~
Forget the fancy fluff that poetry can bring
when all I meant to do
was show you that which lies before me
at my feet uncovered by the melting snow
~
in the silence of the early morning still dark blue
red raven comes and settles upon my mind
~
I remain hidden
behind the looking glass
Talk to me I tell you
and you turn to me and stare
into your own eyes
~
~
Another big one goes down.
Two more logs for a wall.
Finding the bright side does not make the dark go away.
So, you learn to see in the dark. And laugh. We definitely manage to laugh.
It lightens our tendency of taking it all too seriously. Taking ourselves too seriously. Yeah, lighten up.
~
~
From across river looking back at where we work, with the dead knocked down, burned up and dragged out, it begins to look fresh and young and alive. Green. The blue spruce are blue.
We are not fooled. This is Round One of our work. The smaller ones will be next. We see the signs. They already bleed.
At times I’d rather look at the surface and see only the remaining green. Not deeper through the branches at the slipping bark, pin holes, dripping sap, and first of the yellow needles down along the base, but I am here, and I do see.
~
Out of curiosity, I’ve started amassing before and after pictures. Here, before and during. Starvation Gulch. Twelve miles up the mountain. Maybe my favorite place in the world. The first picture, three years ago. The second, last year. What do you think this summer will reveal?
~
~
~
Maybe it will stop. Just like that. Maybe the devastation will end at the boundaries of the Weminuche or the Upper Rio Grande or… wherever the damage has now spread to.
Maybe it won’t continue. Maybe all the trees that still look alive will remain alive.
Maybe I’m wrong, there is no real problem, it’s all just me and my over active imagination and my sense of drama.
Maybe the trees will all survive and beat the beetles, the drought will end, the climate will cool, and we’ll all wake up next week and the hills will be alive with deep, dark timber once again and our children and their children will run through the big beautiful old trees and celebrate… life.
But I don’t think so.
We’re not going backwards.
Even if we don’t go any further. Look at what we lost.
Me, I’ll have a new house. Cheap.
Cleaning up our little pin prick of a piece of land in this big wide wild expanse is all we need to build with. What do we do about the other half million acres around us?
~
~
This affects us all. If you don’t see it, you’re denying it, or you just haven’t been down (or up) to these mountains in southern Colorado where it slaps you in the face.
I hear from readers who have survived the fires. Their scars are deep. They still cry.
I have dead trees. I am awaiting whatever is next. Will life return quicker in an area cleared and cleansed by fire?
~
~
Maybe that’s the big lesson in all this: Learning to believe in, if nothing else, the Great Mystery.
The big picture.
Little things like hundreds of thousands of acres of dying trees help you open your eyes, which in turn, may help you open your heart and mind.
There’s much more to it than my trees. This is just a little window. I guess I’m lucky to have this chance to see.
~
~
One night last week, I tried.
I tried to see the aurora borealis. Rumor had it, and science confirmed: they were going to make a showing this far south into Colorado.
So that night around midnight I bundled up in a fat coat and mittens and chunky boots and wool hat, and headed out with the barking dog. Bob was in town; the nearest human being was probably eighteen miles down a closed road and I’m out there running around looking like the Michelin Man in the middle of the night with my camera and it’s okay to let the dog bark all he wants for a change. Who the hell is gonna hear?
Have at it, I say. And he does.
I’m safe. In fact, I rarely see any wildlife any more, day or night.
I’ve got the wide angle lens on the camera, a tripod already attached, and the settings set for night photography. I’m gonna get me some amazing pictures of the aurora borealis.
But a snowstorm blew in and stayed in and here we are three days later and only this morning did it really blow out. No, I didn’t see the aurora borealis. I could barely see the moon.
Now I see, it wasn’t just me. Even if there were no clouds…. Would there have been no show? Depends on what you were looking for. No, I wouldn’t have seen the northern lights. But what of the light of the moon and stars across the deep winter sugar snow of the southern San Juans and the wonder of the winter sky?
Plenty of magic for me.
~
When was the last time Forrest saw a star? Forget the big events of the northern lights or even a shooting star. Just a star, up there, twinkling.
~
~
So, there we are.
The Great Mystery. The Big Picture.
I want to figure out why, not why me.
I am here. I can not turn my back and close my eyes and tell you it’s all okay and pretend it is natural.
The last count I saw said our loss of trees was over ten times greater than what Mother Nature has ever done in the Lower 48. And that’s before the latest figures, which are remarkably hard to find. Maybe it’s morbid, but I need to know. The death toll in my back yard. Southern Colorado. The Weminuche Wilderness. The high end edge of the Southwest and Four Corners. The beginning of the Rio Grande.
Finally, I’m getting warmer (not just me). Getting some answers. I’m not surprised what I’m finding.
Here’s the secret to bark beetles.
They only get the weak ones.
Weak trees.
Tell me, what does that say about the nearly half a million acres of Wilderness that spreads from my front door?
~
Rather than blame the beetles, let’s start thinking about what’s making these trees so weak.
~
~
I know, I know. I’ve spent too long on this. Let’s move on. Think of my poor husband. How many hours have I spent on the web searching in vain for current facts and figures?
Take a break, he tells me. Let’s go fell a big one. Take out your anger by burning the slash.
~
At least in the burned areas, recovery can begin. The past is gone and there is room for the future to take hold. A clean slate. If it does not wash away.
What will it take for the rest of the forest to recover? Rot is not really an option. We’re high and dry here. This is not a rain forest. This is the edge of the arid southwest.
There’s a log we sit on at camp. Rainy Day Camp, we call this place. At the Forks of the Utes, maybe three hours in by horseback if all goes well. Bob tells us the story of how this log was already dead and down when he and his buddy Doug were camped here on a rainy family pack trip when they were maybe ten. They hacked at that log as boys will do and finally cut it in half. That was forty-five years ago. The log is still very much there, and no, nothing is growing out of it yet.
Things don’t happen that fast here.
~
~
Can you say, “There is nothing we can do,” accept those words and walk away?
~
I walk away from the work site today. A growing pile of timber for my new home. For a moment I look back to the other side. It’s a green hillside. Green as I remember it, only without the big trees.
Before we finish felling the big ones, the next group of browning trees appears.
It’s the bigger picture. We’re trying to make the most of a bad situation.
That’s great, you say, but that’s not enough. Take my trees and build my house and pretend it is all okay and not look beyond my little bit of paradise to the big wide world beyond.
Felling our trees is not the answer, only a small solution to a bigger problem that most aren’t seeing, and those that see, deny or do nothing. I don’t know what to do either, so I fell my trees, plan my house, stomp my feet and raise my voice. What else can I do?
It’s not about my logs on my hill for my house. It’s not even about a half million acres of dying trees, in this part of the state alone. It’s about what caused that.
~
~
Is she beautiful now that she is a mountain of dying trees? Yes, she really is, she always will be. Will she be beautiful after she burns or rots or whatever will be her fate? Yes, I believe she will be. But can we not see beyond her surface beauty to her silent cry as tears flow like dried sap down the last of her old wise ones, and her pained wail is in the dry wind which strips her bare of needles on even her young trees?
Can we not be wise (or is it compassionate?) enough to wonder WHY and realize our answers so far are superficial, the questions deeper, the truth still out of reach, and we should be reaching if we care?
Needless to say, I’m not done. But that’s all for now. Enough food for thought, or what ever you want to call it. I might just call it fuel for the fire.
~
~
~
New life. New dreams. New hope.
A new way of looking at the old.
Start by washing the windows.
Get a clear view of this new day.
OK, so maybe I’ve cleaned cabins for part of my living for far too long.
But I’ll never mind cleaning up the view, especially when the view is as spectacular as it is from these windows.
~
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Farewell to old ways, wishes, holding onto the past, wishing it were all the same, what you had, what you were. Or waiting for someone to hand it to you. Sooner or later you figure out it’s up to you. Maybe you already have.
What are you today?
What will you be tomorrow?
That is what matters to me.
Maybe I’m just a window washer. Today.
(Ah, but I’m getting a clear picture.)
And somehow I think you know. I’m a hell of lot more.
~
~
2013 was an interesting year. What other word can describe it?
A year of shaking up.
Waking up.
Some of it, I am happy to leave behind.
But it’s not behind. It remains ahead. Haunting.
Part of what I had to do this week was look back through photos of the past two years to pick out a few for the new book. I’d catch myself at times laughing out loud at the crazy antics of my boys and me, like donning welding helmets in the front yard to witness the solar eclipse, or porcupine hunting in South Park p.j.’s.
Other times, I’d have to hold back the tears.
Somehow I forgot. Once upon a time, was it last year or the year before, our trees were green.
Then I skimmed through the pictures of June and July. Quick. Don’t look too closely at the plume, the smoke lingering over the reservoir, the flare ups, the charred earth. It really hurts. Still. Time to heal, you may say. How can I when it’s not over? You know that, don’t you?
Maybe I shouldn’t have looked. I didn’t realize I was not yet healed.
I wanted to thank so many of you for being there with us. In spirit, in soul. I kept waiting for this to all be behind and then I would find strength and peace and could stand tall and calm and share my gratitude. Only I’m not there yet, and still I want to thank you all. Thank you. That’s all.
~
~
New.
What do you choose to take with you into this next year; what do you choose to leave behind?
What will you keep? What will you let go of? What will leave or bring? We have choice. Obligation is choice. Where or to whom we were born was not. Some people got to get over that part and get on with life. Their life. The life they choose. Hold onto it if it works for you. If it doesn’t, get over it. Tell me once, and move on. I don’t want to hear it again.
Love it or leave it.
Unless you want to keep it. Then embrace it. Or at least accept it silently.
~
~
So, like I was saying, I’ve been spending a good deal of time over the past few days doing two seemingly unrelated things. Only they’ve come together in a most interesting circle.
First, going through pictures from the past two years for the upcoming book. Second, logging. Clearing dead trees from our land across river, dragging them across the frozen water, and stacking them for use this summer in building our new home.
The green trees in the pictures. The dead trees in my view.
We’re barely making a dent. A few a day and the more we cut, the more we see. Those that look still green have the tell-tale signs of dried dripping sap and slipping bark. Some, the needles are starting to fade to the yellowy hue. Others still look vibrant. We hold hope. Can’t cut them now. Wishful thinking.
I can’t clear my whole view of this death. It will happen. They will burn. What else can their fate be? I’m open to suggestions. Whatever their fate, I will be happy to have them gone, rather than holding onto to memories, dead standing.
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Allow the hills to purge and clear and make way for new life.
What will the new life be, and how will it come about? Below us, it’s burned. Most of us assume that’s the fate of the rest of it. We shall see.
And in the meanwhile, what do we do? Sit and wait?
There has to be more.
I’m reading that up in Alaska where similar devastation hit years ago, the dead trees fell, rotted, and new ones are growing. (Now don’t be an ignorant optimist, and keep in mind that the beetles aren’t gone, so the likelihood of these new trees growing into the big old beautiful ones we remember is… nil.) Rot here? Doubtful. Not in the drought conditions that expand from California to the Four Corners to the Head of the Rio Grande (that’s us). A twenty year drought and counting here. Rot will take a long time at this rate.
Just some things to think about. I do because I’m here. I see. I wonder. I care. Chances are, most folks don’t and won’t. Or they’d rather not. It’s still beautiful. Yes, like staring at loved one in an open casket.
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Look at what we have already destroyed.
Look at what we have already lost.
My children’s children won’t get back a forest of deep, dark rich blue green spruce.
Maybe it doesn’t matter to you.
Maybe your kids don’t care.
I do.
And it matters to me.
~
New years resolution.
Speak up.
For those who need my voice.
Some of you won’t listen.
It’s not always pretty.
But can I get you, if not to think, at least to see?
Maybe my camera is the more powerful tool. Better than my words. Who has time to read?
~
~
See?
These are the trees at the forks of Lost and West Lost Trail Creeks. Notice anything different?
Not so different around these parts, now is it?
Just a bunch of dead trees. A few green ones left. Look closer. You’ll see they are on their way out too.
So what do we do?
Get used to it, I heard some say.
Go ahead.
You sit back and take it.
Learn to live with it.
Embrace the changes!
Blindness. Denial. Acceptance.
That would be the easier path.
If only I could.
This is my home.
My life.
I’m here.
I can’t turn my back on that which is before me. All around me.
I have to try.
Something. I don’t know what.
Telling you is a start.
It’s in my face.
My tears are on this land. Here more than any other place I have tried to live. I live here.
Maybe that doesn’t matter to you.
It does to me.
I cry because I care.
I’m going to at least try.
I don’t know what else I can do.
I don’t know what anyone can do.
But nothing is not the answer.
~
I am sorry your children’s children will not see these mountains as I once did.
~
I wish my tears were part of the cure but I see they do nothing at all.
~
Maybe I should leave the mountain and find the source of this destruction and devastation. Where would I go for answers? The big cities and their consumerism and capitalism where I was raised? The oil fields of western Texas where so many of my friends are from? The Forest Service, Government, politicians… someone from whom I would want an answer but we know they would not provide?
I’m angry. I want to point fingers. I can’t. I want to know why, and then I want to know what is next. I just don’t know. Do you?
So I stay here. Wield my pen as sword though I see it does little good.
And I will share this with you. Whether you want to see it or not.
~
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I looked in the mirror today and saw I was older. The wrinkles, sagging, grey hair. When did this happen, really? I didn’t see it coming.
I’ll take the grey. I don’t like it, but it seems somehow… natural.
My dying trees? Natural? Oh, really? On this scale?
I won’t take. Not sitting, at least.
I’m going to stand.
To fight.
Whom?
How?
I don’t yet know.
But please, at the end of the day, when I sneak a glance in that mirror above the bathroom sink I lean over while brushing my teeth and see that strange woman with leathered skin and paling hair, I want to know what she stands for.
Everyone should stand for something. What is the point and purpose of life… without point and purpose? Find yours, and fight for it if need be. Life is worth fighting for.
Think about this. (I do.) This is death. I can mourn, accept, heal. But I’m afraid there is more to it than these trees. Something killed the trees. Something bigger than a beetle. We can’t see it as clearly as a tiny black bug or a blue stained tree. Think about it. That’s a start.
That odd middle age woman before me that I don’t quite recognize?
She stands for the wilds.
And she’ll fight for it.
Look out.
As my son might tell you, she can fight.
Not much scares her.
Maybe people.
But she’ll learn to get over that.
She has a reason now.
~
~
Reflections.
So I’m looking back and you know what I see. Green trees. Here. Across river. Ute creek. Starvation Gulch. It’s weird. It really hurts. It seems so long ago and far away. It’s not.
When you live with it day in, day out, you see the little things. You share an intimate view. You know your trees, your wood, your forest, your undergrowth. You have sat with your back upon the dripping bark, your butt in the fallen needles, your feet on the dried moss, you remember the smell of fresh sap, green needles, a healthy tree, but that is not what you smell.
No one has seen this before. What’s next? Is this the end or the beginning?
You try to look without emotion, without trust in experts who continue to remain clueless. Just look.
You see the tops of the mountain dead before the bottom. These beetles work their way down. But they don’t stop part way. This winter we’re harvesting the dead trees from the river bottom.
I’m so glad to see them going. We cut them down. Burn the remains of their dried branches. Drag them across the frozen Rio. Being stewards of our own land. Getting rid of this crap. I’m sick of it. Maybe we won’t be left with much green and standing when we’re done. But our land will once again feel fresh, young, not dead or dying.
~
And looking forward. To tomorrow.
I share photos that make me cry because it shows hill after hill of dead standing trees, but the people I show to don’t get it, don’t see it, or don’t want to, and see only how pretty it is. Denial, optimism, call it what you will. What about reality?
It will always be pretty, they say.
But it is dead, I say.
You are seeing what you want to see.
I don’t want to see death.
When do we wake up from this nightmare and see it fresh and green again?
The fire woke some up. They finally got it. Only not really. They saw sadness in the lands that burned and happiness for the lands that survived.
Survived? I ask them. But… they are already dead.
The beetles killed the trees. The fires clean them up. What caused the beetles?
~
~
An open response to Kathleen Moore’s A CALL TO WRITERS.
Dear Ms. Moore,
You already have me.
You have been a mentor in your actions and words. There is nothing I need (or desire) to write about more than the change I see from outside my front door. Even inside, looking out.
For the mountain, I will write.
For the mountain, I will dream.
I dream of green trees. Thick air. Running wild, naked, a doe in heat. Smell the sap as I brush against soft blue branches, bouncing back with life.
I dream about belonging, fitting it, being accepted, being liked.
Instead, I’m here. Hiding out. And my cover is fading as the trees are dying.
In my dreams the trees are still blue.
Those who have walked or been on horse through the dying woods understand. Most don’t. They drive by. Touch the surface. Remain in denial. See what they want to see. Trees. No matter that they are already dead.
Life. Life of this beautiful planet Earth. I was going to say fragile, only I am starting to see, she’s even stronger than me. Let her trees die and she’ll come up with something else. I dunno. Bunch grass. I hear that’s what happened in parts of Alaska. Grasses six feet tall that snuffed out seedling trees that tried. Maybe.
She’ll be fine. Better off without us, no doubt. But we’re so tied up and tangled playing God that I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Yes, she’ll adapt. I see the pika doing the unexpected and moving to lower ground, the moose that are dying elsewhere and were oddly relocated to this unnatural environment of the Southern San Juans doing just fine. At the moment. I see rare wildflowers, Calypso orchids, moving to higher ground, and sharing their beauty with me now in my back yard.
She’ll adapt.
Will we?
~
Of course I know what I must write about. It’s not as easy as I thought. It hurts, you know? Me, the writer. I don’t know how (if) it will affect the reader. If I can’t reach the reader, I have failed. This is the risk I’m willing to take. I’m willing to try. I am no more than a quiet voice for a silent suffering.
The forest does not weep as she dies. She remains silent and stoic and maybe if you listen when the wind is whipping through the branches of the needless trees and you pause in the dappled sun and hold your breath for just a moment, for that is all we can do up this high, maybe you can hear her quiet wail.
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On this Christmas Eve.
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I wake this morning feeling out of sorts. It’s my first Christmas without Forrest. What’s the point of Christmas cookies without him here to eat them? (Bob would rather have pies.) My son never got a house of flashing lights, Santa, singing and Rudolf, but baking, and lots of it, I did for him.
We do our best to raise independence. Give them all we can, everything we can.
Put him down, they said,
Come on, get out, come with us, leave him, get a babysitter… he’ll be fine.
No, I said. Because I wanted to be there for him.
This is what matters most, I said. And it did. So now, what does?
The theory was to help build a solid foundation.
Upon which he would build his rocket and take off.
He’s taken off. How far away can you get? I think the South Pole is good.
Of course I am proud. And couldn’t be more pleased.
This is what we’ve been working for, what we really wanted, but still it hurts, you know? Not pain, so much as a void you don’t know how to fix and fill.
No, not sad, he reminds me (he, the wise one, of course…). Bittersweet, he’ll let me have. But not sad. “We’ve both got so much going on…” and yes, of course, he’s right. Good stuff. It’s not the time to be sad.
~
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Well, heck, then, I say, it’s a day to get high. I’m heading to the high country. Nothing cures my blues like extreme white. Me on my snowshoes, my dog in my track. Breath deep of thin air. This is what heals me. Solitude, silence, wind, hard and harsh elements. The power of powder, intoxication of the elevation. Solace of the season.
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~
No presents this Christmas for Bob and me. We have all we need. Instead, we’re gifting to charities. It gives us as the giver just as much pleasure, and maybe the receiver even more.
Glad to have Justin here to share the celebration, the logging, the lamb, the snowmobiles, the high country. (He might tell you otherwise after riding with Bob today.)
~
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~
The tiredness of the darkest days, lullaby of deep winter, forced dormancy, how incomplete I would be without this tranquil time and muted days. Forever summer is not for me. I didn’t know how much I would miss winter until I left it. Like a lover. Left with a cold side to the bed.
And thanks to Bob, even on the coldest nights we spoon and wrap about each other and I no longer know where my limbs end and his begin and I think somewhere deep inside they really have become connected.
The enjoyment of the long, dark evenings, so much time together inside, finally catching up on reading, baking, writing to friends… thinking. Do you remember when?
Time for bed. For sweet dreams. For they shall be.
And to you all, my friends, I wish happy holidays. May they be dear, sweet and holy to you, whatever your practice, faith, believe or choice.
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Solstice Harvest.
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Bountiful.
Not the word one usually chooses for the darkest day.
Bountiful.
So it is today.
Solace as winter begins.
Feels like we’ve been here for quite some time already, snowed in as we have been since before Thanksgiving.
~
~
in the darkness
we learn to see
with fingers
ears and tongue
dancing
in the cave
awakening
while others sleep warm
in their thick brown fur
feeding off their own fat
~
~
Solstice Harvest.
A contradiction, you may say.
But look! It is!
There is lettuce, grown in abundance, picked fresh for the first time since planting a month or so ago from the big planter beneath the south facing window.
~
~
And then there are the trees. The very same ones I have seen out my kitchen window day in, day out, for years, dying, dead. Our trees. Taken by the beetle. Left to await what? The fires that are the only way we know to clear the waves of destruction this chaos has left behind?
~
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Ah, but my trees shall have a better fate than burning.
You can take your ignorance, innocence and inability to act/react.
I will take my trees.
For now I don’t just see slipping bark and fallen needles, pin holes and dried up drip marks of golden sap.
Now I see timber, frames, walls, boards, beams and vigas.
Now, with each tree fallen and skid across the frozen Rio, I see my cabin.
And really, you know what that means.
Now I see new life.
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Time to break out the champagne and have a toast! (The non-alcohol kind is just fine by me – I’ve a bottle of Welch’s sparkling chilling right now in a snow bank waiting for my sweetie to come home and celebrate with me.)
After years of working on this, working towards this, it’s finally happening. My first book is being published.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Bob, for believing in me.
Forrest, for inspiring me.
The mountain, for letting me.
(and S&D for being 100%!)
For really this is about the mountain as much as it is about me. A love story, if you will, between us two.
And out there today in this big wide white silent open expanse of mountain and me and the barking dog (yeah, I know, so much for that silence…) once again I cried upon her and she did no more than let me and the tears became part of the snow, one more drop to feed my mighty Rio now soft and still encased by the early winter’s generous load.
These are my prayers.
Here is my religion.
Silently she takes me in
her cold embrace and tells me
words
The one thing I have she does not
Words
I write for her
And somehow empowered, knowing I am not never will be alone, no, not here, for here I belong and she allows me to be and I have work to do for her, I tread home on clumsy snowshoes, the same ones I’ve worn for so many years and how many hundreds of miles, solitary but for a dog and the mountain.
And the big moon up early and almost full over Finger Mesa in front of me chimes in a silent refrain, so strong, so strong.
And together this is the song we sing, though I vaguely remember from where I learned it, way back when, upon my knees, weeding in a garden.
Humble yourself unto the Mountain
Gotta lay down low
Humble yourself unto the Mountain
Gotta know what you know
We shall lift each other up
Higher and higher and we
Shall lift each other up…
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And then the roar
a deep guttural sound
rumbling the rocks of the frozen sides of
mountain above the river
slowly emerging
from beneath the snow
that falls in hopes of quieting
Mountain and mind
but neither will be subdued
And so I run
slow in deep snow
wild best unleashed
fiery wrath uncontained
By civilization and obligation
and so what more shall we do than let ourselves
Live
wild and naked and free
in the world we build
each for ourselves
our own heaven or hell
how loud do you beat your drum?
oh so quiet
in this little (cold) white world I live in
Now… give me a cloudy day
a sky full of passion, pain and promise
There is no depth in this dazzling blue
I stop
listen for the voice of the wilds
The trees, the wind, the river
under the early winter’s load of ice and snow
This is story I now must tell
Leaving egos and self importance and pity
Buried beneath the heavy load of ice and snow
Screaming to be heard
and the voices I will whisper
when the moon is dark
and I’m out there on a cloudless night
with no more than the trees
to shelter me
but maybe you’re there too.
~
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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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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White washed.
The snow mounts while the temperature drops.
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The last of the living blue.
A live Blue Spruce. Vibrant blue green.
Have you forgotten the fragrance, the sweet sap, moist needles, the soft pastel color?
Now take a closer look.
Pin holes, running sap, slipping bark and yellow needles.
Another tree is lost.
The mountain across river, and the mountains as far as I can see from our little bit of paradise surrounded by a lot of wilds once were blue green. Now they are red and grey. Oh yes, still beautiful. I will always find beauty in these wilds, no matter what we go through together, how beat and burnt, stripped and stark, old and withered we both may become.
Some days it gets to me. Today was one of those days. Watching the next wave of dying trees lose their needles, lose their life.
Maybe you don’t see it. It’s easy not to see if you remain safe behind a desk, or just stop in the woods from time to time to take a look, and leave. But for those of us who chose to live amongst the trees…
This is my community.
And can I do no more than sit back and watch through beetles and burning?
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And then there is hope.
Baby Blues.
A line of spruce trees barely taller than the snow is deep behind my cabin.
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Forget titles and stereotypes and labels and names your big brother has called you. Instead I ask you this: Have you ever hugged a tree? If you haven’t, try. A really big one that takes three or four of you to wrap around like a Giant Sequoia, or a Ponderosa with a vanilla fragrance when you bury your nose deep in the warm crevices of her bark, or the big old Blue Spruce with pokey needles and sticky sap that stays with you all day, or the soft sensual smooth skin of a Madrone wet in winter.
I used to get attached to trees. Forrest and I would name them. Maps across the ranch and mountain, landmarks. You could plan your route around them, explain where you were, where you were going.
The last we named was Grandfather Tree. He was dying a slow death by beetles. We cut him down. A loud crash on a quiet mountain and the scar of his big stump remains. Now he will be a base log for our new home. A Giving Tree.
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Gunnar and I cross the frozen river and listen to the whisper of the running Rio beneath. My snowshoes stay above deep tracks of a bull moose who broke trail into the woods. A tall, cold grave yard that still gives me comfort even in its empty embrace.
Snow already over my knees and the winter has not yet begun.
It’s not enough, this snow. This won’t change the drought. That’s what they still call it, you know. A twenty year drought. Not a change. Oh, no. Just a drought.
What will happen to this snow, sprinkled with dead dark needles to absorb the sun that now filters through the once dark canopy of tall stripped trees?
What will happen to these trees, these mountains of dead standing fuel no longer with a windbreak? What do you think their fate shall be?
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It’s a package deal. The trees, the river, the rocks, soil, wildflowers and wildlife. The cold white winters and blustery springs, monsoon summers and flamboyant falls. This is the world I live in.
Yes, there are people too. They come, they go, they take what they want and leave no more behind than the winds can blow away and the snows will cover. Or maybe they do more.
It is for them that I write, though I try not to care, I do. It’s a package deal. People are a part of that package.
Because I want them to see what they cannot, do not. So I share with you what I see.
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Look.
I have less of some things
More of others
Learning to let go of
identifying myself with
how many hours each day I toil
And still I must justify myself to you
for no longer
keeping myself too busy to think
Now is the time of
intentionally slowing down
Taking time to see
to smell and taste and touch and feel
And listen.
Yes, now is the time to listen.
Hear the shiver in the wind.
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Of my words, of my self.
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“The Color of the Wild.” What will be the first of many. None but Harold and Hillel and A.J. have read earlier versions. Now there is a new one, because if nothing else this past year, I have learned and grown as a writer. So my words must change.
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Though there has been so much more. Life is neither static nor stagnant.
As my mighty Rio flows, so shall I.
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Let me start by telling you this.
I’m still here.
That wasn’t my intention when I wrote this. I wanted to be gone. I don’t know what happened. Really, nothing. The economy crashed, the real estate market collapsed, our debt grew, and our best wishes of selling and making a million that would be our ticket out of here was held on a string for years and then finally just fell off. Faded away.
At some point, we figured, well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not so bad after all.
We tried. We looked. All over Colorado. Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Northern California. And found nothing. Nothing that compared to this. Nothing as remote, as beautiful, and breathtaking. Every time we piled into the pickup, that same one Bob had when I met him, and drove for days on end looking, skimming through ads, getting directions from brokers that thought we were nuts, hiking out of the way and skirting through fences, off dirt roads and in deep snow, driving through town after little rural town with “Meth Kills” billboards and women not much older than me with thinning hair and missing teeth smiling and waving at us from the front porch of the local bar, the only open business in town. Bob and Forrest in the front seat, since Forrest is now taller than both of us. Me and a dog in the back. Now it’s Gunnar. My bold partner with whom I brave the wilds. Before him, there was old Alan. Alan Shepherd. His head on my lap, my head turned out the back window smeared with his nose prints, looking for something I never found.
And then we’d drive back to our mountain. And when we’d start to get close, you could feel it. The excitement. The thrill. The connection. Damn, it’s beautiful. It takes your breath away every time. It high, harsh, wild and free, and the most beautiful place on this earth. It’s our mountain, our home.
Now the in-law matters are behind us, the trees around us dead from beetles and burning from continued drought. I gelded my stallion but keep riding, training and getting new horses to work with. We’re still digging ditch. Forrest is working for the winter in the South Pole, and Bob and I are here. Happy. I didn’t know I’d say that when I wrote this. And you know me; maybe next year I’ll say something else.
This year brought us closer to the land, strengthened our connection, tested in terrible challenges starting with driest year the mountain has seen. Then there were fires, the big one, which burned a hundred thousand acres of wilds and came within miles of our front door. Then rains, and floods and early snows.
I think what happened was this. You define yourself when you defend your space.
Brothers in arms! Or sisters of the earth. I don’t know. I don’t know if it matters. All I know is I learned I’d fight for our land as I’d fight for my family. And I’m not known to be really easy going.
So, here we are.
Here.
Home.
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Gin Getz 