… and Out.

January 15, 2014January 16, 2014 / Gin Getz / 11 Comments

Another big one goes down.

Two more logs for a wall.

Finding the bright side does not make the dark go away.

So, you learn to see in the dark. And laugh. We definitely manage to laugh.

It lightens our tendency of taking it all too seriously. Taking ourselves too seriously. Yeah, lighten up.

From across river looking back at where we work, with the dead knocked down, burned up and dragged out, it begins to look fresh and young and alive. Green. The blue spruce are blue.

We are not fooled. This is Round One of our work. The smaller ones will be next. We see the signs. They already bleed.

At times I’d rather look at the surface and see only the remaining green. Not deeper through the branches at the slipping bark, pin holes, dripping sap, and first of the yellow needles down along the base, but I am here, and I do see.

Out of curiosity, I’ve started amassing before and after pictures. Here, before and during. Starvation Gulch. Twelve miles up the mountain. Maybe my favorite place in the world. The first picture, three years ago. The second, last year. What do you think this summer will reveal?

Maybe it will stop. Just like that. Maybe the devastation will end at the boundaries of the Weminuche or the Upper Rio Grande or… wherever the damage has now spread to.

Maybe it won’t continue. Maybe all the trees that still look alive will remain alive.

Maybe I’m wrong, there is no real problem, it’s all just me and my over active imagination and my sense of drama.

Maybe the trees will all survive and beat the beetles, the drought will end, the climate will cool, and we’ll all wake up next week and the hills will be alive with deep, dark timber once again and our children and their children will run through the big beautiful old trees and celebrate… life.

But I don’t think so.

We’re not going backwards.

Even if we don’t go any further. Look at what we lost.

Me, I’ll have a new house. Cheap.

Cleaning up our little pin prick of a piece of land in this big wide wild expanse is all we need to build with. What do we do about the other half million acres around us?

This affects us all. If you don’t see it, you’re denying it, or you just haven’t been down (or up) to these mountains in southern Colorado where it slaps you in the face.

I hear from readers who have survived the fires. Their scars are deep. They still cry.

I have dead trees. I am awaiting whatever is next. Will life return quicker in an area cleared and cleansed by fire?

Maybe that’s the big lesson in all this: Learning to believe in, if nothing else, the Great Mystery.

The big picture.

Little things like hundreds of thousands of acres of dying trees help you open your eyes, which in turn, may help you open your heart and mind.

There’s much more to it than my trees. This is just a little window. I guess I’m lucky to have this chance to see.

One night last week, I tried.

I tried to see the aurora borealis. Rumor had it, and science confirmed: they were going to make a showing this far south into Colorado.

So that night around midnight I bundled up in a fat coat and mittens and chunky boots and wool hat, and headed out with the barking dog. Bob was in town; the nearest human being was probably eighteen miles down a closed road and I’m out there running around looking like the Michelin Man in the middle of the night with my camera and it’s okay to let the dog bark all he wants for a change. Who the hell is gonna hear?

Have at it, I say. And he does.

I’m safe. In fact, I rarely see any wildlife any more, day or night.

I’ve got the wide angle lens on the camera, a tripod already attached, and the settings set for night photography. I’m gonna get me some amazing pictures of the aurora borealis.

But a snowstorm blew in and stayed in and here we are three days later and only this morning did it really blow out. No, I didn’t see the aurora borealis. I could barely see the moon.

Now I see, it wasn’t just me. Even if there were no clouds…. Would there have been no show? Depends on what you were looking for. No, I wouldn’t have seen the northern lights. But what of the light of the moon and stars across the deep winter sugar snow of the southern San Juans and the wonder of the winter sky?

Plenty of magic for me.

When was the last time Forrest saw a star? Forget the big events of the northern lights or even a shooting star. Just a star, up there, twinkling.

So, there we are.

The Great Mystery. The Big Picture.

I want to figure out why, not why me.

I am here. I can not turn my back and close my eyes and tell you it’s all okay and pretend it is natural.

The last count I saw said our loss of trees was over ten times greater than what Mother Nature has ever done in the Lower 48. And that’s before the latest figures, which are remarkably hard to find. Maybe it’s morbid, but I need to know. The death toll in my back yard. Southern Colorado. The Weminuche Wilderness. The high end edge of the Southwest and Four Corners. The beginning of the Rio Grande.

Finally, I’m getting warmer (not just me). Getting some answers. I’m not surprised what I’m finding.

Here’s the secret to bark beetles.

They only get the weak ones.

Weak trees.

Tell me, what does that say about the nearly half a million acres of Wilderness that spreads from my front door?

Rather than blame the beetles, let’s start thinking about what’s making these trees so weak.

I know, I know. I’ve spent too long on this. Let’s move on. Think of my poor husband. How many hours have I spent on the web searching in vain for current facts and figures?

Take a break, he tells me. Let’s go fell a big one. Take out your anger by burning the slash.

At least in the burned areas, recovery can begin. The past is gone and there is room for the future to take hold. A clean slate. If it does not wash away.

What will it take for the rest of the forest to recover? Rot is not really an option. We’re high and dry here. This is not a rain forest. This is the edge of the arid southwest.

There’s a log we sit on at camp. Rainy Day Camp, we call this place. At the Forks of the Utes, maybe three hours in by horseback if all goes well. Bob tells us the story of how this log was already dead and down when he and his buddy Doug were camped here on a rainy family pack trip when they were maybe ten. They hacked at that log as boys will do and finally cut it in half. That was forty-five years ago. The log is still very much there, and no, nothing is growing out of it yet.

Things don’t happen that fast here.

Can you say, “There is nothing we can do,” accept those words and walk away?

I walk away from the work site today. A growing pile of timber for my new home. For a moment I look back to the other side. It’s a green hillside. Green as I remember it, only without the big trees.

Before we finish felling the big ones, the next group of browning trees appears.

It’s the bigger picture. We’re trying to make the most of a bad situation.

That’s great, you say, but that’s not enough. Take my trees and build my house and pretend it is all okay and not look beyond my little bit of paradise to the big wide world beyond.

Felling our trees is not the answer, only a small solution to a bigger problem that most aren’t seeing, and those that see, deny or do nothing. I don’t know what to do either, so I fell my trees, plan my house, stomp my feet and raise my voice. What else can I do?

It’s not about my logs on my hill for my house. It’s not even about a half million acres of dying trees, in this part of the state alone. It’s about what caused that.

Is she beautiful now that she is a mountain of dying trees? Yes, she really is, she always will be. Will she be beautiful after she burns or rots or whatever will be her fate? Yes, I believe she will be. But can we not see beyond her surface beauty to her silent cry as tears flow like dried sap down the last of her old wise ones, and her pained wail is in the dry wind which strips her bare of needles on even her young trees?

Can we not be wise (or is it compassionate?) enough to wonder WHY and realize our answers so far are superficial, the questions deeper, the truth still out of reach, and we should be reaching if we care?

Needless to say, I’m not done. But that’s all for now. Enough food for thought, or what ever you want to call it. I might just call it fuel for the fire.

Down…

January 7, 2014 / Gin Getz / 14 Comments

~

~
Most days we’re down by the river. You can’t hear it or see it but it is there. Like blind faith. Or common sense. Dormant under the frozen surface. Silenced by the season.

Underneath, I know she rages. The Mighty Rio. Uncontained by elements and as strong as tide, she flows.

Without concern to her, we are on top, dragging logs, back and forth by snowmobile, snowshoes, culling dead trees, wondering if any will remain. Looks like we might be working here a while.

I thought it would be healing. Maybe eye-opening is healing.
~

~
The things we are seeing.

We’re deep in dead wood. Dang it, you can’t even find an undisturbed aspen grove around these parts without a great percentage of death.

But the spruce, the once blue spruce. That is what I see. Red.

I don’t know the numbers. You can look them up yourself. All I know is we’ve been watching the beetles kill mountain after mountain year after year. Like a wave. Starting at the top and spilling down. Then onto the next. And going back to finish off the stragglers.

Please don’t tell me to cheer up. I’ll be just as likely to tell you to wake up. Open up your eyes. Get out here and see for yourself.

It’s quite ruthless. Not what I have seen in other parts. I read we’re not the only ones, but right now, we got it bad. And there’s no end in sight. I just came back from a snowshoe on this side of the river and saw the tell tale signs. Again. It’s making its way down Pole Mountain and hitting the trees behind us. Pin holes, sap and slipping bark. Will they be red by summer?

I’m not hiding the truth or sugar coating this to find the pretty parts. I’m telling it like it is. Don’t read it if you don’t want to know what’s happening in this part of Colorado, here in the Rio Grande National Forest, here where the Weminuche Wilderness borders our land. It’s easy to avoid. There’s not much out there on the subject. I’ll share with you what little I’ve found. Though some of it is nonsense, and the rest, well, you probably don’t want to know.

Remember the year the deer and elk were trapped by the sudden snow? Remember how many of us had broken hearts watching our wildlife starve to death? We started to feed, until finally the Department of Wildlife was tired of being the bad guy telling us it was “natural” as if that would make it all OK and they got in on the action too and tried to help by distributing feed. Sometimes sticking with your heart, doing something rather than nothing, helps. It didn’t save most of the deer. I remember driving to Gunnison that spring and seeing a carcass rotting on every hill, far too many for the coyote and crows to finish off.

But do nothing? Easy to do if you leave. Go home. Don’t see. But if this is your home? You would do something too.

What can I do except share with you what I see?
~

~
Secrets unveiling.

For those daring to dive into the depths, dig in, cut through to the dark blue wood.

Bundle up ‘cause the sun don’t shine down there where we’re working, the sugar snow is deep and loose, and the wind still blows.

There, I’ll show you what I see.

Nature’s foul infanticide. As small as we see they can grow, we see they can be killed by beetles. It only takes a few pinholes.

Mistletoe on most every tree. Odd. I’m not going to turn into a biologist and claim to have the facts but sometimes, many times, I wish I knew more. Why are these parasites thriving as the tree puts out their last sap, and then goes down with its sinking ship shortly after?
~

~
Last night two owls were talking back and forth in the tall green trees behind my cabin. What are the chances of those trees being green this time next year?

A chickadee lights above me on a branch of healthy aspen as I’m fiddling with my camera. I talk to it. It chirps back. We discuss what will become of all of this. We agree (I think) we will adapt.

Next tree over is a big old spruce. One of the elder trees. At the base is a pile of loose bark chipped by the woodpecker seeking out the larva already within. Farewell for the old wise ones.
~

~
Knowledge. How do we find answers? I would have thought quoting science would give me backing. Instead, it seems, if I mention “climate change” or “global warming” I become political. No thanks.

I grew up in lefty liberal world; my husband in a righteous right wing one. We chose to sit back, watch, and think for ourselves. What a concept. What I see is this. People accept politics as they do religion, with just as much blind faith, but lacking a god or the golden rule.

I’m for thinking, observing, making up my own mind. I’m not going to try to convince you to believe what I believe. Beliefs are personal. You can (and should) make up your own mind, be smart enough to think for yourself, change your mind when you learn and grow (assuming, that is, you do…), and then… keep it to yourself. Those with the loudest voices tend to have the least to say. One more reason to stay up here on the mountain and keep away from town. I never was much of a conversationalist.

So this isn’t about science, data, or personal beliefs. This is about cold hard facts. OK? What I see before me. That’s it. Maybe you see something different. Like a paved street or sidewalk or another concrete building or pretty suburb street with groomed lawns and a shiny new SUV in every driveway. Fine. Whatever.

Me, I see trees. Dead standing. Hillsides of them. Big hillsides. Entire mountains you can find on the map with names like Ute Ridge and Simpson, Pole and Finger Mesa.

Come stand before my kitchen window and look outside with me now.

Tell me what you see. Not what you want to see. Not what you are told to believe.

I don’t care about who or what you believe in. I care about what you see.

~

~
Enough, already, I hear you say
So I’ll save the rest for another day.

Solstice Harvest.

December 21, 2013 / Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Solstice Harvest.

Bountiful.
Not the word one usually chooses for the darkest day.
Bountiful.
So it is today.

Solace as winter begins.
Feels like we’ve been here for quite some time already, snowed in as we have been since before Thanksgiving.

in the darkness
we learn to see
with fingers
ears and tongue
dancing
in the cave
awakening
while others sleep warm
in their thick brown fur
feeding off their own fat

Solstice Harvest.

A contradiction, you may say.
But look! It is!
There is lettuce, grown in abundance, picked fresh for the first time since planting a month or so ago from the big planter beneath the south facing window.

And then there are the trees. The very same ones I have seen out my kitchen window day in, day out, for years, dying, dead. Our trees. Taken by the beetle. Left to await what? The fires that are the only way we know to clear the waves of destruction this chaos has left behind?

Ah, but my trees shall have a better fate than burning.
You can take your ignorance, innocence and inability to act/react.
I will take my trees.

For now I don’t just see slipping bark and fallen needles, pin holes and dried up drip marks of golden sap.
Now I see timber, frames, walls, boards, beams and vigas.
Now, with each tree fallen and skid across the frozen Rio, I see my cabin.
And really, you know what that means.
Now I see new life.

The last of the living blue.

December 3, 2013 / Gin Getz / 6 Comments

White washed.

The snow mounts while the temperature drops.

The last of the living blue.

A live Blue Spruce. Vibrant blue green.

Have you forgotten the fragrance, the sweet sap, moist needles, the soft pastel color?

Now take a closer look.

Pin holes, running sap, slipping bark and yellow needles.

Another tree is lost.

The mountain across river, and the mountains as far as I can see from our little bit of paradise surrounded by a lot of wilds once were blue green. Now they are red and grey. Oh yes, still beautiful. I will always find beauty in these wilds, no matter what we go through together, how beat and burnt, stripped and stark, old and withered we both may become.

Some days it gets to me. Today was one of those days. Watching the next wave of dying trees lose their needles, lose their life.

Maybe you don’t see it. It’s easy not to see if you remain safe behind a desk, or just stop in the woods from time to time to take a look, and leave. But for those of us who chose to live amongst the trees…

This is my community.

And can I do no more than sit back and watch through beetles and burning?

And then there is hope.

Baby Blues.

A line of spruce trees barely taller than the snow is deep behind my cabin.

Forget titles and stereotypes and labels and names your big brother has called you. Instead I ask you this: Have you ever hugged a tree? If you haven’t, try. A really big one that takes three or four of you to wrap around like a Giant Sequoia, or a Ponderosa with a vanilla fragrance when you bury your nose deep in the warm crevices of her bark, or the big old Blue Spruce with pokey needles and sticky sap that stays with you all day, or the soft sensual smooth skin of a Madrone wet in winter.

I used to get attached to trees. Forrest and I would name them. Maps across the ranch and mountain, landmarks. You could plan your route around them, explain where you were, where you were going.

The last we named was Grandfather Tree. He was dying a slow death by beetles. We cut him down. A loud crash on a quiet mountain and the scar of his big stump remains. Now he will be a base log for our new home. A Giving Tree.

Gunnar and I cross the frozen river and listen to the whisper of the running Rio beneath. My snowshoes stay above deep tracks of a bull moose who broke trail into the woods. A tall, cold grave yard that still gives me comfort even in its empty embrace.

Snow already over my knees and the winter has not yet begun.

It’s not enough, this snow. This won’t change the drought. That’s what they still call it, you know. A twenty year drought. Not a change. Oh, no. Just a drought.

What will happen to this snow, sprinkled with dead dark needles to absorb the sun that now filters through the once dark canopy of tall stripped trees?

What will happen to these trees, these mountains of dead standing fuel no longer with a windbreak? What do you think their fate shall be?

It’s a package deal. The trees, the river, the rocks, soil, wildflowers and wildlife. The cold white winters and blustery springs, monsoon summers and flamboyant falls. This is the world I live in.

Yes, there are people too. They come, they go, they take what they want and leave no more behind than the winds can blow away and the snows will cover. Or maybe they do more.

It is for them that I write, though I try not to care, I do. It’s a package deal. People are a part of that package.

Because I want them to see what they cannot, do not. So I share with you what I see.

Look.

I have less of some things

More of others

Learning to let go of

identifying myself with

how many hours each day I toil

And still I must justify myself to you

for no longer

keeping myself too busy to think

Now is the time of

intentionally slowing down

Taking time to see

to smell and taste and touch and feel

And listen.

Yes, now is the time to listen.

Hear the shiver in the wind.

Turn Around

July 19, 2013 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Finally the sound of children laughing. Families out playing. I didn’t forget. This is good stuff.

Life as normal. You might say. Though maybe not. Back on track? Or is that backwards? Maybe I’m ready to jump tracks. Again.

The road is open, guests are here, leisure people in the distance sitting around with cocktails and chatter, the miller moths have hatched, this is the worst season for horse and deer flies we remember, and afternoon thunderstorms drive us and the flies to shelter. We’re finally heading off to work at the ditch, the horses are fit and shiny, the grass is green, the road is muddy, and a fire in the woodstove feels pretty good right about now.

The forest fires are out, fire ban lifted, the crews have packed up and left, the rains are plentiful.

These are the cold hard facts. Pretty nice, I’d say. Now it’s only rumors still spreading like wildfire. Get over it and don’t drink the KoolAid. No need to preach doomsday here. Nor do I want to hear blind optimism and see shallow smiles. Get real. Look around. This one’s over. What’s next? In the meanwhile, get to work and stay out of trouble. Best advice I can turn to. That’s all I need to do right now.

We’re off to the ditch. Nothing like good hard work to cure the blues. This is about as good and hard as it gets.

The book on Ginny and the time in Argentina, by the way, was completed two days ago. I love deadlines. There will be some revisions, modifications, refinements. Hopefully not too much. I want it real, raw, and most of all, a fun read and an inspiring story. I think that’s what we’ve got here.

Now it’s back to the Ditch Diaries. What are we into now, Year Seven?

Until next week…

Sending love and light from these wet wild hills.

Gin

Leave of absence

June 6, 2013 / Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Taking a break from the blog for the next month in order to complete the manuscript based upon my time in Argentina and the story of Virginia Neary Carrithers. Please keep in touch, check back in, and I shall look forward to resuming posts as soon as I have this project completed.

Sending love and light from these wild mountains.

On these trees

December 22, 2012December 22, 2012 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

The rhythm of movement. Lost in thought, and trying not to think. Just observe. The beauty and silence of the early winter on the mountain. Over cast sky and hills flattened without shadows, broken by dried bunch grass and the leafless cinquefoil poking through thin snow. Speckled hillsides where we expect by now to see smooth white. Don’t think about the continued drought. Don’t think. Just observe.
Cold hands. I struggle to press the shutter with my mittens on. As clumsy as boxer mits. Such contrast to the delicate subjects before me.

~
Dead trees. And dying ones. Sending out their last sap in a losing battle.
Beetle kill. Part of learning to see, finding the beauty in the beast. Getting used to it. Living with it. Knowing the tell-tale signs. Pin holes, loose bark, dried and heavy sap runs. This is Cutting Edge science. They look for answers. I wish they had them. I am learning to see reality. We are seeing changes yet undocumented, not yet understood. We learn to live it, not analyze it. We use our eyes, our heart. We listen to the falling needles on cold ground in spring and brush a tiny black beetle off our shirt in early summer. We walk trails silent from the layer of needles spread out before us like sand leading the way to the beach. Needles that once were shade. The view is opening.

~
It’s big, hundreds of thousands acres around me, but I am going to look close.
Some days it gets to me. Looking up at the rolling hillsides of brown blue spruce. Looking closer, say, at one pin hole or piece of slipping bark, is easier.

~
Living in a land I used to think was one of the last to be affected in this country, kind of like the late bloomer. Behind the times, if I may say. But now we find ourselves ahead of the game. Water issues. Drought. The aquifer drying up. Farmers paid not to grow. Entire forests dying. This is the forefront. There is nothing to refer to except for today.
We learn to listen with our eyes, our hearts, and let the so-called experts spit in the wind. Hopefully not too close to you or me.
I’m a dark timber kind of woman. A wood sprite of sorts who hides in the big heavy trees where my spirit is free and soars. I found my grandmother wisdom in the old growth fir, and my passionate bliss among the vanilla scented ponderosa pine. I’m not a silken bark aspen kind of lady putting out a fanfare of garish delight one season, and letting loose my leaves for half the year. That said, I have grown to love a hillside blending one into the other. That is Colorado.

~
At last count, Colorado lost 17% of our aspen. The aspen, some say, will be replaced by the conifer. They said that before the conifer began to die. Now some say the aspen will replace the conifer. I say no one knows. Such claims bring false hope. Can’t the land be beautiful for how she chooses to be? Ah… but are these changes her choice, or her reaction to our changing world?
All we can do is watch them slowly die, a quiet death, without fanfare. It doesn’t take a scientist to tell me. It only takes my eyes.
I see it. Plain as day. Plain as death.
Perhaps it is meant to be a mystery after all.
Have I lost my way again? What happened to quieting my mind and just observing?
How hard it is to just breathe.

Ode to a Christmas tree

December 6, 2012December 6, 2012 / Gin Getz / 6 Comments

You get an appreciation for life when you’re surrounded by death, you know? Trees are that way for me.

Although decorating for and celebrating Christmas is something I love, the Christmas tree part just had never worked out well for me. First, Forrest was raised in the far north of California where in winter the only action on the one-lane hair-pin turn road beside the rare sighting of one of the reportedly two hundred people who lived scattered in those hills and you hope on those rare times the driver was not drunk and remained on the road which of course was not always the case, was the logging trucks on days they could make it through mud slides, the occasional snow storm, and ice slick like a buttered pan in the sharp curves of the dark draws. Clear cuts like patchwork quilts secretly surrounded us. We would walk through fields that were once forest. It was a way of life there, a steady source of income for as long as the trees were there and then they would move on.

Now we live amongst Beetle kill. Hundreds of thousands of acres dying around my home. The tip of the iceberg visible from the window I look out right now. A hillside more brown and grey than green. And I know next year will even be worse. These little beetles leave a mighty large wake behind them.

The idea of cutting a tree for pleasure is not very pleasurable right now. For years, we cut Christmas branches. Big boughs off of the underside of the giant trees from the Pacific Northwest. Asked the tree for forgiveness, dragged it home through the mud and rain, then hung it up with bailing wire attached to the uninsulated wall you could see right through to sunlight if there ever was, which was not too often in winter.

Here, even before the trees started dying, we set up a fake tree. Saved from the landfill. No one ever seemed to notice. Who would guess, these folks living so far away on the mountain wouldn’t even take one tree? We couldn’t. I guess that’s why we live here, and those that only think about taking… leave. (Ahhhhh… the mountain heaves a huge sigh of relief….)

The trees up here don’t need thinning. Man’s intervention, from what I see from this window, and any other window I’ve looked out of, has been more than plenty. Maybe leave the forest alone for a while. Though now you know it’s too late for that. We’ve got a half a million acres of matchsticks curing out there now.

But… if I may for a moment try to justify my actions… Forrest is coming home for Christmas. I want the house to be festive. You’ve got to have a Christmas tree. The big old trees I could normally poach a lower branch from are mostly already dead. Bob and I discuss bringing home a Beetle kill tree. A tree skeleton, brown and dried and stripped of needles. A sign of the times. Maybe start something new. Kind of misses the holiday cheer, we decide.

Let’s get a tree that needs to be gone, we say. You know, find one too close to the road. Nope. Nothing. OK, one too close to the trail? We walk for over a mile. This one is too big. This one too sparse. This one has enough room, see, you could ride a horse around it. Leave it. It’s hard to kill when you care so much. We keep walking.

We find a tree that I know from personal experience is one you have to kick your boots from the stirrups and lift up your legs to ride through. And that’s even riding my little Arabian. What if I ride Big Fat Mamma Tres, or heaven forbid, the draft horse Norman? Really, it should go. We’re convinced. This isn’t murder. It’s necessary. It has a purpose.

We took it. Dragged it home well over a mile from the horse trail across river. It’s here now dressed up with colored lights that we can’t plug in because it is cloudy today. The downfall of solar electricity. A bit of a bummer after nothing but blue skies for what seemed like months. Grey skies today, and not even the reward of snow.

It is dry. Too dry. Remember, I live at an elevation of almost 10,000 feet. It’s supposed to be winter here by now, big time, and this snow which is not here is what should feed the river next year. The headwaters of the Rio Grande, wild and free above and around me. The drought continues. Ten years and counting. This year appears to be the worst yet. Warmest, driest.

Mid day and the horses are out grazing on last seasons grasses now dried and brown. The hawks sweep low and are rewarded with moles and voles still above ground finding no solace beneath the leafless cinquefoil.

Farewell to open waters

Still I trust the process
as longer nights will
shed more darkness that
turns the river solid

or so it should

these things must
Come
but have not yet

•

I am waiting to walk
on frozen waters
that now melt in the heat of
day passionless grey

skies skim over
Meaning nothing more
than the promise of returning

to blue
Which where I find myself

now unable to escape

the slow process of
silencing the river

•

watching sand
Fall between open fingers
That try to hold onto

What will not remain

the mountain turns
soundless as the river
freezes over and my

future lies before somewhere
in the twisted silver path thick

I think of mercury from a broken
thermometer dropped on a hard
wood floor and

Shattered

•

Holding no more weight than
a leaf from last season
scattered in the wind

waiting

I watch hillsides
fade to grass pale as snow

and shiver

Hush

November 30, 2012November 30, 2012 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Down by the
Muted river
Where hoar frost grows thick

Winter blossoms
Swelling
In frozen embrace under

Trees undressed
And you and I
In so many layers

Still cold
Though our hands touch
Through thick mittens

We pause over frozen waters
As the raven flies above
And the snow around us is

Marred by the last tracks of elk
Only there can we hear
The cry of moving waters

With depth greater than
Words we share
That shatter the silence

I read somewhere recently of the horse being the dolphin of the land
Then may I call this heavy frost the fish scales of winter

If you walked with me now along the north facing slope, perhaps you’d never notice.

The snow from a few weeks ago has held, now dry and packed, we walk on top with our boots and take twenty steps before falling in. This aged snow now turning to these fascinating crystalline fields of frost. In the trees you might think it odd that the snow is dappled with pine needles. Scattered randomly like in a childs drawing of cows in a field. Do you know what that means? The trees above are dying. Beetle kills. Needles fall like rain drops in the wind.

Perhaps we stop by a live Blue Spruce. It would be a small one. The little ones have not all been taken. At least, not yet. We notice the aroma.

Sap. Sweet life. A smell I have almost forgotten. For now it is rare.

We stop and close our eyes and soak it in, the sweet breath of the tree, inhaling to the depth of our soul. And we smile.

Moving On

September 1, 2012 / Gin Getz / 9 Comments

First, my apologies. Our internet has been dysfunctional the past few weeks. I suppose I am lucky to have it at all out here. Unable to post, keep up, respond, check in as I would like to. There will be time to catch up in the future. Winter comes.

Though I care for many of you, in my odd and quiet way. Strong and fiery as my voice may sound at times. To those who noticed my absence and wrote to check in, thank you. Yes, I am alive and well. Not even too busy or depressed, off in the wilderness or on the road. No real good excuse except the satellite connection, or lack thereof.

Second, an update. Where I am.

Where I am is where I was is where I will remain.

Where I am meant to be. For now, if not forever, for who can portend the future?

Full moon on frosted grass in the dark hours of morning. Silver lights shine underfoot with almost as much mystery as the sparkle of the overhead stars. Familiarity is lost to magic of the moment and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Changing of seasons, of stages of life. Aging, passing, birth and death. A dying forest surrounding me, calling for my voice to speak where it cannot. A hawk circles me, confirms, accepts, allows. We speak a silent dance for just a moment. Long enough.

So much changes, remaining where I am. The soothing blanket set out to dry in fierce winds. Refreshing. Discomforting. Take not the console of comfort for granted. Too easily lost. And found. Changing.

The first of leaves fade brown and yellow. An early passing this year. You know I am ready.

Forrest returns to university, to Canada. Bob and I to our empty but busy nest.

Plans for winter projects, putting up hay, groceries, firewood, chickens, starting winter lettuce to grow in my kitchen this fall…

Third, some thought of gratitude, words of thanks.

Thank you for joining me here. Some strangers, some friends, even a few I have never met but have become a part of our family over the years…

Thank you for being there, for sticking with me. Allowing me to speak. Quiet as my voice may be. Allowing me to listen. To challenge and talk and argue…No, we won’t always see eye to eye… I don’t need to speak with a mirror. I would rather speak with you.

Thank you for being there, for reminding me none of us are
ever really alone. All we need to do is reach out.

Today I send a long arm out to you with a slow embrace through the wires or wavelengths or whatever makes this stuff work.

Namaste.

Gin Getz

On the intimate connection between person and place. Sharing words and images of wilds within and around.

beetle kill

… and Out.

Down…

Solstice Harvest.

The last of the living blue.

Turn Around

Leave of absence

On these trees

Ode to a Christmas tree

Hush

Moving On

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