in that groundlessness of not needing a place to tell me who I am, tell you what I am.

A dear old friend Em so often told me, “Home is inside.”

The last place I thought to look.

“Stop chasing rainbows,” she’d tell me. “What you’re looking for is is not out there. It’s within.”

Yet I watched her never fully find whatever she was seeking and I was left to wonder:

Do we ever get there?

Or is this a never-ending journey, of longing to belong. Of growing up.

Why did I ever think it would be easy?

And why did I ever think it would be done?

Tell me, is it just me, or do you wonder too?

Here.

Rubbing my eyes and adjusting to the soft pale light of a California early morning spring sky, laden with fog, that when it rises into nothingness but blue with big fat happy clouds, reveals swells of gentle mountains undulating in crisp sharp shadows that begin and end spring days. Living is easy here with mild elements, warm waters, and heavy humid air. It is comfortable and congenial, words I never sought to describe my world. And yet, I belong here. I feel a part of the sand as I lay in naked by the river, the oak under which we sleep on summer nights, the geese that return to nest by the river before our house, and the twenty-something fruit trees we planted: peach and pear, cherry and plum, apple, persimmon and fig. I feel a part of the wood nymph fairyland of thick moss and ferns and ancient trees dripping with old man’s beard and the sound of frogs and wind-chimes and a swollen river. I feel a part of the people, my neighbors and friends and folks in town, people I am comfortable with, at home with, can talk with about sharing seeds, starting seedlings, thinning carrots and canning peaches from our own fruit trees. People that make me feel I belong.

And yet too I belong there. Colorado. A part of the stark open sky that shocks you at sunrise, the intensity of the elements that determine our days, the shivering sound of bull elk bugling and teasing call of coyote, the lure of mountain tops surrounding us like dancing muses, and the impression of being so close you can touch the stars as you sit bundled by the campfire at night leaning back into a silence of nothing but wind. I feel a part of breathlessness and burning lungs as the elevation calls and the mountain seduces and I find my tired legs climbing higher and higher and higher still like a feral beast appeasing some inner hunger. As if I needed more to call me, there is family, our son, and well, that love outweighs the rest.

It’s a cowboy boot and Levi jean life there, at least for half the year. The other half is down and wool and a lot of layers. It may sound harsh, and I suppose it is, but something about it entices me. Rather than chill my passionate side, the cold and harsh, the high wild life of those Colorado mountains makes me come alive.

On the other hand… even in these unknown hidden hills in the far north of California it’s flip flops and shorts for half the year, and in winter you don’t need much more than a slicker. Here, in summer, we sleep out on the deck beneath wide arms of old oak trees, lullabied by the sound of the gently flowing river. Here, in cool gray light of early morning with my husband still asleep beside me, the same one I have wrapped my limbs around countless dark morning back there, too, I wake to the smell of sweet grass and willows and wild mint that wafts up from the damp banks as I lay still, trying to count the awakening birds by their particular call. With closed eyes, I know them by their sound. The Redwing, the raven, Steller’s Jay, Tanager, towhee and chickadee.

Is one world better than the other? Who am I to judge? All I know is, some days I want it all. Both. Everything. Everywhere. Here. There. Home. A sense of belonging. With both. To both. Maybe to all.

A feeling that I am where I’m meant to be. But how does one decide? Does the place define, or do the people? Is it “where” or “with whom” or something else, something deeper down, an inner voice, a higher knowing?

How does one decide?

Does the place call us, hold us? Heck, I’ve been called, held, then chewed up and spit out. It can’t be about place. I told you how I wished it were, wished I always knew, wished I was born where I was meant to remain.

But I wasn’t.

And that too is neither good, nor bad. It just is. I’m not the only one.

So I look within. For answers. For home. And watch it grow.

It’s being built. One log at a time. A rustic, little cabin in the wilds. My kind of home.

Within me.

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