literary blog

Compromise

/ Gin Getz / 12 Comments

On Monday as I clicked “publish” for my self-absorbed post full of insecurity and self doubt, I read it is my hundredth post at my “new” blog.  Added to 471 posts published on highmountainmuse.com, and 112 on highmountainhorse.blogspot.com.  As one friend says, that’s a lot of words.

I somehow question if there should be more.  Not more words.  But… more… I don’t know what. Answers.  Like, why am I doing this?  Where is this going? What is the point?  And even as I am unable to answer these questions, I continue to… write.

More… what? Purpose, direction, results.  Something concrete.  Something to show for all the time put into it. Something more than a lot of words.

Horse people will get this part.  Cyndee writes:  “I have a tee-shirt that says ‘The Ride is the Reward’. You know, all those hours spent feeding, mucking, doctoring & worrying in exchange for the complete freedom of time in the saddle, time to just ‘be’ – always looking for those few fleeting strides of perfect unity with your horse? There is no financial reward, no ‘atta boys’, it is simply who we are. Maybe you need a tee shirt that says ‘The Write is the Reward’.”

Some days all I see are more unanswerable questions, more desire for expression, improvement, diving deeper and/or soaring to new heights… and no interest in writing less.  More, more, more!  If only that “more” would get me somewhere.  Alas, it is the journey, not the destination.  So I am often told.  So I would like to believe.  And so I will question regularly.

Questions.  Compromise.  Trying to get somewhere but we don’t always know where “there” is.  And perhaps it does not matter.  Yes, it is the journey… I tell myself again.

We start off heading in one direction.  We learn and grow along the way (hopefully) and may find ourselves somewhere far from where we thought we were headed.

There are days I wish I married a farmer instead of a mountain man.  To be grounded, on flat land, in routine.  Though just as affected by the elements.  And just as connected with nature.  But we don’t choose who we fall in love with.  I think it’s one of the few things that is really out of our control.

But a mountain mama I suppose is what I would have been called even before coming here.  Those who knew me then… running a bit wild in the woods with my baby on my back and a couple of dogs beside me; quiet mornings alone with my dairy cow, my head resting on her flank, talking in a soft and soothing voice as my hands are warmed on her generous teats; learning to horse pack at the expense of innocent children who trusted me (hey, we always made it home alive…); out there in the rain with a shovel in hand, the moisture dripping from my face equal parts internal and external elements.

Compromise.  I think of this now.  I think of this often.  We can’t have it all. What matters most?  What are we willing to work for?  What are we willing to leave behind?  For at some point, something has to be left behind.

Here and now. The compromises to be here.  Extremes, so many extremes, from the elements to the tourists to the lack of air.  Shortness of breath as a way of breathing.  Wool hats and down jackets year round.  The endless chore of firewood, bucking, splitting, hauling, burning. Thirty days frost free and leaves on the trees for but four months. Complications with altitude that kills innocent colts unexpectedly.  The inability to fatten a pig or find a way to keep a small herd of cattle or flock of sheep year round.  Parched lips and bloody noses.  Sunburn and wrinkles.  In-laws, oh those few dreaded in-laws, who choose conflict and control, meanness and manipulation as a way of life. And the void of a sense of community, which became more bittersweet a compromise to be without after having spent the winter a part of such a wonderful one.

And what do I have?  Silence.  Solitude. Wilds.  Brilliant sunshine and radiant views.  Endless miles and mountains to wander.  Peace and love for the land like I have never felt before. Connection.  Admiration.  Adoration.  Of mountain, sky, river and air.

Why here, I wonder?  Perchance like falling in love.

Why we are such reflective beasts, when all other creatures are content focusing on a good rest, sex, survival and the next meal.  Ha, you say, we do that too.  Yes, that and more.  So much more. Too much at times.  How complicated our lives are due to thought alone.

So the best I can do on days like this is put down my shovel or my fencing tool, be still, take a deep breath, and look up at the sky with the ever changing clouds more brilliant than a painting could ever capture, cradling me and my wild world, and become lost in the roar of the spring river echoing like a distant orchestra from the cliffs above the mighty Rio, and count my blessings as a flock of blackbirds swirls around me in a joyous cacophony.

Food for thought

/ Gin Getz / 16 Comments

For a rare treat, we have dinner plates of perfectly pan fried fresh caught trout on our laps in front of the fire and watch a movie.  Julie & Julia.

When I was 17, I returned to the states from a year in France where I started as an au pere and found myself diving deep into the depths of the divine world of French cooking. I figured I would be a chef because French cooking was all I really had, all I really knew or could do.  And I learned that wasn’t such a bad thing, either.  Went over pretty well at dinner. Alas, practicality proved stronger than passion, and the need for a job just to pay to eat won over the ability (or rather, lack there of) to pay to learn to cook… In other words, a quick stint waitressing (where I quickly learned I was better cooking food than serving food), then settling into office work won out over the Culinary Institute.

Though I’d bet you my husband is pretty glad I did learn and do love to cook.

But here I am still not a “real” writer.  I’m still not paid to be published. In an attempt to act professional, I even requested a humble stipend from a local magazine that features my work regularly, and I’ve yet to hear a response.  Gee, thanks.

It’s not discipline I lack.  I’m all for the daily early waking allowing me time to sneak in my writing before my “real” day begins.  In those early hours, I managed to finish my first full length manuscript.   It’s been accepted by a literary agent, so I thought I’d be a regular name at Barnes and Nobles by now.  But alas, it is somehow stuck in that literary limbo and not going anywhere.  “Be patient,” he tells me.  Trust.  I’m not patient, and losing confidence.  Not that I had much to begin with.  I’m not doing the “self publish” thing.  Say what you will, “real” writers don’t go there.

So, here I am trying to justify rejections, getting plenty of practice, and thinking more often than not now that my book is never going anywhere and this blog is just my relief and release for, what would you call it, creative expression?  Oh, I am grateful my husband “lets” me take the time to write, but come on, seriously, what the hell am I doing here?  How can I justify the time I’ve put into this writing, and then commit to the next manuscript when I’ve yet to see a penny from all this time spent… playing around with words?

Whatever.  I’m going to write.  Whether you read it or not.  A quiet voice along a raging river.  Words that flow like water in my ever active imagination, but get swept away by the wild winds, never to be heard from again.

On wisdom

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

A friend forwards an article.  Wendell Berry in the news.  Had the honor of presenting the prestigious Jefferson Lecture.  The highest honor awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.  I read on and become immersed with his words and wisdom.  Click here to read his lecture.

His words tempt me to dig deeper within the fields of my imagination, yearnings, understanding of what matters most.  I share with you the following quotes from Mr. Berry:

 

“What I stand for is what I stand on.”

“And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful, by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

 

I think after that, there is no need to say more for now.  Perhaps it is time rather to work the fallow fields of my mind.  And from there, see what I have sown.

Projects

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

We return.  Settle in.  New found passions and a sense of commitment stirring stronger than I realized were possible.  My marriage?  Well, yes, that too.  But something else. With the land. We tended her, struggled, built upon her, fought for her, won her, turned our back and walked away… and now have returned with a sense of dedication and duty greater than ever.

As I wrote a distant friend yesterday, “I am only beginning to understand.”  It’s like waking up from a long sleep, or finally feeling well after a dragging sickness.  A shocking clearness like evening light on pasture after a heavy rain.

And with devotion comes obligation.  A sense of duty.  Work.  The more we love, the more we care, the more we want to do.

So, this brings us to the projects.

Now when all you have are seventeen acres, and five of them are across the river, of course you need to get over there.  It is usable land, and more important, good grass, and chances are you have hungry horses that otherwise don’t have enough. So how do you get there, get your stock there, take care of fencing and grazing and tend to your land without wading, swimming or skipping over thin ice?

The idea is quite simple.  Just a little foot bridge.  For years we’ve toyed with ideas, for months we fine tuned plans, and finally for weeks we began to work out logistics and gather the material.  It’s really no big deal.  Just a couple timbers across the water faced with rough cut planks.

Now, all we have to do to start is get the materials to the river.  No big deal, right?  Just a stone’s throw away.  But that stone would be dropping down a cliff.  Almost two hundred feet.  Steep, rocky, stark and rough.

Seven days later… putting in over ten hours a day of excavation, digging, ripping, smoothing, grading (and definitely some shaking in our boots, because this one was more than a little scary, and I’d betcha not OSHA approved)… all while perched on the side of this precarious cliff… the little trail is complete… and we’re exhausted.

Ready to put in that little foot bridge?  Ah!  Another complication.  For with the early melt out and heat wave, high water has come early.  This is no time to be dragging timbers across the river rushing brown as chocolate milk.  So, we get a break.  From this project, that is.  Time to work on a few of the others while waiting for the run-off to subside.

For most, this is a place to get away, to rest, kick back, sit around and just watch the clouds go by.  A vacation place.

Somehow I don’t think it will ever be that for me.  And you know what?  I wouldn’t want it any other way.  It is the blood, sweat and tears that have made it mine.

It is that sense of commitment which both allows and demands that we remain.

Back to the bones

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I just want to be with her.  Hikes, explores, photos, projects galore (more on this later), I can’t get enough of her.  I stop and stare to catch my breath, and sometimes I just can’t believe this beauty.

Alone on the mountain, just me and my dog, we walk to Brewster Park, up along the Rio Grande, the back route, the horse trail.  No one has set foot on her bare ground since autumn.  I want to be by the river, wild and untouched.  Hear the rush like blood through my veins.  Enriching, reviving.  Soul food.

There, I am fed, drunk, giddy. Intoxicated by a river.

We walk back along the dirt road and there we find the pile of bones.

A cow, probably a bull.  It is big. Was. Slung on the side on the mountain.  Stripped clean by coyotes, crows and snow.

It’s harsh to see.  It’s harsh to think about.

For I think about this:  someone may have found a pile of bones years ago from the bull I left for lost in the mountains of northern California.  And I cringed to think I could have done this.  My ignorance, foolishness, selfishness.

Yet this bull here, perhaps I could have saved had I stayed here for the winter.  We would have found him earlier in the season on one of our inevitable explores up river.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda.    I’m glad I wasn’t.  Leaving was the best thing we could have done at the time.  But…

There are few regrets for having our winter away.

One more.  Minor in comparison.  Damaging only a hidden hillside in the trees as the first of the spring run off floods and silts up our little water diversion that feeds our “spring.”  Early season run off is muddy, silty, fast and furious.  It’s not what you want running in your ditch. Yet someone unaware of the ways of the mountain seemed to think it would be just thing to have feed our ditch, and diverted the full head of water our way last fall.

Here at least I can clean up from someone else’s ignorance.

The price we pay for a winter away.  The mountain sighs indifferently as spring winds chill over the Divide and stir up the dried grasses and leafless Aspen.  Only I am troubled.

Stirring up a pile of bones

/ Gin Getz / 13 Comments

 

Otherwise known as, “So who says ignorance is really bliss?”

 

Where does the water end, the ice begin?  Water turns to ice turns to water turns to snow, and still the air up here is dry as my fingers crack and lips feel parched and eyes are burning red.

Such is spring on the mountain. Such is life.  Hard to define boundaries.   Harder still to define oneself.  And are we really so different from one another?

I’m forty five.  Mid life.  There’s a lot of self definition going on now.  Then again, I suppose there always was.  Just trying to figure out my place in the big picture. And always feeling more than a little out of it.

When it comes to politics and religion, I tend to keep my mouth shut.  My beliefs are just that.  Mine.  I’ll keep them to myself and usually wish you would do the same.  Please do hold your beliefs dear and strong.  But don’t except me to feel the same. Diversity is a beautiful and exciting part of life, and if I’m so insecure I can’t tolerate a conflicting opinion, or need you think the same way I do, well, it’s a shallow world we live in.  And you know; I’m all about diving in deep.

Challenging the assumptions that one might be best holding ones beliefs deep within as personal truths, I also am learning to be true what I’ve always heard:  Life is worth nothing if you don’t stand for something.  What do you stand for?  Tell me if you’d like.  I don’t have to agree.  But I enjoy knowing what matters most to you. For with that, I learn who you are.  Though I consider another quote I read recently:  You are not known by your beliefs but your actions.  I’m not sold on that yet, but thought I’d throw that in since I’m stirring the pot today.

What do I stand for? If you don’t know, I hope my words speak true and you’ll figure it out if you stick around and read a while.  In the meanwhile, make no assumptions.  Because I don’t know about you, but when I do that I tend to be wrong.  So this much I can say is true:  A person is only proven by the actions I have known them to take.  Stories don’t count.  And for that, you can read:  rumors and gossip and third party tales.

Here’s a grand example of one who stands for what she believes in, and isn’t afraid to stir the waters and create a little mud in the process.  Tricia Cook stands for the wolves… and coyotes.  (See her most recent article from the Mountain Gazette HERE)  Both of which I relate to, as I live beside the coyote day by day, and roll my eyes to hear of men “hunting the problem coyote.”  You got a problem?  Because my coyotes don’t.  Not here at least.  In fact, chances are they are a lot less of a problem on this mountain than that ignorant hunter might be.

Oh, excuse me.  I’m often a bit gruff on Fridays.  And tact, well, tact has never been my forte.  I’m working on it.

But really, what I meant to get to in writing this post, I’m a long ways away from.  Something about that pile of bones. And it’s nothing to do with coyote hunting, though I wouldn’t be surprised if coyotes are in on the picture somehow or other.

Well, until Monday!  I’ll share the rest with you then.  Have a wonderful weekend.

From where the water flows

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

Some say everything happens for a reason. Nothing is chance. It’s all meant to be.

I can’t say I’m convinced. I believe in free will. I believe in taking responsibility for my own actions, even if it is my actions that bring me to the wrong place at the wrong time. Which has been known to happen.

About as often as… I find myself in the right place at the right time.

Free will and free spirits.

Meeting friends, lovers, the family we choose to keep and create, in that perspective, is no more than coincidence. Two free spirits meeting with an instant recognition. Connection. Just like that.  Or not, because sometimes it takes a while, you work at it, and your first impressions aren’t so great.

As adults we have the right to choose our family, don’t we? I have seen too well how damaging holding onto ties and obligations of a dissolving family can be when we blindly cling to what we’re born with.  I’m not interested in living out of the pages of someone else’s story.  I’d rather write my own.

Free choice. Sometimes we must choose to walk away. Open up your eyes and see! What will you choose?

So I walked. No, more than that. I drove. Alongside my husband in our well worn flat-bed pick-up truck towing a twenty-four foot horse trailer loaded down with three cats, a dog, a half a ton of horse tack and two ton or more of personal items we just couldn’t leave behind.

Fourteen hundred miles to Washington State to start anew, and get away from the burdens of yesterdays repeating themselves over and over like unwelcome rain tapping the roof when you’ve already got enough mud outside the front door.

It was only five months away and already we chose to… what should I say? Leave? Or return? We left there, returned here.  Home.  Our Colorado ranch. There’s business to take care of, obligations, responsibilities, commitments. And an oddly deep connection to the land.

Powerful is the draw. The attachment remains in silent dormancy in some secret place deep within.

The mountains are mightier than the people who claim them. Being away gives one a new perspective. I don’t need to own them. I just need to be there.  And not sitting around staring, but out there, working with the land, a part of the elements.  Wet when the rain falls and cold when the temperature drops which more often than not up here it does.

So begins a journey like the path of an untamed river.

A new twist in a old river.  Happens all the time.  All it takes is a log caught in the flow, and the course is redirected.  Nothing stays the same.   And the river never stands still for long.

 

Signs of spring

/ Gin Getz / 11 Comments

It snows. A heavy fat white wet spring snow.  The next day the storm clears, clouds are blown away, and so am I.  We are slammed with the blinding, beautiful intensity of the mountain painted bright white fresh wash and that crazy blue unreal high sky of these Colorado mountains pinned up over head and I forgot how tired my cheeks get from squinting because I refuse to sport sunglasses as I want to feel it all, soak it all in every last pore, make the most of it and not have the world before me subdued by some tinted plastic barriers before my eyes.  I know, not so smart, perhaps, but for today, whatever, it just feels good and sometimes feeling good is a plenty enough motivator.  To hell with practicality.

Ah, but I am practical.  Sometimes.  I try to balance it.  Passion usually wins out, but practicality keeps a strong hold.  Things like doing chores (caring for the animals is the grounding of my flighty soul), stirring up breakfast on the old wood cook stove, cleaning house, and… making a living.

Dang, what’s with those practical responsibilities?

Oh come on, how long do you think the honeymoon could last?   The haze lifts.  Reality sets in.  Work.  Money.  Bills.  Life.  It is easy to enter one’s own simple dream world, but impossible and impractical to remain there.

My dreams seem at war with practicality.   Why can’t I, I ask anyone who will listen, and on most days that doesn’t usually entail more than the ever willing to listen dog, attentive with his perked ears and head cocked sidesways.  Why can’t I take care of my house and homestead, then settle in to write for the rest of the morning, and work on the mountain or build something new in the afternoon and not have to worry about food on our table and fuel in our truck and hay for the horses?  Well, I do have to worry. The pressures of the outside world seep in. And the stresses of realizing our truck isn’t getting any younger and neither are we and mechanics and doctors and vets aren’t free, and credit card bills really do have to be paid, and if one actually pays them on time it’s a little less painful in theory. And in theory we’d have money to allow us to do that. But in reality…

How does one balance dream and desire with day to day? Without giving up.  Because that is simply not an option.  Living a dream, if that’s what you call the way that I live, is what I’ll continue to do. And if I have to go down, damn it, I’m going down kicking.

But somehow, I’ll betcha, I’ll find a way.

A walk in the park

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

Room to breath.  I need that in this thin mountain air. And I find it.

Out there miles and miles from phone, power, people.  Following a trail I have been on foot, horseback, snowshoe surely a thousand times or more. Different every time.  Now soft moist earth beneath my boots as the winter’s load is lifting and a spring storm falls on us, just me and my dog.  Only the occasional track of elk, moose or coyote crossing our path.  I see the signs well now with my head held down to reduce the resistance of the horizontal snow.  Tracks highlighted by fat white flakes on the leeward side of their impression.

Raw earth.  Umber, sienna, soil and seed.  Awaiting new life, growth, a melodious yielding, more comfortable for the eye to see, now too harsh to behold.  As the tourists await the softening of sunshine, ground cover and leaves , I am allowed this time alone.

Slowly we reconnect.  As a long lost familiar lover, knowing her secret places, her touch, her feel, her scent.  No words need be spoken.

My appetite is back as well. Those fancy dinner salads that did us fine at three thousand feet are replaced with cravings of meat and potatoes.  And still my thigh muscles shake like a washing machine on spin cycle, and my head is dizzy from the thin air as I push myself up switchback trails because flat land is no where to be found for too long round these parts.  And it feels good.

I stop again to capture another picture. An excuse to catch my breath.  I consider how many times I have stopped right here, and how many pictures I have of this view.  But it is different this time.  I say that every time.

There’s this little yellow flower, plain and simple, nothing fancy, rather rough and ungraceful.  The first flower of the season.  As wild as they get.  I see a few out there, only three or four, remaining upright in the wind though dusted with snow, as I I make my way over strewn rocks in the open park, head tucked in and down against the biting sky.  I don’t stop to whip out my camera.  My fingers are numb.  I enjoy the simple, subtle gift of color and continue on my way.

Impressions

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

What matters most?  People?  Place?

I tell you I am in love with the place, but you know how I feel about the people that this land represents.  My husband and my son.  They are what make this home, beautiful, safe and warm and welcoming, and complete my wanting to be here.  They are indeed what matters.  Otherwise, would the view from my window be of no more importance than a random pretty picture hanging on my wall?

Consider the roots my son has here, strong and silent and unseen to the observing eye. Though he has lived elsewhere (twelve “homes” in his first three years, then several years settled in a place he no longer remembers), this is home, where he was raised, schooled, taught life’s lessons, and had room to grow tall and straight and sturdy.  How much of this is due to the family that we three became here?

I once heard a person say everyone is replaceable.

“See how long that drop makes a ripple in the bucket of water? That’s how long our impression lasts when we’re gone,” he said.  Was he really shallow enough to believe that?

I don’t see life that way.  Nor would I want to. Instead, I am saturated by the many drops of water that soak into my skin and become a part of my flesh and blood.

I am affected by people. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I am fed, nourished, satisfied.

One of the greatest persons I have known was a man by the name of Bud Jackson who was herding rouge cattle in the mountains last I saw him at ninety. I have a couple of old posts about him Here and Here.   In case you didn’t or don’t read those, I want to share this with you. The quote chosen for the celebration of life upon his passing was one attributed to the late, great Jackie Robinson:

“A life is not important except for the impact it has on others.”

Words to live by.

I remind myself.

You do matter.  You do leave a lasting impression.  Make it a good one.

I, for one, have a long ways to go.  I hope I am allowed the time.  Better yet, I hope I learn to make the most of the time I am allowed.

Remember how fleeting life may be.

 

 

I bow my head in blessings and respect for the family of the youngest member of our community who left a beautiful impact before ever breathing of this fresh mountain air.