Yes, lots happening.  It’s Spring.  You know. Same for so many of you.

Among a lot of other good things, the final editing of The Last of the Living Blue is underway, and we’re now completing the Afterwards.  This may be part of it. And even if we cut it, I would like to share this with you now.

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I’m down at the building site where the snow from the latest storm just melted and the clay of the cut open earth sticks to my boots like concrete. The foundation is poured.  When the ground dries and cement cures, we’ll be back at it.  Next with the logs which have sat dormant for the remainder of winter awaiting their fate.  Becoming home.

At my feet is a gosling. A fluffy yellow and grey critter that at only a few days old swims across the creeks I jump. He showed up in the middle of the work site when we were setting forms.  With a steep cliff down to the river on three sides, and the gravel road and torn up ground on the forth, how did he end up here, on this high harsh bluff above the Rio with no sign of other geese close by? Forrest heads off to explore the ravines and finds no potential parents, siblings or nest.

You don’t want to interfere.  You want to let the wilds be wild.  But you can’t just turn your back, walk away, knowing what its fate would be. I think that’s why they make babies so cute.  You’re going to do all you can to care for them. Against all logic and principles and belief in non-interference. How do you draw the line at compassion?  You don’t.  So you have a baby goose in your house and find yourself cutting dandelion greens and walking to feed the horses very, very slowly so the little guy can keep up.

A friend tells me it must be a sign.  Neither of us know what he might symbolize but you get the feeling it must be something, for some reason, for you can’t help but wonder why here?  Why now?  After having him in our lives for several days and becoming rather attached to the little stinker, I’d say the message he brings us probably has something to do with patience, love, slowing down and nurturing.  He sleeps between Forrest’s feet at meal time and when I don’t feel like walking so slowly, Bob’s got him on his lap when I head out to take care of chores. I swear your blood pressure drops when he chirps sleepily on your lap.

I don’t have time for this, I want to say. Grinding chicken food, picking greens, carrying him about and cleaning up after him. Make time, my friend says.  I know. She’s right.  So there he is now, tucked into my vest, cheeping softly while I write.

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Another May comes, is almost gone.  The foundation for our home is laid.  Concrete in the earth.  A sense of permanence, wanting, needing to belong. These are my roots.  Solid, grey, thick footers.  Something to hold me down, connect me further with the land.  Something to remain long after I am gone, my son and his family, generations thereafter.  Long after the scattered seeds of the blue spruce turn into a forest of new growth, and the new some day turns old.

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This season has been one of strewn spring snows. The river roars rich and brown and the reservoir is higher than I have ever seen it.  It feels healthy. The grass on pasture is already lush enough that the horses hesitate when I call them in for hay. We no longer talk in terms of drought and fire bans and fear of lightning.  We think we’re off the hook.  It’s over.  Long gone.  The treed hillsides even look green.  Am I seeing things?  Sometimes we see what we want to see.

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The season begins. Traffic on the road (well, at least a few motors a day), summer homes dusted out, smoke from other chimneys, voices at the trailhead.  Even the UPS trucks drives in (and once again, a welcome sight).

I feel lost and need to find myself again.  It is hard after a winter of silence and solitude.  I try.  I want to try harder but then find myself worn thin because I’m so tired of trying and I am left wishing it would all come naturally and it never does.

There is an emptiness and detachment that comes over me as I lose the voice of the trees around this time every year when the air is filled with people things.

I think of the conversation I had with a colleague last week who tells me he finds equal beauty in man and nature, and is fascinated by the precarious balance and blending between the two.  A relationship, a dance of life.

Why can’t I see the beauty in this interconnection?  Why do I too often see the fault?

Finding balance in this land of extremes.

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A walk through the trees to Sweetgrass Meadow and I’m looking for the truth.  I’m looking for answers.  Is it over?

I stop to rest, sitting on a fallen tree alongside the edge of a small clearing.  If you look up to the top of the north facing slope, it’s a hillside of grey and brown blue spruce.  Down at the edge of the clearing, many trees are still green.

Here, I am close.  In them.  With them. Among my beloved blue spruce. I sit silently, look closely.

Behind green needles, I see clear fresh sap dripping from slipping bark like so many tears.

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Has it ended?  This wrath of beetles that devastated our forest. Has it finished its destruction?

Is the drought over?  Is the aquifer refilled? Fire danger a thing of the past? I know the million acres of dead trees won’t return to life, but what about the ones left living?  And what about the beetles? After such a mild winter, I wonder.

I want to believe it’s over.  The spruce trees around the ranch and at the edge of the opens meadows across river are still green.  I have not yet seen a bark beetle. With all this moisture, this beautiful spring, surely everything will be okay, I tell myself.

If I am to have blind faith, I shall find it in the wind and wilds.

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