Building got the better of me this past week; no time to write, with a huge push to get the roof built.
Seems like all work and no play… yet tomorrow we’re taking off… something special to celebrate…the roof is built (metal comes this next week) and our anniversary is today.
For now, I’m just sharing this, because this is what matters most: LOVE. For those who have stuck it out together through hard knocks and tough times, and found yourself belonging in the shared place and space of long term love – something I never thought I’d be lucky enough to experience – I hope you’ll relate to this:
funny that all it takes
is opening eyes
to see
that you are there
beside me
right where we belong
Twenty-two years ago today, we married. We committed to become the family we chose. And in those years, we learned what unconditional love, duty and devotion, kindness and forgiveness feels like. In those years, we learned and grew, we flourished and failed, we longed and lusted and feared and found footing to stand strong, and we moved and built more than I’d like to admit.
It’s been a wild ride. The only stability was our love. Of each other. Our son. And the high wild lands where we choose to live. No matter how hard things got, how lost we felt, how tired we became, at the end of each day (or sometimes it took until the morning after) we knew we were no longer alone. And we knew someone else was counting on us, relying on us, needing us. So you pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to work beside one another right where you belong.
Now we are here. In person and place and time.
Slowly we have settled in, learning the lay of the land, the feel of dried grass beneath bare feet or mud caked on our boots. Listening to the wind, tasting the water, letting the first sun of morning fall across our rawhide faces, allowing our fingers to find their place in the others hand when we walk. Finding our place, here. Finding the balance of lust and longing, energy and exhaustion, dirt and discomfort, strain and stress as we kept on keeping on building the dream – our family home and mountain homestead. Something we both wanted, together.
So it went, and so it still goes. Building together. A safe place to bring dreams to life.
Sitting at a different kitchen table, gazing out at a different view, things are different here. The mountain, the river, the elevation and air. Even the bears and birds and colors of the season as it begins to fade and summer browns and sky grays and we start to look up at distant peaks to see if snow has fallen yet.
Our relationship is different now. A little less spark but more warmth from the coals and that is what cooks the stew. And like the stew that has been simmering and been stirred and added to with care and taste and time, together we are each richer within than either of us imagined had we not chosen one another.
Maybe I am different, too. Not in spite of what we went through. But because of it. I am more. I am fuller. I am deeper and wiser. In part because of you. In part because of time. Aging is beautiful thing. At least, most days I think it is.
The wisdom of aging is perhaps best found in the skill of knowing what baggage to leave behind.
You cannot outrun the past. The past is the path that led you to where you are today.
In moving, you leave where you were behind. In a way, you leave who you were behind as well. You become the blank slate. The clay upon the potters’ wheel. You are both the clay and the hands that shape it.
In remaining, however, you face the challenge of your past lingering all around you like last years leaves that still need to be raked, and overgrown underbrush that catches and tangles as you try to walk through the woods. But you know your way through and sometimes there is comfort in knowing what to expect, what it will feel like, how bad it can be.
And how good.
Together we have done both.
Now is the time for re-writing. Not based upon where you are, but who you are.
The answers are not found out there. They are found in here. Within.
Perhaps where I should have looked all along.
But even inside, the landscape has changed. I wasn’t then who I am now.
It takes making the journey to understand the path.
It takes travelling the path to become the traveler.
Marriage is like that. At least it can be.
A mysterious path beckoning you to come hither.
A safe place in which you both can soften.
A healthy place in which you both can continue to be nourished, nurtured and thrive.
As the simmering stew, or the garden bed, deeper and richer and fuller with time.
The sky put on a display all day and seduced me back into love for life and this land after a day where she had knocked me out (quite literally) again. It was magic, reviving me, hour after hour, as my stomach settled and my feet found grounding once again. All the photos I share with you today are completely unaltered. God and/or this beautiful world graced me with this show.
As the painter cares not to color a canvas solely for the pleasure of her own eyes, so the writer is called to share words that you might enjoy; be it for entertainment, education, empowerment, and/or to find yourself somehow relating or releasing or escaping within the images the words spawn.
Yet what happens if the words I am called to share are not what I feel you will find pleasing? What if they are dark, as I confess, mine tend to tangle with? Do I harbor and hide them, or have the courage to boldly express and hope that you will not run away? Perhaps you might even shyly step closer, finding yourself still somehow in a similar state from time to time, knowing you are not the only one.
I’m not a sunshine, daisies and bunnies kinda gal. I’m more stormy skies and tempestuous wind and then a subtle glow in gray clouds to the east at dusk. Sometimes that makes for a pretty picture or enticing poem or captivating tale to share. But sometimes I’m afraid it might just scare you away.
And what about social media? Can it be a safe playground to play with words and hone my craft and reach out in the process? It is concerning as I find myself baring my soul as an outlet for both heart and art. This has always been something I have struggled with. I am an introverted introvert, and find my solace in silence and wild places. So what the hell am I doing trying to, if not master than at least muster, the craft of connecting online?
Is the intention to appease the ego or the muse? The ego is a trickster at times, fooling us to feel what we’re doing is “good” and “right” and maybe even for others, when I wonder if it is not more for her insatiable need for stroking. So does she fool me into feeling uncertain, unsettled, and a little absurd.
But the muse – oh my turbulent muse, she has a hold on me that I care not let loose of. I have always said I can’t not write. At times I wonder why. For the sake of the scratching pen, the alluring sound of words, or for the mood it imposes upon self and others when I manage to get those words write?
For when she dances within me, seduces me in her intoxicating embrace, she calls upon my courage to share. Boldly I open the curtains, as if ripping open a pearl snap shirt exposing a healthy breast, and let her fierce radiance flare outward without bounds. For she is stifled like a rained upon fire when I keep her under wraps, as a flower yearning to bloom bright from somewhere under confinement.
Oh, and as for progress… if you’re still with me…
After all those months of felling trees, clearing slash, dragging logs, milling lumber, stacking, loading and hauling across the West… to see the wood we loving harvested finally being put to use… It’s a thing of pride and joy, for sure.
And for those of you back in California. This is how deep you have to dig a water line in the mountains at 10,000 feet. Six to seven feet deep.
If you’re brave enough to live life full and rich and little wild, there is of course a downside. You will experience grief and loss and pain. It’s part of the package of life. You can try to play it safe, stay home, watch from the window or the barn stall and wonder what living really feels like. But even within castle or padded walls, there will come a day when grief will find its way in through the tiniest of cracks and fissures and fester in your heart and soul and oddly, make you something more. Something deeper, richer, fuller, wiser; something more compassionate for having experienced this part of life and living that none of us look forward to, but all of us intimately know or will know.
Grief is part of living. It is a burden we all one day will bare. A shared experience like one of those finely woven threads that bind us together.
We all know grief.
“Only those who have can lose.”
Years ago, Crow witnessed the loss of his foals, then his beloved, and then her daughter.
This week he watched me load his granddaughter in the trailer and roll down the dusty road, taking her away.
I wish he understood. I wish I could explain. I wish he knew we are simply hauling her away for a week, and she will return. Hopefully with a new family member brewing within her.
Many years ago on my old blog (the long since deleted High Mountain Muse), I shared the story of how Crow got his name. He was a three year old stallion, green and fresh and wild, I adopted in hopes of replacing the horse with whom I had been guiding. He was a hellion when he first came to the ranch – never having left the barn in which he was born. Careful what you ask for. I wanted a challenge. This was more of one than I wanted, and I wasn’t sure I was up for it.
As I sat on a stump in frustration with him on “time out” behind me, wildly pacing the fence with his head held high and the whites of his eyes exposed like a mad man (that is another name for young stud), I heard his lungs rhythmically, rapidly filling and releasing, pulsing with powerful breaths, and I remembered how it feels to run in the open places with a healthy horse pumping beneath and hair and mane and tail flying free and that sound of their lungs like the beating of wings… and just then a black bird flew over head and I heard that sound in unison.
And so he was named: Flying Crow.
That was almost twenty years ago. Twenty years of training, riding, guiding, working together in the mountains, countless pack trips, a lot of breeding, and a lot of loss. Loss I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Not him. Not me. But that was the curse we endured.
And left behind.
Always remaining within us in a dark, tender corner of our heart.
Some days that feeling resurfaces, catches us off guard, takes the wind from our lungs and we stand there wondering what has hit us. It is an emptiness. A hunger. A void. A black hole in our hearts. How else can we each describe that which we all have felt?
That is what I saw on Crow’s face this week.
He has been my faithful partner, playing and working in the mountains, and crossing the West with me, through more miles, adventures and stories than he or I shall ever dare share.
Along the way, he learned the unfortunate truth that grief is. This has happened to me too. We say that going through grief is essential to the human experience. But those of us that have spent enough time around other species know it is not reserved for humanity. It is a shared sense of soul.
This morning she revisited me, a wave of old rehashed emotion washing over me, stirring current calm waters and I want it to just go away.
Demons disappear only when we muster the courage and strength, trust and faith to stop running, turn around, face what you fear is chasing you. Look it in the eyes. And in the depth of the eyes you will see the reflections of the still forest pool where real love resides. It’s one in the same. And in that clarity, somehow, not that scary after all. The essence within every pool, every eye, every fear is still love.
As you stand there before the calming waters, allow the mud of fear to settle as you witness the love rising, radiating from the surface. It does not eliminate the pain of grief. But somehow, it does even more than balance it out. It give you something more. You dip from the pool and taste that which you have been thirsting for.
Crow has been around. He’s seen a lot. Been through a lot. Done a lot. And some of that “lot” invariably has been grief.
Witnessing his grief now makes my own somehow more bearable. I know his will be relieved in just a few more days when we bring his granddaughter home to him, hopefully with a baby growing within.
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.
In that time and space between here and there and somewhere else, there is this.
A slow gentle unfurling. Of the breath, of your heart, of all the crazy busy things we all have to do and should have done yesterday but really, you know, can wait.
A time to smell the roses, quite literally in this case, in the garden, as blooms begin their annual renaissance and the grande display for nose and eyes begins one petal at a time.
In the days before we leave here and head there, there is time to lay back in the lush grass of the garden and revel in the roses just coming on, heavy and bending and fragrant and bright.
Just enough time.
There has to be.
What matters more?
One more milled board, mowed lawn, window washed, garden bed weeded, or top of cupboard cleaned?
Well, maybe.
But no. Take time. Make time. There is time.
Would my life go on if I missed a weed? What about if I missed this moment?
I’m trying to remain present. Here and now. Be her now, you know how it goes.
Love where I am which is not hard to do as there is so much to love.
Vibrant green meadows, glossy new full leaves on these ancient sprawling oaks, baby chicks hidden in the jungle that the grass is growing into, swelling fruit on peach trees. Geese and ravens, redwing and quail, and the phoebe that has nested in the eve above the picnic table every year since we’ve been here. Horses fat and sassy needing to be escorted into the barn at night because really, leaving that lush meadow is not what they choose to do. The new dog running circles around the old dog (funny since the old dog was the young one just a few years ago).
And yes, those roses.
I sit out on the steps at night under the light of the waxing moon, tired sore and sunburned from a full day which for so many of us is an integral part of spring, and a calm sense of anticipation washes over me, soft and silver as the light in the cloudless night sky.
A heavy letting go.
I have left and returned before.
The calm before the chaos. Twenty days before we load the horses and chickens and last of the lumber we milled and make our way across Highway 50, heading to the high country of Colorado to break ground.
Leaving our little bit of paradise behind is not new for me. Remember, two years ago how I up and left this time of year with a few horses and a four month challenge to make it Colorado?
This time we’re driving.
A different adventure awaits.
After a journey of seeking, which the Long Quiet Ride was, I thought I found the answers. My excitement to be “home” was overwhelming, coming over me soft and bright like a gentle swell ready to embrace me. So close I could taste it. Only rather than receiving the loving arms of this land, I was punched in the gut. I returned to the greatest trauma of the whole trip, which kind of broke the whole thing up. And left me wondering (among other things): Where?
That was then.
Now, it’s a different adventure, different journey.
I’m not saying my inability to sit still is a good thing. But it is a thing.
It’s not just itchy feet. It’s a longing. That longing to belong. Harmonizing with curiosity.
Stepping outside the box is easier when you don’t have a box to begin with.
So we’re setting out to build another box.
And holding onto this one, just in case.
Alas, it’s just a box. Something to define and confine.
And at the same time, hold you tight.
Here’s little ditty for Mother’s Day.
As the garden grows and the seasons change, so do we.
I don’t have a bucket list. If I really want to do something, chances are I’ll do it.
I have few regrets, few things I didn’t do that I wish I had.
I hope you feel the same.
Not that I did them all well. That’s not the point.
The point is, I tried. And failure is part of the path. The yin to the yang. You know.
Still…
There are times I wish I knew more before I dove in to certain things.
Mothering tops that list.
As in: if I knew then what I know now…
But it takes living and learning to know.
I am somewhat in awe of the few mothers I know who feel they did it all right. I was not one of them. Few mothers are.
For it takes failing, falling and fucking up. Really. I’m afraid it does. If you don’t do all those things, you haven’t tried. And if you’re not trying, you’re not learning and growing and really living. You’re stuck like a stick in the mud, right? Like all living things, we cannot remain stagnant for long.
Okay, so I failed, fell and fucked up maybe more than most, I dunno. But no one ever accused me of not trying.
That’s how mothering was for me.
The things I wish I knew… Why don’t they teach that stuff in school? I don’t mean changing diapers and dealing with leaking boobs; I mean the important stuff like understanding emotions, communicating clearly, listening. Tools to remain calm and patient and kind when you’re sleep deprived, financially strapped, frustrated, confused, and feeling alone. Seriously, that stuff is way more important than Roman History and Algebra, right?
Seems like there is a trend and current expectation that mothers are now meant to be perfect, and parent perfectly. That’s not only wrong, it’s not possible. Besides, if perfect was possible, by whose standards of perfection would we judge?
Sheltering children, coddling their wisdom, padding their world and giving them all the answers rather than allowing them the time and space to figure it out themselves? How will they learn to learn? Sometimes you gotta skin your knees.
A balance between the two, between being handed life to you in a silver spoon or on a silver platter – and the school of hard core hard knocks, would of course be ideal. But I’ve yet to see a truly ideal life. Reality is unique, not ideal. There’s always ups and down, good and bad, so accepting and learning to live with that reality is one of those things we don’t want but we do need.
I’ve been a mama for 32 years. I don’t write about him much because (1) he probably doesn’t appreciate it, and (2) he’s is Colorado, not California. (Suddenly that choice to build in Colorado makes some sense, yes?)
Nothing has ever mattered more to me, or defined my choices more, than being a mom.
So many say the same. As we stare off softly, upward, maybe inward, a gentle smile upon our lips, and you know what we are thinking about.
Our children.
Our pride and joy. Not the pride for having, say, built a cabin or put in a gorgeous garden. It’s different. It’s not ours. It’s for them. I can’t explain that kind of pride well. Can you?
Have I told you how proud I am of mine? Not for making the most of what I gave him, but for making so much on his own. From his adaptability to his authenticity, from his self-earned college education to his successful career. From his empathy in dealing with dear old mom and dad, to his badass ways behind the wheel or at the shooting range.
I’d like to take credit for teaching him. I used to say I homeschooled him. Truth is, he self-schooled. I’m a pretty crappy teacher, and the two of us, well, we butt heads. He figured it out himself. Pretty damn well, I dare say.
I am guilty all too often of giving unsolicited advice. But the best advice I think I gave him, showing, not telling, thus teaching by example, was this: you gotta figure it out yourself. That is how we learn. And you can. If you want to. You can make mistakes, and change direction, and drop out and divorce, fall apart and get back up, and with all of that, we learn, we grow, we live, our own beautiful, unique, magical, mysterious, authentic life.
It’s like the old Zen teacher telling her student:
I can point to the moon. But you have to find your own way there.
And if you’re stubborn, like my son is (can’t imagine where he learned that) then chances are, you also gotta find your own moon.
So what do I know now that I wish I knew then?
Oh, so much! Let’s start with:
Cultivating curiosity and compassion.
Took me along time to learn this was okay. More than okay. That’s where the beauty of life is born.
Then propagate creativity and courage, which can come naturally with a solid foundation and safe place to “try.”
Get comfortable making mistakes, and learn how to learn from each one.
For sure, the Old Man’s Three C’s: care, connect and contribute.
Belong. To the land. To the people. To your dreams.
And finally, love. Deeply, passionately, beautifully. Whatever, whoever you want to love. Love. Have the courage to love. Even when (not if) your heart gets broken, you lose someone or something, or you change your mind. Find the courage to open your heart wide, more fully, more wholly, less discriminating. That’s the key to living fully, deeply, richly.
Connection, connecting from the heart, is the greatest reason to live.
Love.
Don’t be stingy with love. I promise: it will never run out.
Okay, finally, that thing about an invitation.
Ready?
Here it goes.
Yes, I ramble. But have you noticed? I’m rambling to you.
My writing is meant to be a conversation between us. At times it feels one sided. I do the sharing. You do the reading. But there’s no connection between us.
Why not?
I’ve said this before: This blog was started as a way of sharing our “out there” lifestyle. But instead of being a how-to or pretending to be an expert, more often than not it’s about “in there.” Usually it’s a combination of the two, and always, always, a good excuse for me to work on my craft, for the love of writing. However in addition to all that, it’s also a way for me to reach out, share, and connect.
That said, it matters to me to know people are out there, reading this regular random outpouring. When I check the numbers on this blog, folks are reading it. But only a small percentage, it appears, leave comments, “like” on Facebook, write me directly, sign up to subscribe or otherwise share the connection.
Speaking of sharing, this is a video shared by Cathy this week. It’s wonderful. If you’ve “listened to” some of the videos I shared in the past, you’ll see why she shared it, and why I love it:
So here’s the invitation.
Inviting you to share in kind.
I’m putting myself out there for you.
Will you please let me know you’re reading, that you’re with me, that somehow we are in this together?
To those who have been responding via the blog, leaving a note or like on Facebook, or writing me directly – I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
For those who are just passing by, seeing if you want to stay a while, I welcome you to return and see if what I say and how I say it is worthy of your time.
For those who DO return to read somewhat regularly, if you enjoy my work, please let me know.
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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.
Gin Getz 