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On death

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

We turn one corner closer to home as the horse trailer rattles down the dirt road behind us, pulled by the same truck we’ve been driving since we first made a family. Dust kicks up a wake as the view of our little piece of the mountain spreads wide open before us.

We ride along in our own silence. What can we talk about that would distract us from this changing view? We are not supposed to comment. It’s all been said before. We should be used to it by now. Perhaps we should not notice. But we do.

What are we supposed to feel? Nothing? Never. I turn my head and see the dying from another point of view.

Death descends on the mountain. Some days we think it’s just the light. We sit at the kitchen table and look through the wavy old glass panes and think maybe it isn’t so. Perhaps we’re just looking for what we know will be. Browning trees, starting at ridge line, sinking down draws, wrapping around the mountain from the beetle killed back side into our view. The green fades. An amber glow of evening light halos the trees even mid day. The beetles are taking our side of the mountain.

It’s a natural cycle, I read. Does that make it all right to see our hillsides dying? And all we can do is sit and watch the hillsides fade.

There is no one to blame but the beetles, and they feel no remorse. I feel so much.

Death, oh death, descending the mountain like a heavy brown veil taking the green needles away in the wind, a blanket under foot as our trails become lined with what was once vibrant life.

I shed tears like needles, and they fall just as plentiful, just as silent, with no one there to hear.

It’s natural, they tell me. So is my anger. And so are my tears now blending with the summer rain and soaking into the opening hillside of dying trees.

Dreaming

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Within a stone’s toss from our Little Cabin is the outhouse, a close and convenient distance from the front door of a cabin without indoor plumbing. On the east side of that outhouse, like a small wooden box perched on the bluff over the river with a view as spectacular as any you could dream up, is a bluebird house. Before we moved back down to this cabin for the season, renting out the house we built and called home once again to a series of grateful tourists, the bluebirds moved in. They were disturbed when that outhouse began receiving regular use, but determined to stay put.

The couple remained, the eggs have hatched, tiny squeaking chirps amuse us as we sit silently on the throne on the other side of the old weathered wood wall, and from our table in the cabin we watch the proud parents busy throughout the day catching bugs to feed their growing brood.

Determination.
The power of a dream.
And the emptiness to be without.

Even before he was born, it never occurred to me Forrest would not receive a full tuition scholarship. I know that sounds crazy. Much of what I do and believe does. But I’ve not only believed it, I’ve worked towards it for the past eighteen years. I saw no reason why it could not be. And took a lot of steps along the way to make it happen. And then so did Forrest. And ultimately, he made it happen. He’s learning to dream, and seeing how dreaming is the first step to creating.

Now I find myself uncertain of my dreams. They are distant and vague. The clear images which have guided me into these often crazy situations throughout my life currently are too murky to steer me clearly. I’ve been beaten down after the past eight years of plans torched in spite of my efforts. I’m not sure if I blame bad luck, bad relations, or bad choices. Probably a combination of all three. And still I have to realize that success or failure, both are mine.
Now I falter. My resolve is weakened. I question myself. It is one thing to be a dreamer, I remind Forrest, but I have and will always strive to be one who works towards and makes my dreams into reality.

A doer, he says, not just a talker.
Yes, I say. But I don’t want to just be empty words. I want to be actions. Living proof.

How do I get myself to dream again when right now it seems my days are consumed putting out fires as they arise? Moving out, moving in, moving far away, guests arriving, horse training, college paperwork, business, ditch work, completing the subdivision… Even the simple things like finding a place to take a shower after a day of hard work. I tackle the list in order of priority. Dreaming is not at the top of the list, and the list is in a cycle of growth. Wind stirs the fire.

The additional energy needed to build, and rebuild, has been minimal. I’m trying to catch up with the fires, jump the line and run free and clear.

But I’m done being burned and consumed. My priorities are no longer this business, my guests (yes, my calling in life of providing a clean and comfortable short term get-away for a bunch of every changing tourist is complete – I can check that one off my list). It’s time to close one book and begin a new one. Scary, exciting, wild and uncertain.

The wind picks up. It’s bringing rain clouds this time. A storm blows in. The embers sizzle and thin trails of smoke wisp up as the rain pours down.

In the midst of the storm over the Rio, I feel my dreams stirring like dormant seeds in a parched land. Soak, expand, and allow the dreams to swell. Something is taking shape.

Return

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments


We return.

Greeted by the soft light of the amber evening sun, long shadows, the smell of horses and clean air, and the close rush of the Rio, now a foot lower on the bank than it was five days earlier as we were preparing to depart.

Home. Simple and pure. A little one room log cabin, now flanked by a storage shed and a simple deck of scrap wood connecting the two. There, where I stand in the morning sun and wash my dishes in two well worn steel tubs of water heated on the old cook stove.

We settle in, lighting the Coleman lantern and that old stove and feel very happy to be home.  Home in all its simplicity. Home for now.

Away from the fancy Four Star hotel and restaurant fare served on real plates with cloth napkins with smiling faces who were used to strangers coming and going when I carried on with a sense of permanence, ever changing but understood by hotel staff.

Here, home, back where I can clear my mind with the sound of the river pulsing through the open door, the thin old panes of glass on closed windows. I stir the pot simmering on the stove, stuff in another chunk of wood, and stare out into the disappearing view. Close by, Gunnar runs in circles in his favorite patch of long, wet grass. His home. For a moment, he is wild, and I let him be.

We step out for our evening ritual of brushing teeth under the stars, a fine necessity when one is without indoor plumbing, and the smell of wood smoke lingers like a heavy incent, frankincense in the church at Christmas when I was a child.

My temple, I think now, as I stare up into the ever expanding array of stars, and the Milky Way sweeps liberally across and down to the south east in a cloud of open promises.

Graduation

/ Gin Getz / 12 Comments

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

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

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

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

Changing times.

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

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

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

And he understands the power and passion of work.

Where will his dreams lead him from here?

A new beginning.

As my greatest dream to date is being fulfilled.

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

I love you, Forrest Nile Getz.

Work

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This happens every year

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

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

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

This happens every year.

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

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

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

Almost summer

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

The comfort of clouds

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

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

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

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

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

Morning moose

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

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

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

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

Connections

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

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