nature writing

A song for the autumn river

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

 

Upon returning from a stunning day skiing (yes, skiing…) atop the frozen Methow River… I was inspired to rework this poem originally started back in October of 2010 inspired by my beloved Rio Grande.  Thank you to new friends and neighbors here in Washington for a feritle seed of inspiration, and to those who put up patiently with my longing for where I was.

 

The water lures me as she has so many times before
Now emerging discreet as a delicate muse in the woods
Her hollow voice tempting in a distant primordial chant
Of silver coins tossed from teasing fingers
Her sweet smell and silky sway and wave taunting down the mountainside

And if I stand here long enough will I see her freeze
Watch the surface relinquish to the stagnant state of frozen waters

Am I no more than a voyeur
Standing safely out of reach
Dry on her precarious banks
Enthralled
While she takes no heed of my presence
I am but a hunched form like a leaning tree casting shade across her face
As her struggle to keep fluid ebbs and flows in thickening waters below

Watching the last of her dazzling dance down the mountain
A spray of glittering waters splashing over rocks worn smooth by her impassive force
As the last of the lowering sunlight sheds long shadows across her ever changing shell
So soon to be concealed for the drunken duration of long winter

The surge of ice shall spread expand swell and cover
Suffocate the last of this seasons song
As she gives up gives in and can no longer hold her own
Succumbing to the weighty swathe of ice and snow
Cooling and calming her passions
Reducing restricting constricting her rage
Held back at bay by the season

The expanding cold takes charge of her course
Secrets and sounds still
The long static expanse being laid out above her
A white ribbon winding between two hills of black timber
Silent

The end of a white noise louder than the clatter rolling around in my mind

I lose myself in the last of this frigid rushing
The conclusion of open waters and her alluring voice
Soon to be suppressed
Numb and stifled with no words of her own
Tucked away behind her hijab

I lean over and dip in my hand
Calloused palm seared by cold waters
Fingers outstretched seeking searching
As if I might hold onto something solid
Perchance an understanding
But all she does is move around me
Unconcerned with the minor inconvenience of my flesh and blood and bone
Appearing a ghostly white beneath the slick surface

I pull back my hand now red and throbbing
Anger at the violent cold
And allow the water to continue without me
My futile interference leaves not a ripple
I am allowed to watch but nothing more
The river is stronger than I am

And to think of how many spend a lifetime
Struggling to subdue control alter and own
That which is mightier than you or I will ever be

She will have her time again
Singing loudly with fierce abandon
As the ice recedes and she releases her pent up rage
Wild with furious brown waters
Six months from now

No more than a whisper

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Wilds whisper yet I long for their roar

In the hollow silence I listen for depth
The eventual splash of a bucket dropped into the well
Does not come

I learn to accept a bubbling brook tucked into the trees
When what I wanted was the bellow of the ocean
Crashing waves and endless horizons
Not before me but within me

Snow falls
Not so much a storm but a gentle covering
White wash
Settling
Erasing the past
A part of my passion and dreams
Colors
The horizon

Standing out alone
She adorns me with tiny jewels
Glistening silver and white
That last no more than an instant on my naked flesh

And then I am left
With nothing

Seduced by earth and sky

/ Gin Getz / 6 Comments

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 recognized the warmth against my back
Wind like lazy fingers through my loose hair
A recognizable sweet musky breath

Swelling wide above me was Colorado
Bright and blue, clean and open
A crisp dry chill through my nose and throat and lungs
As we climbed the hillside on the clearest day I’ve seen since moving here

It took me there and I was reminded there was not where I wanted to be
I left for a reason, for a hundred reasons
Finances and family, tourists and timing, altitude and in-laws
Histories I was placed into but don’t belong
A burning desire to change, expand horizons, ignite a new adventure
A secret hope to find the Forever Home

A desire to grow
Yes, just grow
As in a garden
A tomato
A lilac bush and hollyhock
A pig that can put on some pounds
Funny the things that interest me.

My father just forwarded an article entitled “Curious Things about Colorado” which included the fact that Silverton, the town closest to us on our west, has no growing season. Really. None. On average, a total of two frost-free weeks per year. I was hoping it was more like four at our ranch. On a good year. After all, I have managed to scratch out lettuce, chard, kale and carrots from soil laden with mounds of horse manure piled and protected in raised garden beds we built from the old bridge across the Rio.

Yes. On a good year.

And still I look back and see an attractive comfort and that entices me. Because it was known. I could find and fill the coffee pot in no more than moonlight when I woke at my usual early hour. Know the number of Stellar Jays that would appear from the Blue Spruce each morning and squawk above my wool capped head until I spilled out their daily rations. I could tolerate the heavy storms and mornings out feeding the horses with the thermometer so low it read, “OFF” because I knew the sun would soon shine and from exactly what point on the eastern ridge it would pop its glowing head.

It is hard to let go of what you had when you have no clear picture of what you have.

So we are seduced by desires of the past. Holding tight to false hopes that we can carry the knowns and givens with us as we step forward into the future and find ourselves floundering in the present. Clinging to the safety of the side of the pool. Afraid to let go of the handhold. Not because I want to return. Yet that comfort temps, the familiar lover you can not leave because a warm body in bed is better than no body at all. At least that is what we are often told.

I challenge that assumption.

Easy for me to do as my lover lies safe and warm beside me and the thick gold band on my finger, combined with my stubborn sense of commitment, reminds us both we will watch each others wrinkles spread like the hoar frost down by the river bank and still lie next to one another and spoon close on cold nights many years from now.

Today we find ourselves out under a low grey sky, hats and shoulders turning white amid the first good snow of the season as we walk in the dream state that first days in a new place seem to necessitate.

And for today at least, I am freed of the burden of the seduction of the dazzling blue.

Beauty redefines

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Beauty is redefined
By necessity
It is what we expect it to be
What we look for
What we are comfortable with
In context with our past
Our present is relative
As is the view before us
Now seemingly a bit odd
An awkward moment that sticks around
We shall get used it to in time.

Must beauty be big and showy
Blatant and bright
Or can it be subtle, slow, vague, and mysterious
A distant view revealed between dense timber
A play of light gracing the valley below
Through a break in the clouds while snow softly lands on our shoulders

Slowly we begin to see, to feel, to understand the difference. We absorb it all, the moisture in the air softening smiles, plumping out the creases the high altitude had carved on my paling skin.
Big trees thicker than our arms can reach around, with our noses touching rich and sweet bark.
Beauty that soaks in like the heavier air, damp and dark and a patchwork of long shadows.

My old mountains screamed. Blaring sun, rugged peaks, stark blue and white
These mountains sing, a quieter tune, we hear only if we listen and look through the trees
Softer, easier, but somewhere in them, I think, she holds secrets just as deep
She begins to open herself to me
I am the one now reserved
I need to let go and release myself fully
How else can we receive

How many layers can we lose and still remain in tact
Can we peel beyond naked and vulnerable
Down to bare bone
Hard and dense as granite
Expose the inner core
Then find what we are made of
Our essence
Perhaps no more than air and water
Thin and light and a little bit ethereal
That which holds us together
Or spreads us thin
Binds us
Or blinds us

When there is nothing else left to protect us
Contain us
Identify us by
But waters smoothly flowing
Over solid rock

Raven

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Silent are the wings of the raven as he passes
Casting a shadow long against the withered brown grasses at my feet
Laid over in the wind like hair in my eyes
Escaped from beneath the safe and warm confines of a wool cap pulled tight

Under a still grey sky
Laid out above like the inanimate object
I try to reach and reward myself with a soothing touch
Something warm, like flesh, soft and pink
But feel nothing
Only the weightlessness of the air above

Raven on the fence post
Static statue on a barrier to no where
No boundaries to define in the fallow field
Like some random spot out in the open sea
Just a few posts remaining
Semi upright
As time and gravity pull them slower than the eye of a generation might see
Old cedar carved deep with creases like wrinkles on an old man’s brow
Then surprisingly speckled with a shock of brilliant chartreuse moss
Unexpected life where one might suppose no more than death
And a tangle of wire coiled like snakes hiding in the tall brown grass
Prepared to grab the unaware footstep

The world around me as a mirror to my soul
Now tired and tamed and worn by the wind
Dreams and desires whisked away for the season
Seed heads reaching mid thigh
Dancing like drunken old men leaving the bar past midnight
Leaning on one another as they make their way down the twisted cobbled alley

Where does it lead me
As I seek a trail through the woods
No more than a tangle of vines and fallen trees
Leaves from the past scattered like forgotten promises

A stir in the stagnant air
Raven takes flight and the flapping beat
Throb like lungs of a running horse
A deep and guttural pulse as legs pour forth in a frenzied rhythm
Across the wide wild open plains

A breath I can hear and feel and smell
Warm and sticky and so wonderfully sweet
And for but a moment
I am carried through those parting grasses
And my dormant wild ways are awakened
For but a moment
I am unbound
And take flight with that feral black bird

Deer Season

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Leaves fallen
Feathers plucked
Skin left naked and raw
Open to the whim of the wind

She steps away
Stripped of her robe
Fallen at her pale feet
Exposed and vulnerable
And lies upon a new land
Cold and hard and uninviting
Not a whisper spoken to her
No secrets to show her yet
Nothing but a cold blank stare
Impenetrable
Unfeeling

She longs to feel
Against the freezing ground she presses her boney spine
Arches her neck and looks up at a sky she does not yet recognize
A stranger above her
Her eyes roll back
Hiding blue as a sky behind thin clouds
White reveals a void
Releasing a guttural moan
An unfathomable sigh
Giving in
Giving up

She remembers standing up
Taking a stand
Vaguely recalls what she stood for
A dream behind billows or a dancer behind a veil
And for a moment she blends into the brown and rotting leaves
Blowing about her like a dirty halo
The rich musky perfume overwhelms
Dulls her other sense
Her wildly racing thoughts
And she rests
Quiet as the sleeping doe
Awaiting the hunters footsteps

A little world

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Snow falls. Fat wet flakes. Big and chunky, each the size of cornflakes on a ground as white as milk.

A secret between the mountain and me. There is no one else around. She sends me off with this intimate moment. A soundless farewell. Words, song, fanfare, lights and crowds would not suit me, do not suit her. We need not speak, only stand together, I at her soft and white and unrefined alter.

This silence of heavy snow. It is mine. As a ballerina on a muted stage with no one there to see. We dance together uninhibited. We sing of silence in darkness.

I stand on the porch, the overhanging roof protecting me; the warm glow from the kitchen door left wide open spills a perfect rectangle on the snow. The dog returns with big white spots across his head and back.

My little world. Unrealistic I have been told. But who defines real when I feel taste touch and smell what one might call serene, but see no deeper than the smooth surface? Snow, thick and heavy like a warm blanket tucking me in to a world I am about to leave. The satellite dish is covered. Communications are cut. I am isolated. Why are we told that is a terrible thing when I find myself so safe within these silent arms? I am content talking to the dog.

There is no sound, no smell, no movement of air, only the softly falling flakes in a quiet dance, a silent film in black and white, I stare out the window and wait now for the lightening of day to reveal more to me. And for a moment my mind is as tranquil and subdued as the world around me. My little world.

Stepping out of the comfort zone

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

The blanket of snow I remember as a consolation for half my days of the past ten years I will no longer be allowed. Not here.

Awakening. The bubble has burst.

Stepping out of the comfort zone.

Development, just beyond where I found myself yesterday, the place and space of ease and solace. A shock of humility. I wake up and the world I thought I knew so well is gone, going, no longer what I thought it to be. Expanding views, minds, horizons, beliefs. Habits are broken. The chain tying us to past is torn loose.

I ask the woman in the mirror, “Who are you today?” There is no answer.

“What do you want of me?” Silence. A cold hard surface.

I don’t know the answers. I look for them inside. They are vague and misty and mysterious. A game I’m not sure I’d like to be playing, but there I am, in the middle of it, and the ball is thrown my way.

Still I smile. I am looking forward to not having “The Ranch” define us, bind us. But without it, the bottom falls out. I fall, seemingly endlessly. The rabbit in the dark hole.

Listen. Silence. In that void, I start to whistle. My own tune. It means nothing to no one but me. I can be myself again. Something I never was here somehow. The history, the attachments, my husband’s family, the stories told of me I still don’t know and don’t want to know. All of it. I just felt I fit into the picture. Contorted to the shape I was allowed.

Now I begin to draw my own picture, tell my own story. It starts now. With a simple breath. Deep and strong and dizzying with the dazzling stars of this high altitude I find myself staring up at as I walk the dog in the middle of the night. His wet cold nose nudging me awake becomes the blessing rather than the curse.

It’s all a matter of how we look at things. As long as we look. Even in the pitch black of mid night as the infinite stars above bedazzle my sleepy head.

My side of the mountain

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Lost and found
I lose myself in my big back yard
Consumed by her presence
I’ve become almost comfortable
Such stances dull the senses
Noted as I languidly lie back on her still warm hillside
And breathe for but a moment between bursts of vigor
Bouts of anger and so much still to do before I leave.

Soul food
She has fed me from her flesh of rock and soil
Nurtured me with her cutting wild wind
Filled my belly with raging storm and thundering tempest
When the earth and sky merge together as one
And quenched my seemingly insatiable thirst for wide and white and wild
Then let loose her uncontrolled wrath of waters in spring
When no one else would stand by her side
As if she were no more than a shallow sunny summer face.

She showed me her subtle still side
Her dark side
Deep side
I dove in
Where the sun dips behind her mid afternoon silhouette and her skin turns frigid in a flash
And the world is a blinding white and black and blue
Or the brown grey cold wet simple season of spring
That no one cares to see
Her seemingly ugly side
A raw face before the fanciful adornment of warmth and leaves and light.

Now she is stripped bare
As tourists turn their backs for a warmer ease
The elk for lower ground
Foliage for their resting place on the leeward side of bunch grass
Surrendered for the season in tired tangled and torn tan mounds
Or deep in the woods beneath the silent silver trees awaiting their blanket of snow
And the geese begin to congregate on the delta flats
Their final farewell sounded by loud squawking that carries up the side of the freezing mountain
Two miles or more as I stand on the front porch and hold my breath to listen.

Forever Home

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Part one.

Our intention was to be here forever. We were building what was to be our forever home.

When I married Bob, I thought I was also marrying the mountain. The two were close to one.

I have since learned there is a connection between man and land, but the two are not inseparable. It is a connection created only in the minds of those seeking something solid to hold. A meaning and importance, connection and definition.

But the land does not define us. We only use the land to describe ourselves, find meaning in a more universal sense, one that others can comprehend and characterize. A false and temporary explanation of self. The exterior as a mode of classifying the interior. As a shell that does no more than contain and protect that which lives within.

We are both learning to re-write these labels, and learn who and what we truly are, not based on the walls we built and the mountains we climb.

How do we, then, define ourselves? Somehow we feel lost without the label.

But I am not the mountain.

I am not my husband, not my son, not my dog or horses or job.

I am me.

Of course that’s too ambiguous.

How do I define me except in relation to all these things?

And how when these things are all changing?

Will I remain the same?

Do we ever?

For now I don’t know who or what I am.

And now I recal the words of Cyndee sharing the image of the horse running free, when all four feet are in flight, above the earth, ungrounded, unbound, exhilarated…