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An ugly picture in a beautiful world

/ Gin Getz / 25 Comments

I think when you come down to it, truth is, everyone wants to be loved.

Though at some time, with some people, we must face the facts that attempts for being loved, let alone being accepted, are futile.

Oh sure, I’d love to be like those that claim they do not care.  Seemingly untroubled by who calls them what, the stories that have been told, or the judgments made.  Maybe such people really do exist.  I am not one of them.

So it was with that hope in mind, that of simply being loved, and then reduced to liked, and then reduced to accepted… by my in-laws, that I write today.

Oh, not all of them.  In fact, only a few.  There are a lot of them around here in the summer.  Some have been fine.  Some have been great. But that very unpleasant, difficult few have made a big impression.  Not a pretty one, either.

Why?  Go figure.  We’ve learned we’ll never really know. I’ve heard all kinds of theories.  The typical, “She must be a hussy.”  Or thinking I was no more than the hired help.  Or that I married Bob for his money (no offense, sweetheart, but I can hear the chuckles).  Or fear.  Fear of me taking their little boy away.  Fear of losing control.  Fear of change.

For their world was perfect before I came.  Right.  Wrong.  Frighteningly so.  But I don’t know if anyone every spoke about it, you know, as in “admitted it” before I was here to open up the closet and let the skeletons spill out.  Hush-hush, brush it under the carpet, don’t tell a sole, and just pretend we get along.  Good lord, but you HATE each other!  Who are you fooling?

An ugly picture in a beautiful world.

When you put the pieces of the puzzle together, there before you is one ugly picture.  But it’s just one, spread out on my kitchen table, a twisted mix of facts and lies, and I know I have the ability to brush it off, toss it away, clean the slate and begin my day, my life, in a beautiful way. Even here.

Pieces of the puzzle.  It’s a long story.  I’ll probably only get to a part of it today.  Bear with me as this might not be the lovely lighter side of life you like to listen to.  But it’s real and raw and revealing.  And I suppose there is something to be said for that.  Like letting it all hang out so you can lighten your load and learn to laugh again.

And I’m gonna have the last laugh after all.  Because although legend has it when we were married my husband’s brother and mother vowed to chase me off in five years, I’ve spent the last four chuckling, just knowing my presence alone causes them misery.  And now, with our return, with our commitment to the land, it’s easy to see how  we’ll still be here, enjoying a new group of neighbors, long after they leave.  And yes, I confess, I do I take pleasure in that.

So where do I begin?

An ugly picture.

Most of the details I chose to forget.  There were many.  Ugly, ugly images.  Memories more like nightmares.  I learned to say this family is not mine.  No family is perfect, I know, but this was a bit much.

So why am I rehashing all this crap?  Because I can, the brother used to say.  He never gave us a better reason for treating us as he did. So maybe just this time, I’ll say the same.  Because I can.  And because part of healing is forgiving.  Letting go. And I’m still holding on.  I’m still hurt.  Having people hate you, hate everything you do or did or built or made, finding fault in you and your life and your dreams and your hard work hurts.  Period.  The scars are deep.  But they are healing.

This story will help clarify the picture for me, ugly as it may be.  Only then can I brush it aside… and laugh.

I might add that this post is not endorsed by my husband, and may be the first one which he will read and won’t say, “It’s nice.”  I guarantee.  This will make him cringe.  Why stir the waters, he will ask me?  I will tell him that the mud is thick and deep, and taints the clear waters that calmly lies on top.  It doesn’t go away on its own.  At some point we must drain the pond and begin anew. Let sleeping dogs lie, he’ll tell me.  But my dog sleeps restlessly, and wakes up barking.

Life isn’t always peaches and cream.   Maybe it’s because of the bitter apple and sour milk that fine wine seems so sweet.  It’s a package deal.  The good and bad.  An ugly picture in a beautiful world.  So, I’ll tell my story finally.  Forget the silence of the lambs.  It due time I climb to the top of the mountain and let loose my feral wail.

It isn’t going to make me any friends.  But truth is, it’s already cost me plenty.  That was their intention. Stories from my mother- and brother-in-law. I’m better off not knowing the half of them.

I would like to claim innocence but that would not be fair.  I could have/should have seen the signs, and probably did, but love is blind.  The sweet little old lady who had already had about twenty five years perfecting the act.   Oh, she could tell a story so well!  A historian, she called herself.  Though I cringe to think of how many stories were told for the sheer impact and effect on intrigued tourists.  I too was enamored by her once, and so looked forward to having her… love me.

Silly me.

Why she couldn’t run me off like she succeeded in doing for others before me, I do not know.  But for that I am grateful.  Though the battle to win and keep her son left deep scars within me.  They are worth it.  He is worth it.

An ugly picture.  You built your own hell.  Alas, it’s fading.  It’s lost its control.  The rein of critiques and criticism from the plastic throne is withering away.  The powers she appointed to replace her are not even worthy of mention.

There is more, so much more.  I need not remember it all.  I need to learn to let go.  For myself, my son, my husband.  For them, I push open the shutters and pull up the shade and let go of the past and let new light flood into the room.

As one friend writes, “The old me would have…”  But the new one won’t put up with crap.  OK, well, so maybe I never did.

So what is the solution?  Learning to let go.  Learning not to care.  Learning not to be affected by the words and actions and stories spread by others.  Well, one thing is for sure. I’ll never run for public office.  I’ll never be a politician.  For I never will care enough about what others think of me to act falsely or to put up with injustice and sit around silently. And still, I find I care too much.

So, where does that leave me?  I guess exactly where I am.

We have not spoken in years.  A big fence divides us, and I have learned no fence is big enough to hold back hatred.  I’ve stopped listening to them, to their stories, though I still hear them from time to time.  I think only a few still listen, though only a few ever did. They still spend their idle time here, coming and going in the summer.  Just more fair weather tourists who like to think about how many years they have been coming here, as if that enables one a greater hierarchical ranking.

And I will watch them leave, and breathe again.

And in the meanwhile, I will learn to accept that not everyone is going to love you. Some, in fact, will hate you.  Not because of who you are or what you’ve done, but because of themselves.  Let them keep their misery.  They build it well.  Some people choose to paint their own ugly pictures, then spend a lifetime looking at that, rather than the beautiful view before them.

I don’t want to be that person.  I want to see that beautiful view, be out in it, be a part of it, and should I lift my paintbrush to add to the picture before me, may I only craft it to be a more beautiful one.

If ever that were possible in such a picture perfect world.

Enwrapped by vibration

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

Lightning on the other side of the Divide where the clouds are steel grey.  A blinding bolt in the dark sky. A mirror image remains for a moment even through closed lids. Holding still, I wait and count and listen for the inevitable thunder.  Further away than I would have guessed.

The sound reverberates in a broad booming circle about us, bounding from the hard face of the mountains all around as we stand there in the center, protected in our little fenced yard, holding our spade and hoe. Waiting, awaiting, the certain sound and stirring.

Enwrapped by vibration.

The rain won’t reach us today.  I would like to smell the sweetness on warm soil and have the lettuce seeds and newly transplanted rhubarb and bunching onion softly sprinkled. But I can tell. The heavy clouds will loop around and loosen their load elsewhere, always elsewhere it seems. Except for when it’s here, and then it seems we are in the storm forever, forgetting what before and after sunshine feel like when the cold of mountain hail and rain surround us.

Not quite the banana belt. It was twenty five degrees this morning.  We’re still a month away before morning temps might remain above freezing.  And then, even then, I’d be a fool to count on it.

Quite contrary.

How does your garden grow?

Talk about an uphill battle, but I’m going to do it again this year. I’m going to try.  Lettuce and chard and kale, potatoes, onions and herbs.  Seeds spread out on my kitchen table of what I used to plant for spring crops when I gardened in California, here will grow in summer.  If I’m lucky.

And this year I’m cheating.  My husband brought me home starts from the greenhouse.  Tomatoes, peppers and flowers.  Geraniums in the boldest reds, so many shades, shocking and vibrant and really quite sexy.   Just ask the hummingbird who already found his way through the open sliding glass door to get closer to the brilliant blossoms.  Silly little birds.  Still seem so oddly out of place in the high country, yet manage just fine, even without the sickly amount of sugar so many humans think they “need.”

The chance of rain passes us by.  The dark clouds dissipate, or hide on the other side of the Divide, which is possible, for I would not see them for days if they chose to remain there.  And in the evening as the clear sky darkens for the day, the dog and I walk from the yard back towards home, smoke from the wood stove slowly waving like a happy dog tail as the temperature has already dropped to the mid thirties.

The smell of burning cedar.  Scraps of the posts pulled up, rearranged, fencing removed and replaced, because nothing stays the same, and we always find better ways. Even better places for the garden, now tucked in closer to the cabin, a little more protection from the extreme elements of the mountain.

We stop to listen, just the dog and me. There is a snipe’s flickering mating call to one side of us, and the bellow of geese on the other.  I imagine them there, perhaps no more than a pair, following the black ribbon of the river up to higher grounds until they settle in to the concealing darkness, wait out the night, and celebrate the first of light on the mountain in the morning with broad wings and joyous voices taking flight above the now silver flow of our Mighty Rio Grande.

Hardened by the season

/ Gin Getz / 12 Comments

Hiding behind the veil of the softening trees.

I learn to find my place and keep my space as the tourists begin to flock, moving in like the geese soon moving on from the delta flats where they hatched their young.

Swelling of the pussy willows.

Cirrus clouds to breach an otherwise stark blue sky above me.

Soft.  The Aspen are filling with lace of caterpillar like seed pods draping delicately from their softening branches.

The subtle art of learning to stand up softly… when I see my technique is much too harsh.

Soft.  Small as I may be, this is not a word many might use for me.  At times I wish it were.  But life, or destiny, the way I was born, the path I chose, or the way things just turned out had something else in mind.  I’m not saying “tough” is good, but chances are, you’d use that word to describe me more than “soft.”

I guess it started as a skinny little girl when the biggest girl in class was after me.  You know the type. For dramatic purposes, I’ll paint her portrait as a young female version of Lennie Small from “Of Mice and Men.”

Jenny Tole was her name. Big boned and slow witted we said at the time.  Probably an unkind and untrue description.  Children are too often cruel.  She came from the wrong side of town and I never remember her around much past fourth grade.  Don’t know if she dropped out or moved on.

I became the object of her attention, me, the smallest kid in class, always sitting front row center in every class picture at the suggestion of the wide eyed and every smiling photographers, probably so I wouldn’t get lost, and being closer to the lens, perhaps I would appear larger…

It started as a rumor.  “Did you hear?  Jenny’s got it in for you…” And spread like wild fire until the entire class was abuzz with the prospect of the ensuing battle.  And I just remember feeling they all felt I would triumph.  Though half her size and weight, at least that’s how it seemed at the time, they laughed like it was a done deal.  No one would whoop me.  Why?  I do not know.  So I tried to convince myself I could win a backyard brawl, though I don’t believe I had ever hit anyone besides my brothers before then.  And the prospect truly frightened me.

I remember being sick to my stomach, the tangled gut feeling every time I walked (ran!) home from school wondering and waiting to see if she was in the bushes about to attack.  For the first time in my life, I didn’t want the school bell to ring.

Now what I don’t remember is exactly what I did, so probably no big dramatic battle scene must have ensued.  Sorry, I know that would be fun to hear.  However I have these memories of turning to face her, feeling a bit like David against Goliath, though somehow at the time being overwhelmed with this HUGE feeling and imagined myself actually towering over Jenny.  I felt strong, mighty, powerful.  A dark red rage.  I would not be scared any longer!  I remember being in her face, pointing my finger, and putting her back in her place.

No punches flew. Whatever I said, it worked.  I think we even became friends after that, which I guess is probably what she wanted in the first place. Ginny and Jenny.  The mouse and the elephant.

I told myself harshness is how to handle people. Stand up!  Be strong!  I find myself still saying that. I know no other way.  I try to learn, and usually fail.  As one friend said, sooner or later, they’re going to disappoint you.  And I will you. So why do we even try?  Such socially strangled creatures we are. How dependent upon one another.  No matter how I try and fail, try I still always do.

The harsher side of self.  Longing for an internal softening.

The land here, my husband says, is harsh.  A winter away in a softer land has reminded him anew.  There was soft, pink, moist, mild.  Here the sun, wind, air burns, cracks, parches with little comfort from hard rocks and rushing river.

And yet of course it is the people which will always hurt more than the elements. So against them must I don the heaviest cloak.  And the softness that I allow myself alone on the mountain, letting down my guard when no one but nature surrounds me, closes off and shuts down for the season as the sentinel arrives to stand guard and protect.  The inevitable conflicts await, approaching with the season.

Mid week in early May

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

By lunch the snow has melted. The grass is a shade greener. The high country remains frosted and the air that comes over the Divide from the West has a strong bite.

I take off on a quick walk to burn energy that might otherwise drive the boys nuts.  I’m not good at not doing much and the morning snow and afternoon mud has slowed me down.  The dog joins me, chasing off two separate bands of elk along the way. They are shocked that this little beast would run straight up the mountain towards them as they side hill into the trees.  He is courageous.  I cannot say fearless, for the dark of night and high waters still frighten him, and for good reason. But he is bolder than any other dog I have known.  Only now, after almost two years together, have I learned to understand and appreciate his big, brave heart.  He is a lot of dog. Not physically, for he is only seventy pounds or so, but his spirit, his soul.  Yes, my friends.  Dogs do have soul, and this one has a big one.

By evening I am finally tired enough to sit. I pour a glass of wine and visit with my boys on our deck, soaking in the last of the sun before it drops behind the far side of Pole Mountain.  Warmth on the back of my head as I gaze forward across our yard ripped up from gardening mayhem, across the pasture with the horses grazing upon the moist spring grasses while two cormorants that just arrived back in the ‘hood mill about the undisturbed, across the hills which ebb and flow down to the swollen banks of the Reservoir, high with waters retained from cutbacks, making the drought conditions appear so plentiful.  How far reaching our view from the front deck can be if we take the time to consider the reaches and impact of the expanses before us.

Today I am at peace.  Home is bliss.  And yet it is not because of the beautiful place. I am not so shallow to be impressed by no more than a pretty face. It is because of what we bring here, have done here, do here, build and grow here, give back rather than just take.  It’s a love affair. A swirling, churning, mixed up romance, at times still or drowning and other times exhilarating like wild white waters.  And like that of my marriage and relationship with growing son, becomes deeper, stronger, richer with time.

Going away and returning has taught me it is not the place.  For this place is also tainted with some of the ugliest I have seen in life.  I cannot bury these burdens but learn to rise above.

Sherie wrote, “You found home.  Hope the feeling stays.”

I know it won’t. I’ve learned that much. For you’re right, it is a feeling, and emotions change with the wind. They have no substance nor permanence, but impact us so strongly if we allow them to, and too often, I do.  This feeling too will fluctuate with the seasons and moods and events that shape us far more than the mountain. It’s not our surroundings that ground us, but our heart and soul, and yes, our loved ones.  I’m not above counting on and relying upon those I love to help me learn to live with not only where I am, but who I am.

On the outside, you might say a place like this is easier to find that peace within.  But you’re looking only on the surface.  And peace is not so shallow.  Look deep, stir the waters, and see more than the reflection in muddy waters.  The trials, tribulations and traumas I’ve been challenged with here have been harder and more painful than any I have been tested with in other places.  Ultimately, they helped (or rather, are helping, for it is forever a fluctuating process) me learn to find and make peace within myself, of myself, not because of my environment.

Likewise, with Don’s comment, and others you may see from Al, for example:  They are not as obvious, those natural, wild beauties found within city boundaries, but they are there, and open and free for the few bold enough to seek them out.  I was raised right outside and then within NYC.  I learned more about natural peace, beauty and serenity there than I did after six years in the barren hills of New Mexico. Because it mattered to me and I took the time to look.  Sitting silent along the Hudson piers to watch the sun set cast golden orange on the gentle ripples of the then foul waters.  Climbing to the rooftop to find the greatest silence and find a pocket view of the night sky sharing a secret moment with the full moon.  Like Sherie noticing all those things that so many might not see, the frogs, the sounds, the squirrels… the magic and beauty.  I cannot tell you how many near to here are surrounded with so much and see so little. It is more than the environment.  It is our heart and soul and ability to see and feel.  Or not.  For there is no doubt that wide open spaces can craft closed minds. It is always our challenge to open up, see, feel, taste and touch the world around us.  Dive in!  Or skim the surface.  The choice is ours.  Me, I’d rather dive in, fight the currents from time to time dragging me in a direction I do not wish to go.  And deal with the frigid waters, stirred up mud, and scratching rocks at the bottom  just for the chance to float calm and serene beneath the clouds reflecting on the glassy surface supporting me when the wind is still and water and mind calm for no more than a brief but beautiful repose.

(A friend and reader wrote yesterday to mention how interesting the conversations and writing in the comments can be.  Mine, yours, the prompt and interaction. I don’t know how many readers take a look at these, but I do know more of you still prefer to write me personally and directly – and that’s fine – however – sometimes there is a response I want to share or continue the conversation with, and I’ll take the risk to include it in a post – just to be sure you read it!)

Home again

/ Gin Getz / 12 Comments

We have returned from the weekend away, bringing Forrest home with us. A sense of fulfillment and completion for me, having my family together as a team. The beginning of a well earned summer break for him.  Some break. Building, fencing, digging ditch.  May sound hard to many, but you know we love it all.

He returns to a house that looks the same as it did when he moved out how long ago, when we all moved out, renting out our home and moving to the Little Cabin to increase our cash flow, trying to create a change that seemed so slow to come.  Since then, we moved to around five times, including 1400 miles to northern Washington.  And then back again.  What a lot of work!  And I wouldn’t have it any other way. (Though hiring a moving service seems like a tempting option.) Put super simply, it was all good.

Change. It came, in a big way, and beautifully, and reminds me we are in constant state of change, only sometimes we don’t see it, and other times we may deny it.

And yet, on the surface, it appears we are right where we started.  Same beautiful house, hand crafted, all our years of woodwork and refinement, rough and rustic though it still feels, just the way we like it.  Warm, welcoming. Few come into our home without noting how “comfortable” it is.  The pictures hanging on the wall just where they belong.  Sofas, pots, pans, everything in place as it once was.  Sounds of the woodstoves crackling, one to heat the house against morning temperatures in the teens, the other to cook our breakfast, Forrest’s favorite in a big cast iron skillet ready to be set in the oven. Steller’s Jays pecking at the same feeder even they too remember right where it used to be.

And the view from the window as it has been for half our days here:  white.  For just when we were settling into the balmy spring that felt like flatlands, enticing me to think I might manage growing a tomato or pepper, we are reminded.  These are high, harsh mountains.  And that little bit of snow might just be the reminder we need to show us where we belong.  Home.  Here and now.  We’ll see about tomorrow.

Much more to say, my head seems swirling.  I can’t wait to show Forrest the things that are just as he remembers, and have changed so much. Off to stoke the fires, stir the pot, and wake the boys.

“Call it what you will” Change

/ Gin Getz / 10 Comments

One advantage to beetle kill.  It’s not too hard to find a dead tree to fall  across the high spring waters.  And then I am on the other side.  Where I wanted to be.  As if I wasn’t far enough.  Not for me.

We are playing hooky from work.  I’m tired of fencing and moving the soil from my garden beds by shovel and wheelbarrow from the old place to the new.  The sun seduces and we are lured by the sound of the creek beside which we tread, as sweet as the Pied Piper calling…

We walk and walk surrounded by last year’s bunch grass, leafless trees and the swelling buds of the willows.  We see old tracks of the moose, set when the ground was still soft and damp.  New tracks of elk in the dusty top soil.  Our tracks.  None others.  This matters to me.

Dry and dusty.  Bogs that we have held our breath crossing horseback for fear of punching through and sinking in are already firm.  I don’t remember when they last were muddy.

The high country looks like early June.  Shrinking snow banks and exposed windward slopes. My husband kicks up powdered dirt behind him on his motor bike. Grass crunches underfoot. The creeks are running rather full but clear and we wonder if the high brown waters are finished for the season.  It used to peak in early June.  Then mid May.  This year it seems to me it was the end of April.

But there is no global warming.  Then what do you want to call it?  Call it something.  For something it is.  I don’t know what it is or why or how.  But I see it.  Look around.  Can’t you see the beetle kill, once green hillsides turning brown, the dried up bogs, the high country already melting, springs and little creeks going dry in early May?

Just a fluke year?  Then how come it’s been progressively worse since I arrived on the scene after the driest year on record, the start of the big drought?  I keep track of temperatures and in the last ten years, we’ve not seen much change.  But we are seeing the springs drying up, the aquifers dropping, bogs turning solid and hard. Birds arriving and nesting sooner.  High waters earlier each year.  This is nothing?

It is something.  You are not blind.

It is something.  I don’t know what, but I’m not clinging to the comfort of a closed mind.  I’m not claiming I have the answers or gripping to ones I want to believe in.  It’s not politics or religion.  It’s real and it’s kind of sad.  And maybe it’s a natural cycle.  Who knows?  But how can you be such a fool to believe that all of man’s raping of the land and burning of fuels to power our ever growing needs and greeds in such a short period of time would have no impact?

Only I believe the earth is stronger than you or me.  So though you may have a hundred years of coal left to burn, have at it.  Then fade away.  The earth might actually be better off without us.

An early summer tourist arrives on the mountain for a stay and I hear a generator being run for a microwave oven while we’re getting our power from the sun and burning dead wood that is all around us. Wood that will burn if not in my woodstove then when?  Or will man be God enough to suppress the wildfires and let the old wood rot.  Which up here where it is high and dry is longer than my lifetime.

And perhaps that’s it. We forgot how to look beyond our lifetime.

I want to leave this world a better place for my child, his children, and the generations after them.

There are consequences to every actions.  Cause and effect.

We are not God.  We are not Mother Earth.  We pretend we are one and think we can handle controlling the other, but I can’t say I’m impressed.  Some say we are stewards of the Earth.  I think we’re doing a crappy job.  We take what we want.  Burn, slash, rip and tear.  It’s all about bigger and better, shiny and slick.

I don’t know.  I look around on a day like today, with the only human trace a small path through the woods or drawn across the hillside, and I think it’s pretty darned beautiful out there. And I don’t think you or I could do much better than that.

What do you choose to do?  What do you believe? And then, what do you see?  There before you.  Not just books and papers and scientific studies and biased reports.  But there before. For real.  Open your eyes and look. And here, in a land you tell me love, though often no more than a week a year if you are lucky enough to fit that time into your busy schedule.

If you can’t see it, your eyes are more closed than your heart.

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.

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.