Gradually, she enters. Silently moves in. Puts down her bags and unpacks. She intends to stay here a while.
She has left the door ajar. You feel cold air on bare ankles and get up to close the entryway. Put on another layer of wool. Zip up a little higher. Keep the fire going all day.
Here in the far north of California, she does not scream her arrival. You must listen. Wind is quieter with leafless trees. Fog and frost alternate, making mornings an eerie scene to wander through, beneath tangled bare branches, oak moss and old man’s beard. Stripped of autumn’s gaudy golden display, you see more of her pale sky, muted and subdued by the season. You notice her wrinkled arms exposed, gnarled fingers of naked branches reaching upward, outward, as if she is holding up the heavy air. You walk with her as if somewhere in some old western sepia photo, crunching leaves with every slow, measured step. And you stand with her, simple, stark and unadorned. And breathe, because she invites you to pause, to slow down. To look inside. In your home. Around the old wood cook stove where the kettle ever rattles, the cats are curled nearby, and the smell of biscuits wafts as a welcoming chime. And in your soul. Those dark places. Warmed by the fire and intermingled feet together on the sofa shared with perchance a dog, a cat, and a cup of tea.
Some say winter is the Old Man. Yet I believe she’s the crone. Gray and weathered and wise. Almost silent. She has little to say. You ask her to share her secrets, and in reply, she raises a gnarled finger and points the way.
The way home.
Somewhere safe and warm, between your ribs.
There is a part of me that yearns for the wild winters of Colorado’s high country. Where the approach of winter transforms the mountain into something hollow and vast, and holds you tight in a frozen embrace. In thick socks and thicker soles, we walk with a deliberate pace for you cannot linger out here for long, crunching across frost swollen ground so solid we bury our pipes six feet down. It’s not that I love to be cold. It’s not about snow, and certainly not skiing and those kinds of things you hear about that could lure a person to remain. Rather, it’s the crystalline mornings when frost sugar coats each delicate bare branch of the bare willows, silent and still down beside the frozen creek. It’s the glacial flow, layered like a silver lava flow, down at the bottom of the creek creeping thicker and thicker each day as water gradually works its way around ice. And it’s the afternoon sun working its way through disrobed aspen and sparce blue spruce to the frozen riparian bottom, turning the ice flow alive with a ghostly glow. It’s the sound, ethereal as a whale call, of groaning ice spreading thick across the big white flat of the reservoirs under endless stars dancing in fathomless black in silence only heard through deep, deep freeze when the surface of our world is still.
I could tell you my heart is torn, but that’s not quite right. It’s not ripped or ragged. It’s just a little confused.
How can I decide? Between soft, light and mild – and high, harsh and wild. I cannot. Not for now. For now I will dance between two lovers, the slow embrace of a gentle land; and the passionate tango holding me tight to fierce ground.
And time will be my crystal ball, or the wisdom of the winter crone, when I finally understand to where her knobby finger points.
Finally a warmer evening. No rain and hail this afternoon to cool things down to cold. So he heats a bucket of water over the fire and offers me a soak, out under the wide open sky that throws her usual evening show of colors nearly gaudy – blues and violets and magentas and grays, blending boldly in untamed air.
As I slip my dirty feet into the pail, a part of me melts. Between the warm water, watching ground-in dirt abrade, and the generosity of my husband to share this simple gift, I soften.
Two weeks ago yesterday, we left our oasis in California, and today Colorado feels like home. Here, there, wherever I am. Wherever the soil rubs deep into my pores and comes to rest beneath my nails. Wherever the air fills and burns my nose and lungs and wherever the water in which I bathe becomes me. That is where I am, where I wish to remain, where I belong, forever.
Camp is set. A place to sleep and cook and clean. A road to come and go. Water to drink and a place for chickens and horses, dog and this meager thing I call a garden. A place to do laundry, store tools, wash after another dirty day.
We are ready to move forward.
And so, we break ground.
And as the sod is peeled back, revealing rich soil below, deposited a millennia ago by the industrious work of beavers, the story in my heart unfolds just as deep, just as wide, just as rich and wild.
And then we return inside. Into the comfort of what is now home to my man, my dog and me. A tiny trailer, 8 feet wide and 14 feet long, that I decorated as I do, with crystals and warm colors and an assortment of things that make me feel cozy. Things that make me feel at home, as does the sound of that rooster’s crow.
Prayer flags in the kitchen window that were custom made many years ago. The only missing message is faith. Something I am returning to. The path is unique to me. The direction is all the same.
In fact, this lesson took me fifty-something years to figure out.
It’s about people.
The photos today may not be, but the writing’s about people.
The thing about people.
See, intertwined with this journey of place is one of people.
Because true belonging is a balance, unique for each of us, of connecting with people as well as with place.
Ones sense of belonging is found with and created by connection.
Connection. Connecting with land has been easy for me. Connecting with people, well, this is the part I’m finally getting.
If you’ve known me a while, likely you know that people were not my thing. I was awkward. Shy. Reserved and withdrawn. At least I usually felt all those things.
And yes, scared.
People scared me. Being around them, talking with them, trying to connect with them. Never belonged. Connection felt like an impossible mission; I felt more disconnect than connection. And then would rehash and ruminate for hours, days and years all the things I surely did wrong in those (rare) encounters.
So in my defense or some sense of self preservation, I became a bit of a recluse, a hermit, a wild woman who lived “way out there.” And I did my best not to deal with people.
I’ve lived like a lone wolf. I’m not saying that’s a good thing. However… I once proudly boasted of not leaving the mountain for five months at a time, and going from fall to spring seeing only nine people, two of which were my husband and son.
It’s not that I didn’t like people.
It’s just that I chose to be alone.
It’s just that…
I thought I’d be better off.
I thought I’d be safer.
I thought I had all I needed, was self-sufficient, could do it all by myself.
And guess what I learned?
I was wrong.
Isolation created separation.
And separation created depression.
And in that self created state of disconnection, I found myself in a rabbit hole that got deeper and deeper and deeper still.
And into that hole I fell, deeper and deeper and deeper still.
Until I finally hit the bottom, dusted myself off, and climbed back out.
It took taking my Long Quiet Ride to wake me up to the greatest truth.
It was a trial by fire.
Throwing myself out there, in front of the bus, being at the mercy of people. OMG.
And out there, I learned two things.
First, people are good. For the most part, I mean like seriously, obviously, good is so far above and beyond bad. The fact that our population has grown to over eight billion of us is proof enough for me. Good wins.
Second, I need people. We all do. No matter how independent we fool ourselves to be. We are interdependent, and that’s a good thing. On that trip, boy did I need people. For direction, for suggestions of safe passage, for companionship, for connection, for some sense of wholeness that was left as a gaping hole while I was out there trying to do it alone.
Here’s the deal. The fear that prompted me to build my armor and protected walls didn’t keep me safe, only kept me separate.
Believe me, I had spent a lifetime of plenty of time alone and proving myself capable. That’s not what I went out there to do. I didn’t know what I was looking for but I figured it out fast. Got the message, loud and clear. And right away.
And from the very first day, I realized, I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to connect.
I longed to share a meal, a story, a hug, a laugh. I wanted to be a part, no longer apart.
Now, some things remain the same. I still choose to live “way out there.”
But some things are very different.
I have learned the thing about people.
And I have learned to love people.
In small doses, admittedly. I’m still not keen on parties, potlucks and group gatherings. One-on-one is more my style. Even if it’s one-on-one with the woman at the checkout or the guy in line before me, tea with a neighbor or a long walk with an old friend, getting the story of the person sitting beside me in a waiting room, or (this will always be my personal favorite) a lingering dinner shared with my husband and son with candles, fresh bread and simple homemade food, and lots and lots of laughter and love.
I believe it is a universal truth that everyone wants to belong, to be accepted, and to be loved.
Hatred is a defense. I know all about that. It’s armor. It takes more courage to drop it than to hide behind it.
But in doing so, in freeing ourselves of our so-called protective shield, we lighten our load.
Only then can our wings unfurl big and bright and wide. Only then can we rise and soar.
I’m living proof that we can learn, we can grow. We can forgive. And (I humbly bow to those who have) we can be forgiven as well.
I’m sharing this because I wish others wouldn’t make the same mistakes I made. But I know life doesn’t work that way. We have to make mistakes in order to learn. We have to live to learn. What we’re told or taught may be intelligent, but it is not wisdom. It becomes wisdom when it soaks into our heart and soul. Then we really get it.
It took me a helluva long time to learn what a lot of you knew all along. That’s a lot of unnecessary pain, for myself, and for others. That’s a lot of loss, because really, I did miss out.
But I got it.
Finally.
A late bloomer.
Better late than never.
What does this have to do with the adventure we’re currently on, building an off grid cabin “way out there” in Colorado, while still wondering where the hell we’re meant to remain?
A lot.
Because people matter as much as place. Because people are a part of the place. Because people fill my heart in a way that the wild world cannot, and hopefully I can fill others’ hearts along the way. Because connection matters, belonging matters, and no place will ever be “the” place without that bond and love and connection with the people around you.
How can I love a place without loving (at least most of) the people who live there? Am I so shallow as to love a pretty view but not the people, the stories, the interrelation of the people who are there?
The thing about creating or finding community and the place where I belong is ever present if not on my mind than in my heart.
I don’t want to ever be isolated, separated or lonely again.
I may not be totally rocking the social scene. I’m still a quiet, wild woman, silent sort that needs more time in the trees than in town – but finally I learned I do need that time in town. With people. Connecting. Belonging. And much to my surprise, it feels so good.
Yes, it’s scary. Yes I am often still afraid.
But I have to. That’s the courage I’m building.
Though I may choose to live “way out there,” reaching out regularly allows me to live as I do, and be a part, not apart.
I am a part of humanity.
And it’s a good place to be.
Wherever that physical place may be.
And yeah, that’s the biggie I’m working on.
People are basically good. Everywhere. And I can find my people where ever I go. If I have the courage enough to open.
So the question in my heart now is, how do I figure out that balance of loving the land and the people who live there, and choosing where we are meant to remain?
How can I choose one place when I find a connection with people I meet all over the place?
Oh, that’s a biggie. I’ll save all that for another time.
I’ll conclude with a few updates from the past few days. Nothing ground breaking quite yet. Soon. Believe me, you’re not near as anxious as we are to get moving forward on this big job. But before working there is living, and right now, we’re still working on those details, and there are a lot, because it’s not just about building, it’s about living, and living takes a lot, and living does come first. A lot of little details, and some big ones too, like working on the road to access our camp and worksite with some seriously Old Iron and gravel from our land.
And the shed. Oh the shed! The shed is an amazingly awesomely wonderful gift from Bob’s sister that is turning into something we didn’t know how bad we needed, and now wonder how we’d manage without. It’s got enough room to house all our tools on shelves in plain sight, have a work table out of the elements (and elements are a thing up here, with rain and hail a daily thing). And though the shed also serves as safe storage for all those things we managed to stuff in the horse trailer on the way out here, we’re finding it even provides us with a mud room – a place to leave our muddy boots and hang out weather gear, and up here, that’s a mighty appreciated thing. It’s huge – big enough to live in, far bigger than our humble camper. Though rest assured, it’s not going to stop us from building. Just help us along the way.
The things that were easy and reliable for me to share back in California – the constant and reliable beauty and abundance of the garden we created – well, not so much here. Between the mice and mornings still freezing regularly, my so-called garden, though covered with agribon and a heavy tarp at night, is not a happy place.
Though the rest of the wilds here are. And wild it is. With endless room to roam and mountains to wander and treasures to observe. All in all, it’s big and wide and wild and my heart and soul are soaring with the ever-changing but all the same expansive view before me.
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.
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.
Gin Getz 