literary blog

A good place to be

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Huge moon lights my world this morning.

I swear it’s these mornings when in such silence the depth of the world is found in surrounding snow covered peaks glowing in the moonlight that allow, if not develop, the profundity of my own thought and imagination.

I read a quote yesterday – in Western Horseman magazine of all place, written by Joel Nelson, a wonderful cowboy poet – which holds true for any artist, scientist or philosopher:

“You must allow yourself the luxury of thinking deeply. To be a great artist, you have to submit to the muse.”

Ah, my muse!  The mountain!

My son writes last night (or early this morning as the case may be for a nineteen year old caught in the throes of college) he’s looking forward to returning to Colorado though he is enjoying British Columbia and his university.

He says, “… seldom it is the place that’s special.”

For years I tried to convince myself the same because of a deep rift between my intense love for my family, home and mountain here and the accrual of painful conflicts surrounding us.

I reply:

“Seldom… but sometimes… the place is special.

I think perhaps it is possible to be in love with the land.  Have a dazzling, passionate relationship.  And then, even, if we work at it, settle into a long lasting love.

In any case, a place is as special as we make it, as we hold it to be in our hearts, and in balance with the positive energy we put into it.  There again, just like a relationship of people…

Hmmm… interesting to consider.  I need to ponder this one more….”

I am in love.  Madly, wildly, passionately, and at the same time, settling into to the commitment of long term.

A good place to be.

Soft storm

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

We awake to our world wrapped in a swathe of white.  And I consider how familiar I am with this.  How our world is, has been, for nearly half my days here.  A frequent view.  Almost expected.  As expected as seeing horses from the kitchen window as I sit and savor my morning coffee.  As expected as smelling their sweet musty scent on my hands, finding their hairs clinging to every shirt and sweater, and hearing their heavy footsteps upon frozen ground as they run to greet me in the morning.

And now they are there.  Completing my view. Fulfilling my life. I have missed them in ways I do not quite understand but may come to realize as I spend more time with them again. Feeding, training, first rides of the season, polishing tack, brushing off their winter coats and allowing their fresh spring sheen to surface.  Familiar as close friends or family.  Those I choose to have around.  Each with such a great variation of character, defining myself through relationships with each.

I must head back out to work now.  Boxes still unpacked, shelves calling to be filled, a world in the process of returning to what I expect it to be.  Same as it was?  No, thank you.  Better indeed. For I am not fool enough to hold onto what was, but am learning to carry with me what I chose as I forge my future with those stones from the past I care to stack into the foundation I am building for the future.

Snow and ice and rushing waters

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I find my way up a road laced with crusty snow and last year’s grasses still pressed sideways from the weight of winter’s burden.  Silent it would be were it not for my loud-mouthed dog, barking, sweeping both sides of the road before me, keeping me safe from wildlife.  Funny, though, for I have never feared wildlife.  People, perhaps, but never a wild beast.

How many miles separate me from another human being, here and now, except my husband still asleep in the cabin he built with logs he felled and dragged?  There is something about home.  I walk in the cold wide open crisp sweet untouched air of early morning before the sun has even met my trail and my thoughts wind back to home.

Home.  It is odd how happy we feel here.  We have earned this it, this sense of home.  Built it, fought for it, left it, and returned.

Paw prints of the pup cross before me again, brown on white, easy to trace the joy of his freedom and energy, now dropping down to an open creek running clear and quiet before the inevitable mid day warmth lets loose the fury of melting snow.  Snow and ice and rushing waters.  Spring in the high country. The elements blending together.  A blur of passing clouds and melting snow and the shrill whistle of a pair of blue birds lighting the top of a nearby spruce tree.  Subtle harmony of earth and sky.

I stop atop the highest hill before the ribbon of road drops down to the river.  The pup joins me, sits tall and watches.  He has learned to accept and perhaps even enjoy these still moments.  Our heads face west into a charcoal grey horizon portending another storm.  And below the metallic sky juts up bright white peaks, royal crowns above tree line probably nine miles away.  I remember trudging through the snow on the far side and dropping down that face one April years ago with Bob and Forrest on an adventure I said I’d do alone if they wouldn’t join me.  Which of course they did.

Memories swell with the brown waters and are washed clean and clear as melting snow.  I am left with a barren hillside as the sun now shines upon it, sending me home to wake my husband and stoke the fire in the old iron cook stove on which I’ll fry up breakfast.

The process of unpacking

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

And now I hear the waters roar, already brown with the fury of an early melt.  The Rio Grande, here still untapped, untamed, wild.  The wilds I have been yearning for.  Releasing once again.

A premature spring, washing down hillsides, singing like the sound of wind through leaves, above the crackle and hiss of the camp fire as we sit there huddled in our down jackets and wool hats defiant of the cold, determined to celebrate under the light of the growing moon, illuminating silver patches of snow banks, drifts, the flat open expanse of the reservoir below, and the wide white open peaks standing sentinel above.

I was sure I’d have all kinds of time to describe it all – from how it felt to how it looked.  But truth be known, I’m tired.  Moving is hard work.  I’m not the first to figure that out, and you’d think that having moved just a matter a months ago, this would not have come as a great surprise.  But it did.  Somehow I was sort of thinking that maybe moving back would be something all together different, and really, a piece of cake.  OK, so I was wrong.  It’s just as hard as any move.

And still… it was worth it.  I’d lift my half of that leather sofa a hundred times or more to live a life so full and rich.

So, after four days on the road we arrived, cats and dog and Bob and me.  Within forty five minutes, all systems were a-go.  Solar electricity, running water, wood stove, cook stove, and (this one really blows me away) satellite internet!

And there we are, on the deck looking around and starting the lists that have for the past ten years seemed endless and prove to be still.

By morning I notice the crows holding vigil in the bare aspen above the abandoned chicken coop, the Steller’s jays on the deck already glad for our return and awaiting their first free meal in what seems like ages.  Then the clear sweet song of blue birds and robins blending in harmony with the wind, the river, the rush of my  heart, all somewhere between me, the mountain, the river and the seemingly endless sky.  I savor the scent of this thin crisp air.  Intoxicating is the altitude!

And then not in the plans, but often the best of life is not.  Visiting friends, good people, a necessary reminder that community is here too, along with bottomless coffee pots and plenty of no-occasion-more-special-than-here-and-now bottles of wine.

Some things may look the same, but nothing really is, this much I know.  And I like that. I take an odd comfort in that.   The unknowing.  The uncertainty.  The adventure.  The mystery, passion and uncontrollable wilds.  Keeping me on my toes.  Think fast and live well and don’t waste a moment unless doing nothing is exactly what I’d rather be doing more than anything else at this very instant.

Which does sound tempting right about now…

Waiting for the roar of spring waters

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

I hear the river only to realize it is no more than the rustle of last year’s life clinging to the trees, brown and thin and wrinkled like an old ladies flesh over bony fingers.

 

My Rio Grande awaits me.  I hear her in the leaves, the wind, an SUV driving before daylight down the gravel and snowpack road on the hill below my apartment.

 

And now I am gone.  Heading there.  Back to her.  To her wail and roar and brown fury bursting through frozen grounds.

 

The sound of the engine numbs me for hours today as I leave the past behind, a good past, a good winter, good people, the best friend I found since I was a child.  And we drive, the same truck we’ve been driving since we met ten years ago, now towing  a 24 foot trailer loaded down with horse tack smelling of the beasts I left behind, packed with snowmobiles, motorbikes and furnishings that transformed a little white walled north facing apartment into a cozy home. And three cats, one dog, and the two of us.

 

Loud rain on the truck, hard metal, cold pavement, wash away tears of goodbye.

 

If it wasn’t bittersweet, I wouldn’t be doing it right.

 

The forest wept a sweet farewell.  The mildest winter I have had in years.  Over night, it fell apart at the seams. Rain, pure and rich and heavy from the intensity of a magenta and steel grey sun rise rolling overhead so close I could almost touch it. Tenacious snow spilling white and wet from the secret sides of hidden trees on the north bank.  Soft rain on hard metal roofs, tapping a familiar tune on my window sill awakens me.  I am stirring back to life.

 

Farewell, I say, as I begin to leave.  Shedding a new layer of skin. Her soft ways have pleased me but not drawn me in.  Intense passions have been subdued.  Somewhere through the rain streaked window in the hum and splash of traffic, I consider the tangled commitment to the land like legs of a lover beneath sweaty sheets.  Passions reemerging.  Perhaps with a familiar horizon.

Where I’m coming from

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

(The following was drafted a month ago as we were considering how life was turning in such a way as to send us back to Colorado) *

 

Am I odd to define myself by where I find myself?

Here, now.  It is soft, mild, easier.  Words I don’t want to use to describe me.  I sound too old.

I would rather use strong, wild, passionate, stormy, intense, maybe a little bit gritty.

But those words don’t fit here.  And I see now, neither do I.

Here is “nice.”  It’s comfortable.  I’m used to extremes.  Isn’t that why we chose the mountains?  High, harsh and frigid.  Obviously not.  That’s why more people live here.  Comfortably.

What is it about those extreme elements of the San Juan Mountains that draw me?

Here, nearly seven thousand feet lower than where I was and about as far north as you can get in the Lower 48.

Here, where the thermometer regularly read a full twenty degrees higher than I was used to all winter as I headed out bundled like a swaddled babe to brave my morning chores.

Here, where the wind sort of puffs.  People don’t store spare tires on their shed roofs, hold their breath each time they drive through a snow drift hoping they’ll make it to the other side, and discuss afternoons in terms of how bad and damage done.

It snows, but one could hardly call it a storm.  More like a flat white sky slowly merging with boughs on these tall trees and then descending to the monotone curves of the ground which rise a little higher every few days.  It’s gradual.  I’m missing drama.

Here excitement is noted by current road conditions and the futile battle to conquer the slow, steady stream of the elements. My neighbors exude a passion for plowing.  No conversation is complete without discussing the finer points of snow removal techniques. Standards are based upon V-plows on pick-ups, push blades on ATVs, snow blowers, berms, banks, and the underlying assumption of a shovel standing sentinel at every front door and lurking beneath the hatchback of every Subaru.  The evolved philosophy of chains, studded tires and four wheel drive.

Snow accumulates, a few inches at a time, then is worked religiously, pushed to the side in monstrous banks traced with lines of mud and spots of gravel.  In the eternal freeze/thaw hell the road turns first to slush and then to a sheen of ice smooth enough to qualify as a skating rink, though not quite as fun due to the steep slope. And then as soon as one finishes sanding, a fresh layer of snow just sort of appears and consumes the sand and you start all over again.  How many layers of this sand/slush/ice lasagna will reveal themselves in spring?

Even shadows are pallid and mild mannered. The sun only semi-shines.  I swear. It too is soft, sweet, demure and polite. What’s with that?   Give me some gusto!  Burn me!  Let me feel you sting my chilly cheeks and smell you on the small bits of exposed flesh when out there in the wide and wild opens mid day you heat my garments enough to peel me down to pale skin.  (Forgive me for this confession, for I know it is hardly wise considering the known facts of the sun’s damaging effects on skin, and the ruthless wrinkles I’m revealing already at forty five are testament to the damage already done.)

I’m lusting for biting winds and burning sun and temperatures so low they freeze your breath before it leaves your nose.  For views that continue beyond where I can see until the mountains fade into a fiery sky and if I climb of any one of those peaks tempting and teasing me to make it to the top, I can let loose my hair, lay back my head, and howl like the feral beast lying dormant within me and know no one can hear me and wonder what the heck this crazy woman is up to now and I take great comfort in that.

I want to feel alive!

And so what would you do if you were me?  That’s silly to ask, for if someone asked me what I would do if I were she, chances are, the answer would be to play it safe and stay.  Grow up and give up.  And you’re not going to hear that from me.

 

* A disclaimer to all my Washington friends:   I allow myself artistic liberty when it comes to writing, but the last thing I mean to do is put down your beautiful state and my awesome neighbors (trust me on this:  I’d trade a few of those from Colorado for the crew I got to live near here in Washington).  However, sometimes I write because it sounds good, or feels good, or I like the way the story works.  Besides, writing about the better parts of winter, like skis/snowshoes with Tricia, Lynne’s Three Rivers dog training and our agility crew, open minded intelligent and stimulating conversations on one hand or Hobbit House destruction progress on the other with the best bosses we’ve had in years (the only, I confess too, as we’ve been self employed for years until now), and the best bitter ale from the Old School House Brew Pub… those things probably wouldn’t sell stories. (Or maybe, just maybe, they would…). So yes, my love for Washington, at least the Methow Valley and these people, I hope you know is sincere!  Only… different…

The nitty gritty

/ Gin Getz / 14 Comments

Here’s the deal.   Last fall, we packed up and moved out, leaving the home and business we built, saw the son off to college, and Bob and I flew the coop together instead of wallowing in our empty nest.  Took a few months away from blogging to finish a separate writing project.  Then suddenly I reappear only to say, “Guess what?  I’m moving again!”

Where?

Back where I came from.

I would tell you life is all about change.  Perhaps it is for me.  For now.  Of course it won’t always be.  This is my challenge. What is yours?

Friend and author, Laura Crum, reminds me, “…the still pond is not always stagnant. Sometimes it is clear as crystal and of an unimaginable depth.”

I remind her I have not been so lucky.  I am no Wendell Berry who has “never not known where (he) belonged.”  Some of us were not born in the place where we were meant to stay.  We have our work cut out for us in a different way.  Our lives are not about diving into the still quiet depths in the world around us, but in learning to find it within us while the world around us spins…

And yes, I do get dizzy and wait for this thing called life to slow down.  I too shall allow deep roots to take and spread some day, though the land on which they grow will be my choice and challenge, as finding it seems to be.

There is not one right way.  As I responded to Laura, “…points of view bring further wisdom if one is willing to listen (or read).”

For now, a few specifics. The nitty gritty.

First, about blogging.  I am glad to be back. Back to the blog, that is. Back at the ranch, well, that remains to be seen and is still a week or so away.  Though I think you can imagine how I might feel when we arrive.

I have missed this form of writing, sharing, bouncing ideas and receiving your feedback, not to mention the opportunity of keeping in touch with many of you. So, back to blogging.  To bouncing ideas and pushing myself to get my work out there, even if it is rough and rustic and falling apart at the edges.  At least I’m trying, writing, growing, evolving as a writer, slowly but surely.  Pushing myself.  I’m keen on pushing myself.  For now, I’ll try to post at least three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday). Check back regularly; there should be something new.

Second, where we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going.  Well, this is a little more complicated.  I’ll sum it up by saying we’re in northern Washington State, somewhere between the edge of the Methow Valley and the North Cascade mountains. And we’re going back to our Lost Trail Ranch in Colorado. The rest of the story will come out in due time.

And third, what the heck are we doing with our life?

I’m not so sure what our plans are for the future, though we’re not running the cabin rental business anymore and the outfitting business is changing hands.  Time for us to move on with the rest of our lives and find our next calling. (No offence to y’all, but this one has been fulfilled.)  Still just a whisper, but I’m thinking it will turn into a song before you know it.

Where to next?

For now, we’ll stay firmly planted with our feet in the clouds.  We’re sticking to our land in Colorado, way high up in the San Juan Mountains and figure things out from there. We are oddly excited. Nervous as young lovers. Butterflies in our stomachs.  I just caught Bob whistling a John Denver tune. (Don’t tell him I told you that.)

So you see, same place we were, but everything has changed.  Life is like that. Guess it all comes down to how you look at things.  Right now I’m looking at a still pond that is very, very deep.  Only it’s not the land.  It’s me.  So I am learning.

Thanks for checking in.  See you Monday.

On Returning.

/ Gin Getz / 15 Comments

Am I returning?  Yes… and no.  I am not going back, but moving forward to a place I once was.  A place where I belong.  Now.

By choice.  My choice.  My land.

I’m moving again.

Remember this. Moving does not necessarily mean staying long enough to get comfortable.  (As if “comfortable” was what I was looking for?)

Moving does not always come with a sense of commitment set in stone.  Life is more like the flow of water tumbling rocks.  Still waters turn stagnant.  We must move, change, evolve, bloom.  Surge and swell like water and waves fed by no more than a gentle stream.

So we move. It’s what we do.  Or at least what we did before and are doing again.  I can’t say it’s been a conscious choice.  We did not plan for a short term move and back again. But I can tell you this.  We are living life full.

As I look back on my adult life (and at 45, that can read “only?” to some, and “OMG!” to others), there are the facts. Moving happens. For example, the first three years of my son’s life, as a single mom trying to make it on our own, we moved a dozen times.  Say what you will, it worked. More or less. We survived, if not thrived.

Sure, I’m looking to settle down.  And our ranch is (and was) the most stable sense of permanence, of home, I’ve known.  Crazy when you realize all the conflict and turmoil it came with.

And here we are. Returning on one hand.  Leaving on the other.

We wouldn’t be living right if leaving was easy.

Of course there’s more to say.  Another day.

Thanks for being there.  Wherever your “there” may be. For I am learning this. “There” does not define you.  I wonder if, if anything, it holds you back rather than sets you free?