Within.

January 16, 2014 / Gin Getz / 3 Comments

For a moment, I look within. Not too long. It can be scary in there.

Not out side, at the trees, the mountain.

For a change, I don’t look around. My eyes are closed. My heart is open instead.

I’m sitting in a perfect circle of exposed dirt at the base of one of my favorite big old spruce trees just a little ways up the Ute Creek trail in the Weminuche Wilderness. My back is pressed against the rough bark and my snowshoes stick up before me boldly on the ends of my outstretched legs. Gunnar is beside me of course, sitting, on the look out. I’m safe.

Forrest’s Throne, we call this tree. Another one with a name. For the many times we stopped here, stared out over the Rio Grande Reservoir in all her seasons, and he rested at the base enwrapped in the bulk of aged roots.

I am sitting there now, thinking deeply about what Amy shared in response to my last post. Wisdom, insight. More welcome when it comes from a friend, a dear friend of the family as she has become, though none of us have met her yet. Perhaps the words she shared would not have rung so true if I was not battling this concern within my mind already. A confirmation. Drilling it in.

On anger.

Answers come.

Less with mind than with heart.

Anger moves, motivates, and must be left behind.

A hot coal under my seat.

I jump up. Put out the flame. Set back and breathe again.

Balance the flame of passion, of anger, of how to draw the line.

Whatever happens, please don’t let me fizzle out and turn lukewarm.

And don’t let me burn too bright I scorch, burn myself, turn you away.

Seek.

Try.

I will make mistakes.

As I will make love, and may make you mad.

Not intentionally, of course.

It’s just part of living life the fullest way I can.

At times, my heart acts stronger than my mind.

How does one find balance?

Anger.

It opens my eyes, but closes my heart.

My eyes are open.

Now, it is time to leave it behind.

Will you see a gentler me?

I’ll try.

Though as a friend visiting the other day said, there’s something about those Jersey girls.

Can I use my “spunk” (his word, not mine) in positive ways?

Yes, I can.

Just watch what I can do.

Anger.

As a form of passion.

Passion can be our greatest motivator and raison d’être.

Or it can eat us alive.

Let it move me forward. But not leave you behind.

This is the message that came to me, Amy, in my walking meditation:

Get on the right path and watch doors fly open.

How do I get from here to there?

Step on board.

It’s that simple.

Move on.

Forward.

Positive.

Partner with the enemy. (Your wise words, Amy, and those of Nelson Mandela.)

Just write and write well.

Show the intimate side of this situation. That’s what I can do.

Yes, leave the “why” behind. I am not a victim.

Turn towards the “what” and the “how” and the “where” and “when.” Share what I see. Be a part of the solution.

Maybe that’s why I’m here.

Stick with my path, share my gift, and perhaps you can use it, perhaps you will hear, perhaps it will help. And maybe it won’t. But at the end of the day, I’ll sleep better for believing at least I had the guts and grit (and spunk) to try.

To try. To stand for what I believe in.

Without burning bridges.

Anger may be what got me started.

I’ve started. Now I can let it go. Of the anger, not the path, not the movement. Anger will no longer bring me forward, only hold me back. Leave those I care about behind. That’s not what I really want, is it?

Let it go and replace it with… sharing my gift. Writing about the intimate view I have, I see, I touch and smell and taste and feel. I am here for a reason. Anger helped me remain here; anger helped me fight to be here. I swear, if it were not for anger, I would be long gone by now. It gave me strength when I needed it. Now I own it. I am here. And it is time to leave that anger behind and move forward.

I don’t need to fight for it; Maybe I just need to listen to it now.

Let me tell you what I hear.

Listen.

I’ll tell you what I hear. I don’t need to say more.

Where? Where will I go? How will I get there?

Start.

Write.

Share what I see. Share what I feel.

Look deeply, write passionately. Bleed, as Hemmingway said and we writers will do. Bleed, I do like the trees with their sap. Bleed to share the life, the beauty, the reality of the world I live in, we both care for. Passionately.

Our weather comes from southern Cal. The rest of Colorado may be watching the Pacific Northwest and the Great Basin, but here in the southern San Juans, we watch what hits Baja and get excited when they get rain this time of year. That means we’ll get snow.

So, the continued California drought concerns us. We’ve been in what some say is a twenty year drought. Call it what you will.

Every year we hope. Every day we watch the weather and look for another Big One. And as is typical for this region, more often than not, it isn’t there. It isn’t coming. Though don’t get me wrong. It’s hard to complain about blue skies and sun.

Back to my snow shoe. Trying to balance that anger, that passion; working with you, not against you and still shaking things up without turning my back or having you turn your back to me.

I return home after feeling I found the answers only to see the news. Fires on the north side of L.A.

So the positive? The answers? The direction that I long for, I lust for?

I’m still working on it… back to square one… something to do with trust in the Earth, and belief in her eternal beauty.

Call me what you will: angry, passionate, or a Jersey girl. But I do have that.

Belief in eternal beauty of our Earth.

Enduring and endearing.

December 6, 2013December 6, 2013 / Gin Getz / 3 Comments

So it’s Thursday afternoon and we stop working on the new snowplow blade to bring the horse trough into the house by the fire and get water heating on the wood stove.

It’s bath night.

Think of the folks working their tails off to afford a fancy bathroom with a shiny bathtub that’s easy to fill with water that you probably don’t know where it came from anyway, but that tub is quick to fill and simple to drain and it has to be easy because you’ve been working all day at a job you don’t like just to pay for all this and don’t have time to mess around. Long hours, big debt, no time for a bath anyway – just jump in the shower and get to bed because tomorrow you’re back at it.

Or, a hundred buck investment, an old garden hose, and all we have to worry about on this chilly afternoon is heating water.

No, I don’t have a car, a cell phone, TV, a hairdresser, a hairdryer, or fancy clothes. But I got a tub, and my husband has time to fill it.

Now it’s seven below zero and dropping and we’re sweating in the horse trough inside by the woodstove.

I step out with bare feet (and bare butt) dripping onto the snowy deck to let the dog out for one last bark and still I’m warm to the bones from my bath.

Maybe, just maybe, the heyday of consumerism is passé.

Another morning of fifteen below.
(nothing compared to what Forrest is dealing with down there)
He loves it.
And really, so do I.
The cold
brings out the wildness
chills your lungs as you howl as the sliver of moon reflecting on the flat white surface of a snowy pasture.
weeds out the weak
sends them south
and to lower ground
then again, most everyone I know
lives at lower ground.

Cold reminds me
of the fragile threat
of existence
When I can see it
at each exhale
Steaming forth like a dragon’s fiery breathe
or so it seems
a delusion
delicate like hoarfrost
as my eyelashes freeze closed
for just a moment and
I remember to blink
after every mouthful of air
escapes

But for our four leggeds
my beloved horses
out there in the cold

seeking relief of the sheds
the hay
my presence

the promise of more hay
the sun coming over the mountain
and hitting flat across their

solid brown sides
winter is too long
too cold

too harsh and white
and makes them too irritable
with frost on their muzzles

icicles dangling from their manes
and snow gathering on their back.

Three were given.
Three were born into my arms.
(Fragile life upon this hard harsh land
that through too many untimely deaths
I learned
this is no place to be born.)
And two have more than paid for themselves
through their offspring
not to mention their years
of carrying us
caring for us
and letting me care
being there with us
when really maybe
like on days like this
I’m pretty sure
They’d rather be somewhere else

Some days I think
they think
they are the luckiest of horses
with a balance between time to work and time to play
point and purpose, and spoiled rotten
wild and free, and my little ponies.
Other days, like today, I think
they think living in some stall on the outskirts of a city sounds pretty darned nice…
They don’t hate me
though at times I wonder why not
for it is only because of me they are here
And if resentment within them builds
(though I think a horse is beyond such things)
they forgive me fast when they see me
trudging through the snow three times a day
with the wildly barking dog
to feed them.

PS.

Carlos and Indi, please don’t write home now. These guys don’t need to know how nice it is for you in Hawaii!

Today.

September 1, 2013 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Today.

Another week passes, with rain on the laden heads of grasses rich and bursting, waist high and ready to spread their store, and frost out on the flats along the Divide silver sparkling in first morning light, and clouds white and heavy and full of mischief enwrapping the stoic mountains that keep their stone face in spite of the teasing and tickling of the continued rains that drip and cover and pour and wind little ribbons of silver down charred matte black hillsides and let you know really, it will all be ok. Some day.

Some day. Today.

And now the water flows. In the ditch we have so carefully tended. It’s not our water, but we watch it, mesmerized, dancing down the course we have cared for.

A rare occurrence for this time of year. For our ditch. Perhaps it is the rains. Work is disrupted. A bittersweet parting.

Dare I complain about that which I so longed for only months ago as the moss cowering beneath the barren branches of the stripped spruce trees shriveled and dried and the grasses wilted and browned and my spirit became still in the wake of the winds that stirred mighty fires?

Today.

Now what? I ask myself as I stare at my hands held before my tired eyes. Eye lids drooping over a once solid steel grey stance. Do I already have too many years of squinting while working in the strong high sun? Too bad. I’ll take the wrinkles I have earned and hope my husband finds them as enchanting as the wild ride of a life that produced and continues to feed them.

My hands. I see calluses I have worked for. Only to watch fade away for now their work is done. For this season at least. What will the next one bring?

I hate to be done. For where does that leave me, what must I do today? Only that which I seek out and find, not that which is pressing and forced. It’s a matter of choice. And is that not often a bit more than we can bite off and chew?

Unless I knew the answer to the riddle for which I am always stirred to dance.

“What’s next?”

What’s next? Let me tell you as I try to figure it out myself. Make it up as we go along.

We leave camp, leave even our Little Cabin by the Big River. Leave silence, simplicity, hauling water, listening to the river roar brown and milky about the constant rains and the mud slide up river. Leave the outhouse, the bunk beds, the cabin twelve by twenty which we moved, for those who remember when, by snowcat away from that which was to that which will be. We’ll build some day. Soon enough. Bigger. Fancier. With a toilet and a kitchen sink.

As I move back up to main camp and luxuries like solar power and flushing toilets and washing dishes in the sink, I wonder.

Better?

Today.

My dirty little secret

August 3, 2013 / Gin Getz / 7 Comments

Another week worn and older and more work done at the ditch. We do good work. Life as a work of art. Work as our palette. No matter if it’s digging ditch.

Frost already in the morning. Rain so hard you wonder if you’ll ever dry and suddenly fire becomes a treasured gift though I don’t know if I’ll ever look at thunderheads the same way and not see plumes of smoke rising from the raging flames. Our views are tainted. Maybe it’s just me.

Get on with it. Dig. Sweat. Soak through. Cringe when you pause, rest against your shovel and watch another backpacker in the distance not figure out the way across the great Divide. The spine of the sleeping beast. I feel her roar, tilt back my head, and join in her wild howl. Maybe the backpacker wonders what scary beast lurks in this high country besides the usual fear of bears. It’s just me. Some crazy middle aged mountain mama out here digging ditch for a living.

Wild life, changing seasons, strawberries beneath every step on the hill up from the horse pasture. In camp come does, bucks, bull moose, mama grouse, and Gunnar flushes out a few little ones that spook the horses as we lead them to the river for water.

Here’s life’s simple. It’s no secret, really. It’s about hard work, silence, the disturbance of airplanes, simple living, simple food. Everything tastes better when you’re tired.

Dirt work, dirty work. This week Norman packs in two hundred pounds of lumber and we lay down our shovels, pick up our hammers and hand saws for two of our days here in the wilds during which time we reframe the diversion box that was sagging almost as bad as an old barn ready to fall over under the next load of snow.

I’m out there and I want to get further. I fantasize about owning the valley. Maybe the whole mountain. I don’t want to see the bright white or fluorescent colored pin point prick of a backpacker a mile away. I want to be alone. With my boys, my critters, my hard work, the wind, the wilds. A part of the elements. Even the dirt. I’ll take it.

I never thought I needed money. Maybe I finally do. I want enough to buy a valley – both sides – so no one is in my view. And no one is near enough to hear, to roll their eyes as I run around howling like the wild woman I can be.

I don’t think it’s that I’m anti-social. I just like to be alone.

In praise of the chainsaw.

Sixty four. That’s the number of trees across the trail on the lower half mile of the North Fork of the Pine River. Most of those down are beetle killed. Trees dead, dried and snapped in the wind. A few are still green. Their needles now enough to catch the wind in this thinning forest.

Of course if the chainsaw were always allowed, like any motor or wheel, we’d be out of work in the Wilderness. Instead we have horses, shovels, the two person, cross cut saw where it’s all about rhythm. Part passion, exertion, sweat. And part Zen, losing your mind to the back and forth push and pull.

The trail is still open. In theory. No “closed” signs or reports tell you otherwise. Though crossing horseback might bring tears to your eyes and a few rips and tears to your horses’ legs trying to find a way over, around, through.

A part of the Divide system, it’s still not a popular section of trail. In peak season on a normal year, you might get three or four groups passing by on any given day, going up, going down. We know because we see. Our ditch crosses the base of the trail and every once in a while a curious backpacker or lost Forest Service Newbie takes the wrong turn and comes down the ditch instead of the trail. Water only flows down the ditch when “in priority.” Otherwise, the ditch is a dry channel. I guess I can see the possibility of someone mistaking it for one heck of a well used trail.

It’s not a popular section of the Wilderness. Our use numbers are low, elevation high. It’s far away, even to get to the trail head, away from any city, without cell phone service and internet access. This is the real back woods. The high country. Left for the hard core. Left.

Well, I haven’t even mentioned the chainsaw yet and this section was going to be about that.

Here’s the deal. The trees are dead and falling, and trails are being blocked far faster than a dandy group of young and ambitious Forest Service yes-men-and-women can get out there and clear them. The trails are becoming impassable. The point of the Wilderness, for man to come, travel lightly, enjoy the pristine and untrampled, and leave, is being lost. Man – or woman – and the few that do come this far – can barely get in there and get around. The place is a mess. It’s a disgrace in places, and getting worse fast.

So, here’s my proposal. Tell me what you think about this. As chainsaws are about 400% faster than my dear cross cut saw, what if, for say, one week at the beginning of the season, early season, you know, when no one is really out and about up here yet for the year, we let them (or better yet, they let us, if you really want this to be about efficiency, but I know it’s still about more, like rules, regulations, control and bureaucracy…) take in chainsaws for just a few days and clear the trails, open up the access, clean the place up, allow our minimal use to continue and the tradition and dedication that made these trails possible in the first place to carry on in a respectful manner, to land and man, wild and curious.

Now we’re back home. Guests have left early so there is an empty cabin with running hot water. Showers feel especially good when it’s been five days and you’ve been out there really working. So does bed.

Home is still simple. For us now, a one room cabin, still propped up on blocks of firewood until we build something else, a little bigger, down here some day. For now, we have bunk beds. Forrest on the top; Bob and I down below. In the middle of the night a cat forgets we’re back and jumps from the top bunk and lands on my face. I awake to a bloody nose and can’t find a flashlight to find my way to a little water in the jug on the counter to wipe myself clean. Sometimes a little too cozy.

Though earlier I visited the outhouse in the dark of night with the door open to the sound of the river below and a spectacular show of distance lightning in the sky above. Beat that.

Simple pleasures. You think it sounds like fun, but do you really want to be here? For how long? Are you ready to give up your bed, toilet and kitchen sink, medical insurance, job security, regular payments towards your debt which has allowed you a bigger better life? Trade that for bugs and cold and wet and dirt and sore muscles and regular cuts and bruises and a bloody nose at best? Is it not enough to come here one week out of every year and dream about if for fifty others?

You may have more comforts and luxuries and fancy foods and nights on the town and you won’t get me to want to trade places.

I’ll take my dirty life.

Mild retreat

November 3, 2012November 3, 2012 / Gin Getz / 7 Comments

Bring it on

Ready for winter. The wood shed is packed full. Ten cord of beetle killed spruce, split and stacked and ready to burn.

I have confession to make. In the form of a hydraulic wood splitter. Gone for me are the days of wedge and maul. Cheating? At times I think so. Power tools. Machines. Something ten years ago I (foolishly?) would have said I never needed. I may not need it now (at least, I certainly am not going to admit that) but I do like it. Makes the job go faster with much less effort. Hard to complain about that. Though the Mountain Mama in me isn’t always so convinced. The draw towards traditional is bent out of shape by the noise of motors, moving parts, bells and whistles. This still seems a bit wrong to me. But my ditch digging shoulders love it, and the job is done, so what can one really complain about?

The hay shed too is filled. Stacked with small bales piled ten high to get us through the worst of winters. The horses have already bushed out with their longer winter coats. The smallest of them, my little Arabian, Flying Crow, started his early this year. I think by the end of August. Taking no chances. Being “hot” here only lasts so long. And that’s not very long at all. Cold is a far more common state of being. He’s been here long enough to know. By now even memories of his barn and stable in the lower ground are long gone, I’m sure. He’s a true mountain horse now.

Next we’ll fill the pantry and freezers, though I’m guessing we won’t need three hundred pounds of flour this year. Forrest will only be joining us for Christmas break, so the cookie jar will empty at a much slower rate, and freshly baked bread will last us an extra day or so.

Yes, I’m ready, thought nothing but sun and mild temperatures are in the forecast.

Will I complain about that?

I think not… What I will do is lace up my hikers, or saddle up my horse and enjoy…

Take a break!

January 21, 2012 / Gin Getz / 2 Comments

My dear readers,

I am taking a brief break in posting while I’m completing another writing project. But before I sign off for a little hiatus, I believe a brief “thank you” is in order. A thank you to my readers – especially those who have been with me for years, who I now feel I know intimately though many I have never met.

(I always say I write to be read, to express, reach out and share. Not just to get the words out of my head. Though sometimes it feels like the latter.)

My gratitude is sincere though my ability to express it might be a bit lacking.

While I’m off for a while working on my “other” writing project, please continue to keep in touch, through this blog or by writing me directly. I’ll be here. Writing, and reading, and as always, thinkin’ and dreamin’.

For now, I leave you with a list below of a few of my favorite posts written over the years, just in case you have a few minutes to share here with me a while over a good cup of strong coffee.

Warmly,
Gin

The Night the Chicken Blew Away
Moving the Little Cabin by the Big River and a few words about Hillbilly Ingenuity
Untitled (The death of Artemis)
Grains of Sand
Losing the Bull
The Homestead Bear
Grill Chicken
Ditch Diaries
On Truth
Newcomer
Lucky Girl
Return
More on the Fear Factor
Two Poems by Two Special People
About Not Getting Lost

From a New Perspective
Cowgirl Up
Leap!
An Open Letter to My Son
Seduced by Earth and Sky

Confessions of a snowshoer

December 27, 2011 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

(an excerpt from a longer piece that got too long…)

Here’s what my first impression looked like. Deep powder, back county, dark timber. A solitary woodsman with an armful of split wood, a little log cabin, smoke welcomingly wafting from the chimney. Snowshoes left by the simple stool on the front porch, while the wood is carried in, the fire stoked, and the smell of warm stew and drying mittens permeates the air.

Snowshoes. For me, they did then as they do now represent the real deal of living with snow in the back country. Pure and simple. Economical, practical, solid and safe.

OK, it is many years ago. There we are at Thanksgiving. The most beautiful Thanksgiving I believe I ever was a part of. The turkey and pies carefully lifted from the heavy old cook stove crackling in the kitchen corner, upon which a big tub of water was warming for washing the old antique dishes spread out for this bountiful feast, most with chips and nicks from years of use and secrets of stories from many a meal shared in this cozy little cabin. The old heavy wood hand hewed table was laden with home grown goodies, and the room washed in the soft golden glow from a half dozen kerosene lamps carefully tended and chimneys cleaned each day. No electric lights, no music, air so soft and voices kept as low as the lights but laughter still spilling over like wine, staining the tablecloth a jubilant, vibrant red.

The little rough cut wood cabin, casement windows trimmed with wisteria vines then barren of leaves and fragrant purple flowers, trellising up the side and softening the obstruction that the house was to the mountain further still. It somehow fit into the woods, discrete and modest, into the mountain, not stuck on its side or the mountain cut, carved and suited to fit the home.

I still choose to mix my cookie dough with a fork, mash my potatoes with an old hand masher, and wash my hair at night so it’s dry by morning rather than resort to an electric hair drier. In the morning, I fry our eggs on the old cast iron skillet and our coffee percolates in an old steel pot. I’ve survived over thirty years without a TV and I still don’t want a phone. A dishwasher here would be as seemingly as out of place as a microwave oven.

Downsizing, scaling down, simplify, creating the chosen simple life. The pure essence of life. Simple pleasures. An appreciation, commitment and passion for that which matters most. My family, both two and four leggeds. Nature. Wilds. Air and water.

A simple walk in the woods.

In winter, that means snowshoes. A quiet, solitary, snowy walk in the woods.

Rain at night

September 9, 2011 / Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Rain. Its primordial rhythm on the metal roof calls me, lures me seductively like an enigmatic wood nymph out into the ink black night. Akin to the murky depths of the ocean, the moon and stars are shrouded behind this heavy cloak. Darkness is complete. I stand in the doorway and look out as if with closed eyes.

Suddenly a close strike of lightening, the ranch illuminated before me instantly, seemingly unnaturally as if under glaring spot lights of a semi truck and I can see it all for just a second, the dirt drive, the cabins, the grove of aspen trees and old manure spreader we set there as an odd sort of decoration. Then the blackness returns and seems cavernous.

The dog and I step out into the abyss. Now the rain taps on my hard brim hat and I break the blackness with a beam from my flashlight. The drops of cold rain illuminated like a million diamonds falling from the sky. They feel close to ice, close to snow. A soft sign that summer fades as the tired aspen, leaves paling as their annual brilliant grande finale is about to begin.

We follow the flashlight’s beam to the barn and open the gates to allow the mare and foal a warm dry shelter for the night. They are there waiting, bright yellow eyes captured by the flashlight. I return to the cabin and release a contented sigh, kicking off the muddy boots and hanging the damp slicker by the door. They will be dry by morning when I slip into them again.

Dreaming

July 3, 2011 / Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Within a stone’s toss from our Little Cabin is the outhouse, a close and convenient distance from the front door of a cabin without indoor plumbing. On the east side of that outhouse, like a small wooden box perched on the bluff over the river with a view as spectacular as any you could dream up, is a bluebird house. Before we moved back down to this cabin for the season, renting out the house we built and called home once again to a series of grateful tourists, the bluebirds moved in. They were disturbed when that outhouse began receiving regular use, but determined to stay put.

The couple remained, the eggs have hatched, tiny squeaking chirps amuse us as we sit silently on the throne on the other side of the old weathered wood wall, and from our table in the cabin we watch the proud parents busy throughout the day catching bugs to feed their growing brood.

Determination.
The power of a dream.
And the emptiness to be without.

Even before he was born, it never occurred to me Forrest would not receive a full tuition scholarship. I know that sounds crazy. Much of what I do and believe does. But I’ve not only believed it, I’ve worked towards it for the past eighteen years. I saw no reason why it could not be. And took a lot of steps along the way to make it happen. And then so did Forrest. And ultimately, he made it happen. He’s learning to dream, and seeing how dreaming is the first step to creating.

Now I find myself uncertain of my dreams. They are distant and vague. The clear images which have guided me into these often crazy situations throughout my life currently are too murky to steer me clearly. I’ve been beaten down after the past eight years of plans torched in spite of my efforts. I’m not sure if I blame bad luck, bad relations, or bad choices. Probably a combination of all three. And still I have to realize that success or failure, both are mine.
Now I falter. My resolve is weakened. I question myself. It is one thing to be a dreamer, I remind Forrest, but I have and will always strive to be one who works towards and makes my dreams into reality.

A doer, he says, not just a talker.
Yes, I say. But I don’t want to just be empty words. I want to be actions. Living proof.

How do I get myself to dream again when right now it seems my days are consumed putting out fires as they arise? Moving out, moving in, moving far away, guests arriving, horse training, college paperwork, business, ditch work, completing the subdivision… Even the simple things like finding a place to take a shower after a day of hard work. I tackle the list in order of priority. Dreaming is not at the top of the list, and the list is in a cycle of growth. Wind stirs the fire.

The additional energy needed to build, and rebuild, has been minimal. I’m trying to catch up with the fires, jump the line and run free and clear.

But I’m done being burned and consumed. My priorities are no longer this business, my guests (yes, my calling in life of providing a clean and comfortable short term get-away for a bunch of every changing tourist is complete – I can check that one off my list). It’s time to close one book and begin a new one. Scary, exciting, wild and uncertain.

The wind picks up. It’s bringing rain clouds this time. A storm blows in. The embers sizzle and thin trails of smoke wisp up as the rain pours down.

In the midst of the storm over the Rio, I feel my dreams stirring like dormant seeds in a parched land. Soak, expand, and allow the dreams to swell. Something is taking shape.

Return

June 29, 2011 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

We return.

Greeted by the soft light of the amber evening sun, long shadows, the smell of horses and clean air, and the close rush of the Rio, now a foot lower on the bank than it was five days earlier as we were preparing to depart.

Home. Simple and pure. A little one room log cabin, now flanked by a storage shed and a simple deck of scrap wood connecting the two. There, where I stand in the morning sun and wash my dishes in two well worn steel tubs of water heated on the old cook stove.

We settle in, lighting the Coleman lantern and that old stove and feel very happy to be home. Home in all its simplicity. Home for now.

Away from the fancy Four Star hotel and restaurant fare served on real plates with cloth napkins with smiling faces who were used to strangers coming and going when I carried on with a sense of permanence, ever changing but understood by hotel staff.

Here, home, back where I can clear my mind with the sound of the river pulsing through the open door, the thin old panes of glass on closed windows. I stir the pot simmering on the stove, stuff in another chunk of wood, and stare out into the disappearing view. Close by, Gunnar runs in circles in his favorite patch of long, wet grass. His home. For a moment, he is wild, and I let him be.

We step out for our evening ritual of brushing teeth under the stars, a fine necessity when one is without indoor plumbing, and the smell of wood smoke lingers like a heavy incent, frankincense in the church at Christmas when I was a child.

My temple, I think now, as I stare up into the ever expanding array of stars, and the Milky Way sweeps liberally across and down to the south east in a cloud of open promises.

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