The morning after
Muscles moving with soreness and shivers
Dripping where once was dry
The cage door swings open
Feral beast unleashed
She bolts and does not look back
Stops to catch her heaving breath
Sweating along creased brow
Narrow vision of passion
It is all a blur
Mind blending memories with desires
How do we separate the two
After they have intertwined?
Rain turns to hail turns to snow
Winter’s white line blending with brown
A slow sad march down the mountain
Covering the last of summers stories
Faded like a sepia portrait of an old cowboy
Yesterday today tomorrow
You may say bad things comes in threes
I’d rather think of body, mind and soul
Nothing is not connected
Though too often we find ourselves alone
Seemingly old words shared with a new friend:
“As I write, I am down at the Little Cabin, our one room cabin built of old round logs, set out on the bluff above the river. Big Haus, our main home for now, is being used for the last big event of the season, so we’ve chosen to hide away down here, and I love it. A small satellite dish and solar panel which charges a battery which in turn is inverted to household power allows me the use of the computer and internet, though we have the old wood cook stove giving us heat, and candles and kerosene lamps at night by which we work. There is an outhouse nearby and when the rain and hail (and soon to be snow) are not as loud on the metal roof as they are right now, I can hear the song of the Rio Grande just below us.”
Get away, far away…
I wonder at times if I am running away? Or running to something just out of reach?
A new view, looking out of these old weathered eight-pane windows. Snow beneath the beetle killed spruce trees. Rolling waves of light and dark, subtle shades and repeated variation, hillside after hillside fading from green to grey. It’s only a matter of time.
Are we better off not looking?
Yet even blindfolded, would you feel the tears of the trees dropping their needles upon you as we stumble through the last of the shade?
Heavy clouds holding in the mountain
Containment, wet and shallow
Not deep enough to drown
The rage of waves
Ocean lures
Stirs me
I wake
Tumbling
Upon the spine of the sleeping beast
Land of dormant fires
Awaiting the chance to ignite
And then it clears. Then it dries. We return to blue bird sky and say this is how it should be.
Twenty five degrees and a heavy frost this morning. The garden has turned to mush once again. Heck, it’s later than I expected, later than most years. I gather the bounty of my harvest. Three baby zucchini and a couple of green tomatoes. That’s it. More than most years. Yes, I know. A greenhouse goes on the south side of my next house…
Colors turning early yet cold arriving late. The Aspen begin their show, gaudy as fluorescent flashing lights. Dazed and dazzling.
A long season coming to an end.
I am as weary as the grass, browning, turned to seed, swaying in the rains, bent over with drops of raining clinging like children to their mothers dress.
Hide me not behind a veil
Of pouring waterfall
Through which I breathe
A sputtered breath
Nor pin me to a wall
Hard and cold and unforgiving
I watch the caged beast pace uneasily
Left with blood on lips
Unable to rinse clean
In pure waters of the river
Down to which she tilts her head to drink
Waters flowing like silk in the wind
Now tainted with the color red
Pour into pink ribbons of a young girl’s hair
Disturbing as hillsides draped with swaths
Of dying trees once green
And full of life’s broken promises
Captured in the currents
Slammed into a rock mid stream
Or drifted to a shore upon which I never meant to be
Tangled with the upstream trash
Snared in the hollow stream
I tire of trying to stay afloat
And wonder if I’ll learn to breath
Below
Rain. A sweet sweet song playing on the metal roof. Steady rhythm, pulse, cadence. I fade into the dark clouds, black black sky, like the deepest sea, behind which the promise of full moon rises. Somewhere else someone else can see it. In their own silence, far from the stream of rain drumming primordial chants above me, over, on top, around, surround sound embracing me, accepting me and allowing me. I breathe.
I’m home. Ditch work for this week is cancelled. We’ll make it up next week. Sticking around to care for our little red mare, Canella, who, so it seems, was attacked by a mountain lion, and won. One more reason to love this horse. However, with a ranch full of little kids and a few little horses, too, sticking around to keep an eye on matters probably isn’t a bad idea.
So, I am left with a week unplanned, able to be filled with time to write, time to work the (other) horses, and time to get out and explore.
In my need to get out there as the confines of high summer weigh somewhat heavy upon me, the past three days found me on foot (not horses), hiking to places I have never been before. Spontaneous adventures leading to who knows where. Yesterday led us to the base of Brewster Park, about four miles up the Rio Grande from where we began, and back along our horse trail which seems so different viewed on foot in summer. On foot, one finds more time to look closer, slower. A different perspective. Perhaps more intimate with the mountain.
Time. This summer my goal was for more time. Time to do what we’ve had to put off for so many summers. More hiking. Fishing. Early morning photo safaris. Pleasure rides, the pleasure of riding with just each other and even alone. Building a bridge – our bridge, something just for us. Writing just to write; playing with the written word, wild thoughts.
And it was on one of these hikes (it matters not which one, now, does it?) I noted the first yellow leaves of Aspen. Bunches, small trees, a leaf strewn across the path before me.
Summer promised to end. I feel her bowing early as early she came on this year. The hour glass empties and as always is only so full. How short she really stays up here.
A part of me grasps for the hope of enough sun and warmth to bring on tan legs and a ripe tomato. I am rather sure I will see neither one. Another part of me trembles with anticipation of my wild winters returning. So close. My breath quickens and I am lost with her, alone, and exactly where I want to be.
She touched the face before her
A hard and cold reflection
Slick surface on delicate hands
When really what she wanted
Was a soft embrace
The thermometer on the porch reads thirty five when I wake up. Grass out on pasture is laced with frost. Yellow leaves of cinquefoil stick to my damp boots like polka dots. All morning it looks as if my squash plants are going to give up and give in to that sickly, mushy green of a frozen plant, but they do not. They survive. Not to say they will ever produce. Just staying alive here is asking a lot for a crook neck squash plant. My little Arabian shows the first sign of fuzz from his winter coat, though the ranch raised ones shrug off the rain that drips down their manes and muzzles.
The monsoon season has settled in. The hot and dry of May and June are but a misty memory. And when this pattern passes, the first chill of fall will find us as always unprepared, wondering how it came so soon, and where did the summer go.
It’s an arduous land, make no doubt. Even now, in the easy season of summer, when tourists come and go, smile and laugh and play and leave their world and worries behind as if this were some wild park at Disneyland. They will all be gone by winter. Ok by me, as I’ll remain, but I’ve never been much for the social scene.
So here we are in mid July and the weather site on the internet we check each day has rain clouds for as far as one can see in the forecast. This is how it should be, I am reminded, but I still remember summers in other places, hot and dry, where we swam naked in the river or sea, sand between my toes (yes, bare feet!), sat out in shirt sleeves and shorts at night under the stars, and took a siesta mid day. Our spring this year was as close as it gets, with the never ending blue bird blue sky that made one long for a bad ass cloud to break up that blue and whirling dervish dancing of rain and hail on the metal roof. Now we have that. Every day. Now we’ve got the monsoons, and it’s hard to complain because it’s greening up the pasture (sorry, it can’t do much for the red hillsides killed by those nasty little black beetles).
And I try to enjoy every wet, damp chilly storm and rainbow spreading across pasture knowing the fast and furious spell of summer will slowly sink into the comforting cradle of winter…
Lost.
Amidst the changing landscape of green hills turning red and brown.
Give up, give in, fall deep into the darkness.
I try to stay afloat. So hard in the rushing currents. Waiting for my island to capture me, hold me up, pin me down long enough for roots to grow, flowers to bloom, seeds to take shape for next year’s dreams.
Wanting the yellow brick road to appear before me. Instead there is a discernible path of last year’s aspen leaves still untrodden and I need to find my own way.
But this morning there is hope, relief, as I watch the footprints of my polka dot boots trailing behind in the frosty grass.
Last night’s rain lingers in low heavy clouds not yet broken and gone, and promising to renew again by mid afternoon.
For now there is cold wet ground before the morning sun.
Silver droplets on the railing
Each with a little world within them
Enter and lose yourself inside and away
Beads of rain clinging to the bottom of the rusted steel railings like welding lag or a row of sparkling diamonds dripping from a rough cut mine.
And inside each one are upside down images of brown and green hills over layered grey skies
Deep stratum of clouds, draped like velvet and barely moving
A lacy veil slung low along her hips in her slow dance of summer
Languid in the early hours
Like thickening water waiting to freeze
And by afternoon rain on the roof will drown out the sound of the growing parade of ATVs
Where for now the wilds are swept away in the murky waters of the monsoons
But I remain here
Hungry for more of whatever she hides
Starving for the wilds
“You were made to contribute,” I read and these words felt strong and true. But what do I have to give?
Isn’t there’s more to my calling in life than providing a vacation for tourists? Building my world so others can enjoy it for a brief stay away from their own reality.
“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” Seth Godin.
I believe this and have tried to live my life this way, yet I’ve been providing that escape for others. And doing so is what has enabled me to live the life others dream of, but don’t dare to walk away from safe and sound and secure to create.
Have I no further talents, gifts, abilities, that can help in some way?
Seriously, life is hard sometimes. Why can’t the answers just present themselves?
I’ve been told they are out there. Be still, silent, and listen. I don’t hear them yet.
I try to find a quiet time alone with her. Hear her wisdom. In wind and water and hard earth beneath my feet. Above the river, across the river.
Here, our Rio Grande, her stories are not old, but fresh and new, like fairytales heard as a child. Here, only miles from where she emerges from snowbank and spring to tint, trickle and trail the mountains and wind her way through my land, my world, my dreams. Here, she is new water, strong and pure, not yet softened and slowed, diverted, polluted.
Step in, she calls me.
And I do.
I thought you would be harsh, blunt, cold, shocking.
Instead I find you have softened with age, sun, seasons. You are summer waters. Childlike. Or very, very old and wise. Hard to tell the difference in your silver face.
Rolling over rounded rocks, as have I.
Take me to the other side, I ask of you, in a current too strong to remain.
And now I walk above you. And am there. On the other side.
Washed away by white noise of the river.
Stepping upon last year’s leaves still untrodden.
photo by Forrest
Now she rains
Cool and wet, green and lush
Wilds washed away
In a land of extremes
Balance is hard to find
With the pendulum swinging widely
Wildly
Only over time
Does balance blanket
A soothing shelter upon her soil
Flashes of the white of winter
The deepest blue sky
You ever were lost beneath
Drawing you in and back and beyond
Alone and silent and still
Arrested with an unforgiving chill
But now she finds me
Restricted to raingear, cabins, confines
And conversations where I remain so out of place
Who knows when I will no longer be able to remain reserved
Lashing with fire and fury and rage
Open the doors to the cage
And let the wild beast roam free again
Hot as a southern summer night
When here and now the monsoons douse passion
And barefeet and shorts and sunburn shoulders
Suffocate beneath down and wool and oilskin
My uncertainties are never doused
Fed well by water, sun and snow
The one element to flourish
In this land of harsh elements and extremes
I share our latest project, my latest dream, with a visitor from out of town, out of state, for I’m already far from town.
First I hear I’m crazy. Then I hear it must just be luck. I’ve heard both before. Funny how it always comes from those standing on safe ground. Unable to see what it took to get here.
It starts with a dream of biting into the succulent peach and letting the sweet juice flow freely. Then climbing the tree and stretching out, reaching to the edge of the limbs to pluck the ripest fruit.
Can you see more than the results? There I am, eating that ripe juicy peach. I make it look good and easy. Now. But don’t you know? It started with a dream.
There is a price to pay for dreaming. One must step out on that limb to make dreams happen. And it seems like out there where the wind whips and balance is a bit shaky, you might wonder at times if in fact you are more than a little crazy. But that is where you’ll find the luck. That is how you make dreams real. They don’t seem to materialize on solid ground while sitting around.
Sure, one could choose to stay safe, secure, easy. Remain on this side of the river because there is no road, no bridge. Me, I’ll say, let’s build a road, a bridge, and cross the river, and go where the rest aren’t willing to go. And there are my boys, hammers, shovels and saws in hand. Because no one said we could not.
Luck is found out on the limbs.
That’s where you’ll find me, even if I fall from time to time.
The river sounds like rain
And is louder than my thoughts
For but a moment I am lost
And realize there is no place I would rather be
A silver lined droplet of hope
For the seemingly eternal conflict between heart and soul
Spark and dousing
For here I have found such wilds
And such confines
And the balance makes me dizzy
I hide here like a child
Knees to chin
Sitting silent dog and me
On fragile moss covered rocks
Where so few feet have stepped
And hopefully never will
Across river
Among the tall trees
Spotted sun
And columbine
My little bit of solitude
A chance to get away from those who came to get away
I’m hoping there is more to me than past and present
Here and now
Stand and confront the rushing waters
Look into her depths like a crystal ball
Answers floating downstream in the bubbling white foam below
I walk the still precarious planks with the Rio singing underneath
She has no answers for me today
Rain
Coming in waves
She returns
Angry as the ocean
And we welcome her wrath
Hard and pounding on the windows
Upon the rim of my hat as I untie the horses and set them free
Lasting for but a moment and passing on
Returning to calm and blue
Barely scratching the surface of soil
Parched lips and land
Thirsting for more
Last night she came
Joining us as we curled in bed
Welcomed as a lover
We opened our windows to her
Receiving
Let her song flow in
Soft and mild like breakers on a bay
Gently lapping at hungry soil
Waves as potent as the pulse of my husband’s blood
Warm against my bare breast
His quiet breath leveling out beside me
While her lullaby seduces me again and again
Singing the sweet symphony of promised showers
Heralding from the metal rooftops and the hard ground
Now hills and sky are a broken pattern of grey
Fading
Interspersed with indigo blue
Dominating
And still I swear the grass is a shade greener
The soil darker and richer
If only the facade
And for once
I care not scratch the surface
To find the underlying truth below
Gin Getz 