Standing Still Beneath Blowing Branches (Lessons Learned from Trees)

May 5, 2015 / Gin Getz / 8 Comments

Standing still beneath blowing branches.

Lessons learned from trees.

These are changing times.

Turmoil around, within. I stand beneath budding branches, the promise of the continual struggle of life, and suddenly it all makes sense, or maybe nothing matters, and everything finds its place. Can I let myself cry, selfishly, foolishly, like an innocent child so wanting comfort in hard times yet not knowing how to ask?

Late spring in the high mountains. I write from home on the edge of the Weminuche Wilderness, high and away in the heart of the Headwaters of the Rio Grande in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. I am flanked by a hundred thousand acres of charred woods and a few hundred thousand acres more of dead standing beetle kill and Aspen fading and falling randomly. A forest full of kindling waiting to ignite. Finding new growth, green needles, sweet sap, life existing, tenaciously holding or ferociously fighting to survive. Life is precious.

In all their simplicity. Trees.

Go through it. Let it out. Tears fall like raindrops. Nourishment to parched lands and thirsty roots. No one to hear them fall but the trees. Allow it. Breathe in, breathe out, standing beside a tree.

These are the wise ones. They carry not a passing fancy but wisdom of the ages. Powerful, deep and rich. They make no loud claims, but hold their ground, tangled in their roots. Powerless to the pretenses of our demands, greed and ignorance. Eternal, I used to think.

Here they have lost ground. We have been hit hard by the changes. A sign of things to come, a premonition, or is this just a warning to heed? Are we too late, and does it matter anyway?

Here our children’s children will never know the old growth through which I used to wander.

Even in their ethereal presence, this graveyard of barren branches, I feel them breathe. I hear them sigh. Down deep if no where else than in their roots, the soil, the earth. That’s where life remains. And life will come again.

Standing on fallen needles and listening to the Wisdom of the trees.

Breathing in, breathing out, seeking the scent of fresh sap and plump needles. I have almost forgotten.

These are the lessons they teach.

Stand with me now, still and silent beneath bare branches of a seemingly lifeless tree. Close your eyes. In the wild spring wind, feel the remaining presence of these great beings. Listen to their wisdom.

This is what we hear:

The earth matters. Give more than you take.

You can’t control the seasons. Learn to let go.

You can’t rush the seasons. Practice patience.

You can’t change the weather. Stand tall in the rain and dance in the wind.

Storms come, storms go, the sun will shine again.

Be still and listen.

Be wordless. (So hard for a writer to do.) That’s where our truths are found. (Write about them later.)

Everything changes.

Seasons come and seasons go.

Leaves fall and blossoms return time and time again.

Life stems where you least expect it.

Last year’s leaves are next year’s fertile soil.

Be willing to shed and grow again.

Be grounded. Grow your roots deep and strong.

We share the same soil. Our roots are connected. We are one.

Stand tall and strong, not hard and rigid.

Be flexible in adverse conditions.

Learn to bend in the wind.

Adapt.

Seeds blow in the wind – new life starts where you least expect.

Be willing to break new ground.

Don’t expect ideal conditions.

Grow where they least expect it.

Know you are never alone. Others will grow beside you, and together, you can create a forest.

Look around at others growing above and below you. Respect differences. We need each other.

Provide shelter to those who need it.

Nurture indiscriminately. Practice non-judgment.

Give what you can, and then give more.

Don’t take it personally, and you can’t change others. All you can do is grow.

Allow the world to come and go around you.

Learn to let go.

Nothing lasts forever.

Progress to date.

July 1, 2014July 1, 2014 / Gin Getz / 15 Comments

This post is all about progress on our home. Sharing the details to date. For those who care, are curious, and/or want to learn. Log Cabin Building 101 and then some. Let me start by telling you this. This is no Little Cabin. We’re doing it all to code. It’s solid, seemingly complicated and overkill at times, but it sure as heck is going to out last us all. And boy-oh-boy are we learning along way. Sometime more than I cared to or thought I needed to know. I still have this thing about simple. Funny thing is, elaborate and grande as it seems to us, it’s still so simple to some people’s standards for a high mountain, year-round full-time home for three.

So, here it is. Custom log home building at it’s funnest. A family affair. A home built by us, for us, with love. Evolving…

In the meanwhile, it’s business as usual in the other cabins as the guest ranch is up and running, we’re camping out in the Little Cabin, and life is good. Simple. Well, sort of. Best not get me started…

Where were we last time I shared an update? The ground was dug out, a level spot excavated, footer set and poured, stem walls formed, in-floor heating coils laid out and slab for the shop smoothed out. Then we set the floor joists… All this just to get started and have a helluva crawl space. Then again, I am looking forward to indoor plumbing once again, so whatever it takes, I guess.

Next, the sub-floor is laid out and oiled.

Then it’s time for the logs. First, we have to get them from our stock pile of those beetle kill trees we harvested from our land across the frozen river over winter. Secret weapons include: Lee’s borrowed crane, Bob’s new CAT, Todd and Barbara (seriously, where did you guys come from, and at just the right moment?), and my magnificent work crew (husband and son).

Thanks, Ellen, for sharing the great perspective on that last shot!

Okay, so once the logs are up, then they get moved by (borrowed) crane to (borrowed) mill.

From there, with help of the crane, these solid “logs” are put in place. Each one is milled two, three or four sided as need be. We’re doing custom, traditional “butt and pass” log construction. Base logs average a whopping 16 inches plus wide. We’ll be warm.

And there you have it. The base logs are set. Walls are defined (of the first floor, at least). Time for movin’ on up!

Really, I swear I do more than take pictures (and feed the crew). No comments about the chicken legs, please.

I can’t thank enough those who have shared so much with us already – their mill, their crane, their crane operating expertise (and great company), their support, encouragement and enthusiasm… but I will try: THANK YOU.

Now, onto raising the walls. This is the fun part. It’s all fun. The best part is simply being here together, working with the best work crew in the world. My husband and son.

Not a bad place to work either.

Oh, and one last note, speaking about growth and progress. Rikki… Then and now…

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.

Down…

January 7, 2014 / Gin Getz / 14 Comments

~

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Most days we’re down by the river. You can’t hear it or see it but it is there. Like blind faith. Or common sense. Dormant under the frozen surface. Silenced by the season.

Underneath, I know she rages. The Mighty Rio. Uncontained by elements and as strong as tide, she flows.

Without concern to her, we are on top, dragging logs, back and forth by snowmobile, snowshoes, culling dead trees, wondering if any will remain. Looks like we might be working here a while.

I thought it would be healing. Maybe eye-opening is healing.
~

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The things we are seeing.

We’re deep in dead wood. Dang it, you can’t even find an undisturbed aspen grove around these parts without a great percentage of death.

But the spruce, the once blue spruce. That is what I see. Red.

I don’t know the numbers. You can look them up yourself. All I know is we’ve been watching the beetles kill mountain after mountain year after year. Like a wave. Starting at the top and spilling down. Then onto the next. And going back to finish off the stragglers.

Please don’t tell me to cheer up. I’ll be just as likely to tell you to wake up. Open up your eyes. Get out here and see for yourself.

It’s quite ruthless. Not what I have seen in other parts. I read we’re not the only ones, but right now, we got it bad. And there’s no end in sight. I just came back from a snowshoe on this side of the river and saw the tell tale signs. Again. It’s making its way down Pole Mountain and hitting the trees behind us. Pin holes, sap and slipping bark. Will they be red by summer?

I’m not hiding the truth or sugar coating this to find the pretty parts. I’m telling it like it is. Don’t read it if you don’t want to know what’s happening in this part of Colorado, here in the Rio Grande National Forest, here where the Weminuche Wilderness borders our land. It’s easy to avoid. There’s not much out there on the subject. I’ll share with you what little I’ve found. Though some of it is nonsense, and the rest, well, you probably don’t want to know.

Remember the year the deer and elk were trapped by the sudden snow? Remember how many of us had broken hearts watching our wildlife starve to death? We started to feed, until finally the Department of Wildlife was tired of being the bad guy telling us it was “natural” as if that would make it all OK and they got in on the action too and tried to help by distributing feed. Sometimes sticking with your heart, doing something rather than nothing, helps. It didn’t save most of the deer. I remember driving to Gunnison that spring and seeing a carcass rotting on every hill, far too many for the coyote and crows to finish off.

But do nothing? Easy to do if you leave. Go home. Don’t see. But if this is your home? You would do something too.

What can I do except share with you what I see?
~

~
Secrets unveiling.

For those daring to dive into the depths, dig in, cut through to the dark blue wood.

Bundle up ‘cause the sun don’t shine down there where we’re working, the sugar snow is deep and loose, and the wind still blows.

There, I’ll show you what I see.

Nature’s foul infanticide. As small as we see they can grow, we see they can be killed by beetles. It only takes a few pinholes.

Mistletoe on most every tree. Odd. I’m not going to turn into a biologist and claim to have the facts but sometimes, many times, I wish I knew more. Why are these parasites thriving as the tree puts out their last sap, and then goes down with its sinking ship shortly after?
~

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Last night two owls were talking back and forth in the tall green trees behind my cabin. What are the chances of those trees being green this time next year?

A chickadee lights above me on a branch of healthy aspen as I’m fiddling with my camera. I talk to it. It chirps back. We discuss what will become of all of this. We agree (I think) we will adapt.

Next tree over is a big old spruce. One of the elder trees. At the base is a pile of loose bark chipped by the woodpecker seeking out the larva already within. Farewell for the old wise ones.
~

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Knowledge. How do we find answers? I would have thought quoting science would give me backing. Instead, it seems, if I mention “climate change” or “global warming” I become political. No thanks.

I grew up in lefty liberal world; my husband in a righteous right wing one. We chose to sit back, watch, and think for ourselves. What a concept. What I see is this. People accept politics as they do religion, with just as much blind faith, but lacking a god or the golden rule.

I’m for thinking, observing, making up my own mind. I’m not going to try to convince you to believe what I believe. Beliefs are personal. You can (and should) make up your own mind, be smart enough to think for yourself, change your mind when you learn and grow (assuming, that is, you do…), and then… keep it to yourself. Those with the loudest voices tend to have the least to say. One more reason to stay up here on the mountain and keep away from town. I never was much of a conversationalist.

So this isn’t about science, data, or personal beliefs. This is about cold hard facts. OK? What I see before me. That’s it. Maybe you see something different. Like a paved street or sidewalk or another concrete building or pretty suburb street with groomed lawns and a shiny new SUV in every driveway. Fine. Whatever.

Me, I see trees. Dead standing. Hillsides of them. Big hillsides. Entire mountains you can find on the map with names like Ute Ridge and Simpson, Pole and Finger Mesa.

Come stand before my kitchen window and look outside with me now.

Tell me what you see. Not what you want to see. Not what you are told to believe.

I don’t care about who or what you believe in. I care about what you see.

~

~
Enough, already, I hear you say
So I’ll save the rest for another day.

The last of the living blue.

December 3, 2013 / Gin Getz / 6 Comments

White washed.

The snow mounts while the temperature drops.

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?

And then there is hope.

Baby Blues.

A line of spruce trees barely taller than the snow is deep behind my cabin.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Diving in… the Ditch Diaries continue

August 25, 2013August 25, 2013 / Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Diving into the Ditch Diaries.

Twenty days in camp and counting.

After a week off, we’re feeling good. Strong, in shape, recovered, ready to hit it hard.

Not bad for a middle aged woman from the Big City, I think.

Some ask me why I don’t volunteer, help the Forest Service crews clear the trails, stop complaining and get out there and get it done. I can’t afford to, for one. Volunteering is a luxury many cannot afford.

And as much as I love working with my old fashioned tools and have utmost respect for the simpler ways, I also love an outlaw.

Besides. They don’t want me. I know. I’ve tried. Maybe you’re either a Yes-Man or a I-Don’t-Think-So kind of person. You know which one I am. My reputation precedes me. We can leave it at that.

Woke this morning to an odd scratching sound and a beeping which reminded us of a back-up warning signal on a dirt mover machine. Not something you’d expect to hear out here. What we found was a porcupine with his head hiding under the log on which we store our saddles. Glad I saw him before the dog or horses did. He’d already done some damage to Bob’s old heavy saddle, chewed on the fenders and back cinch strap.

Always something.

Early morning after putting the horses out to graze. Gunnar and I hike up the North Fork trail. It has been cleared. Traditional methods. I’m impressed, but glad I wasn’t around to witness. Mid season, and I can guess by the number of trees I had counted that need to be removed and were – what was that, sixty four? – that there may have been a good size crew or it took a while.

Yes, it’s sticking to the rules, but is it lower impact on the forest? Or the visitors to the forest?

First time in how many years I could walk without climbing over dead fall. I’m grateful, but skeptical. A usual reaction from me.

A friend tells me she tried to hike up the Ute Creek trail to Black Lake and spent too long finding her way up, over and around to make her destination. Could have sworn there was a Forest Service crew parked there with horses and a group of volunteers for about ten days. What did they do if not clear the trail?

After my indecent proposal of suggesting we take chainsaws into the Wilderness once a year, early season, before the tourists, and properly address the growing problem of dead and falling trees and resulting closed trails, the reactions I received will not surprise you.

Those in the Forest Service were adamant about sticking to the rules, the traditions, at all costs. Everyone else, not so much…

The rules, the traditions… but folks, it’s all changing. Wake up. It always does, only now, more so than ever. Things are happening, fast. Haven’t you seen? The trees are dead or dying. Now they are burning and we all know the risk and know it’s far from over.

This is a growing problem. First the beetle kill. Then the burns. It’s not going to go away any time soon and if we bury our heads in the sand (or under a fallen log like my chubby porcupine), it’s still going to remain. And probably grow.

This is my mountain. This is my forest. These are my trees. These are my trails and my back yard and my home and my business and you know what? I’m going to do something about it. If nothing else, I’m going to grab you by your shoulders, give you a good shake, and make you open your eyes and look.

It’s yours too. What are you going to do? Tell me to hold onto the past and stick to the rules? I’ve never been big on either one.

Open your eyes. Open your mouth. Breathe in the thin air that’s probably going to be a little thinner when all these trees are gone.

Maybe that’s all we can do. But I swear, that’s a helluva lot better than burying your head and pretending it’s all the same today and maybe even tomorrow as it was yesterday and everything is just peachy.

It don’t look so peachy to me.

Gunnar is lying in a big nest that is our double sleeping bag, still warm from a night of tangled flesh, while steam rises from his wet back and his nose is tucked into his fat fox like tail. Bob is getting the fire going, the coffee is done percolating, condensation on the tent roof drips, the moon has set behind the wall of fuchsia sunrise, and the horses are hiding head down in the sea of fog that settled at the base of the mountain where the thick grass grows.

The changes we are witness to. Needle-less trees provide less protection from hail, rain, and I remember when in the years before we allowed ourselves the luxury of a tent, Forrest was at ease tossing out his bedroll under the boughs of a big spruce tree and that was usually enough.

Now the birds of prey fly through and hunt in among the trees.

Grass grows taller when not in the shade.

Raspberry bushes take hold.

There’s no shortage of firewood.

There are some silver linings to these clouds of dying trees.

The first flock of geese flying in formation for this season, heading south.

We step outside the tent to listen.

No motors.

Silence after they pass.

That’s the best part of being out here.

Solace of solitude.

No, I don’t want the chainsaws all the time. Don’t be silly. You should know me better than that. Don’t you remember what I asked for? Just one week, early season, to let my horses ride in safely. I even offered to help.

And what about the noise pollution of small planes that fly low over camp and buzz our horses out in the meadow regularly enough that they no longer lift their heads?

One hundred and forty feet of ditch in a day. Not dug from scratch, but cleaned up. Vegetation removed, upper bank cut to the perfect slope, bottom slipped and shoveled, lower bank raised, compacted, re-seeded.

At the end of the day, you lean on your shovel, look around and think it’s all a work of art. The ditch. The dirt. The slope. The calluses on your hands. The view. The sun going down behind the Pyramid. The horses grazing in the thick wet grass. Hillsides, even with dead red trees. Maybe even when they’re black and burned.

I’ll find beauty. I’m here. I’ll look. Closely. An intimate view, connection, touching, tasting, finding. And in the meanwhile, I’m going to care. About every fallen needle, deer in the distance, slope of the bank, and tiny little transparent green-grey trout fry swimming in the still pristine waters of the North Fork of the Pine River.

And caring sometimes might mean speaking up, stirring the waters, and splattering a little mud. Otherwise, like that porcupine, all you’ve got is a shallow view and a sense of self preservation that probably won’t last too long.

At the end of the day… you sleep pretty well out here.

Enough of a good thing. I’m tired of the rain, wet boots, cold hands, heavy shovels, soggy Levi jeans.

What a strange summer.

Sadness in the air, heavy as the sky cries.

We mourn the loss together.

Something about our team. The three of us. Links in a chain. The secret ingredient to making it all work.

At the end of the day, we balance each other out. With chores, interests, humor, drive… You take this tool, I’ll take that. We’ll get it done, together.

I’m the one to give lectures. They listen. Conversation is killed.

Follow your passion, I tell them, live like no one else. Life is an adventure, live the life you’d be envious of if you knew someone else was living it. Be the person you want to be. Start now.

Dare not only to dream, but to make your dreams come true.

They put up with me. I don’t know if they listen, but at least they don’t interrupt.

Just before lunch another hail storm hits. We’re in the tent, steaming ramen in flimsy paper bowls perched precariously in our laps, looking out the tent flap to a ground turning white. It’s loud on the tent. Oddly enough, it makes you sleepy. Why not indulge? It’s not like you can get much done out there in this, and you know it won’t last too long…

Rodeo.

All hell breaks loose around ten a.m.

Norman’s been on edge this year. Something about his confidence. I need to help him through it. If he’s part of the team, he’s got to work too.

In the meanwhile, he explodes, all fifteen hundred plus pounds of him, bucking, four feet in the air, head down, sacks of rocks flying off, metal racks tossed in the air, and away he goes a half mile across the big wide open meadow on the Divide with the dog and me behind him.

No matter how I tried, this time, I could not keep hold of the rope.

Work season is winding down. Then the fun begins. Hikes and rides and pack trips with nothing more in mind than to be here, appreciate the wilds, make the most of where we are.

I hope to do that every day.

Even while digging ditch.

Wild. Life.

August 14, 2013 / Gin Getz / 3 Comments

Ditch diaries. Year seven, week three.

One very wet week at the ditch.

We ride up as a creek of creamy coffee colored waters rushes down the narrow trail. The horses heads hunker low, manes dripping down long faces like faucets left ajar. My hat collects and pools and dumps as I lean over the side of my horse, turning back to see that the packs are not slipping coming through the steep slope on slick footing and a wet back.

We awake to a dark morning. Rain all night, white noise in the tent, and continuing. Beneath the heavy clouds, a blanket of fog spreads in the valley below camp. Silhouettes of the horses seen from the tent. No more mountains.

Somewhere I hear a duck. Maybe a distant coyote. The small commuter planes stay away from the mountains this morning. Otherwise, nothing but the sound of rain on the tent as I sit with a silent steaming cup of coffee held tight as if in prayer.

Disparity.

I read the word on a piece of newsprint crumbled to start the fire. Old news, I don’t even know what the article was about, but I do remember the word. I write it in my journal so I don’t forget.

Disparity.

The mountain sheds tears.

Wash me in a river of tears… Cleanse me of my past…Dip me in the river of rebirth and let me live again…

Some days you wonder if you’ll ever see the sun shine, and if your boots will ever dry out. Neither will happen today, I’m pretty sure of that.

Before bed I peel off the wet socks. I’m shocked to see brightly painted toe nails laughing back up at me. Bright blue and green, each nail like a little planet earth. I smile to think of my darling niece who spoils me (shouldn’t I be the one spoiling her?) and knows I secretly love those little lady like things, though they’re hard to find and live with under all this mud and muscle and layers of wet clothes.

I can’t keep track of the calories we’re consuming, and still we’re cold, tired and hungry. Sometime in the middle of the night, Gunnar takes over the lower half of the sleeping bag. I tuck in, wrap my legs around my husband’s to make room for the dog, reach down to pat his still wet fur. He is shivering.

The spring runs again and there are puddles in the ditch where we have never seen them before and my rain pants are soaked to my waist before we even start work.

The next morning, a deep frost. Snow on the Rio Grande Pyramid visible when the fog lifts. It is colder, feels like early winter. The first of turning leaves and the last of fading wildflowers, and that’s the end of our luscious little wild strawberries.

Really, I’d like to get over the sadness. It swells sometimes like a crashing wave, catching me unprepared, out of breath, as if I fell asleep at the beach and suddenly high tide moves in and I’m under it. Walking helps. Getting out there. Listening to what you might say is nothing. A woodpecker tapping at a dead tree. The soft trickle of a little spring over moss covered rocks. Snapping branches beneath my feet.

One of these days you’ll disappoint me or maybe I’ll say something to upset you. Human nature. I try to find the good in it. I’d like to think we are evolving and see some signs that give me hope but until I’m sure, I think I’m better off… far away. Out there. Here. Alone.

Maybe with my boys if they can put up with me.

These are wild times.

I wouldn’t want to have missed this. You know how many left, how many stayed away? Afraid to see it. Or maybe it spoiled their view.

It’s real and raw. It’s dead, buried, burning. It is wild. It’s my mountain. And I am so glad to be here with her, on her, enwrapped in her, entwined in her needless arms that still hold power and grace more than I will ever see a human have the ability to embrace.

Sister soldiers standing side by side.

Stick it out. Here, with her. Stand by her. My mountain. This sad stage in her mighty cycle. What if I didn’t lay witness to what she is going through? Leave when the going gets tough and come back when it’s all ok again.

Abandoned in heart and soul.

It will never be the same. Life doesn’t work that way. Don’t fool yourself.

My intimate involvement matters to me, and somehow, I feel, to her. What else can I do, like a mother with a sick child, but be there, by her side, strong and steady while she weeps. Pat her sweaty brow until the fever breaks. I know it will one day.

I was looking forward to being home. It’s what got me through rain, hail, snow, freezing weather, soaked boots, muddy gloves, and shovels that would not let go of the dirt. Dreams of a hot bathtub, fluffy bed, solid walls, dry boots…

Well, we got home, but then all of a sudden, I wondered what the fuss was all about, leaving camp, being here. The hot water heater in the guest cabin we raided wasn’t working well enough to fill a tub, and a family of pack rats moved into our cabin during our absence. When you’re talking a little one room cabin, 12 x 20, there’s not room enough for us all. At four in the morning, we set traps, grabbed our sleeping bags, and went to sleep in a vacant guest cabin. One advantage to our grave business we’re dealing with this year.

We’re back down in the Little Cabin now. The rats are still here, hiding behind the built in pantry. I’ve had better days…

Today, I’m done with the rain. For now, I’ve had enough. How about moderation? What I want does not seem to matter. That’s OK. I know this rain is good… only right now, all I really want to do is go down to the river, lie warm in the sun, and knit. I don’t know how to knit, but today it sounds like a really good thing to do.

I’m at home now with the hawk screeching in the wind and it’s the only music I care to hear. Wilds stirring in the brown waters of the river than washes body and soul of the land and me clear from the worries of yesterday.

A girlfriend travelling in Guatemala shared a photo of a handmade road side sign which translated to this: “It produces an immense sadness to think that nature speaks, while mankind does not listen.”

Listen. The earth speaks in wild whispers. The trees talk. Even the ones that have already died. Maybe they have ghosts. Their stories told in streams of sap now hard and cold on flaking bark. What stories they share of changing times and battles fought and lost and tales of two leggeds with bright eyes that remain blind to the woods around them. Listen. There are stories to hear, beauty to behold, wisdom to absorb, lessons to learn. If we care to listen.

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.

Digging up dirt

July 26, 2013 / Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Ditch Diaries.

Year Seven.

Trip One.

There is nothing like this to clear the air, erase the past, tire the body until the mind finally stops thinking.

Hard work. Good, hard, dirty work, in the purest, simple sense.

Digging ditch.

Packing into the Wilderness by horse. Just the three of us, six horses, and one bold dog to keep us all in line. Shoveling, picking, dragging, slipping, saddling up, hauling, heaving, heavy breathing and plenty of dirt, sweat and soaking from the rain. Sleeping an inch off the ground, getting comfortable with creepy, crawling, flying things, and tossing cleanliness out the window, if we had one.

Lo and behold, there before us as we sit with our tin cups filled with cheap box wine and plates hot on our lap. The Rio Grande Pyramid and Window before us.

We’ve been doing this so long we’ve seen hillsides die and new flowers bloom, drought years and decent water years which means a lot of hours working in the rain, good grass for the horses and slim pickings, early frost and late blooming, grass stalks setting seeds weeks apart from what they did the year before, and waiting for the moon to set just so in middle of that Window.

We look at the ditch in terms of what year we worked on each section. Time told around shovels, slopes, slips and blisters. By the number of ibuprofen popped, packages of hamburger helper consumed, gloves worn through, and horses trained on the job. How about the number of slip handles repaired, leather horse hobbles lost in the grass, corny jokes told in tired delirium and photos taken of that same incredible mountain looming so large before me as she does right now?

We set the tent up in the same old place. Home away from home. The horses put their heads down and proceed to graze before we even unload. They know the deal. The dog digs up an old bone and finds a faded red ball left behind from last year or the year before.

And yet nothing is ever the same.

Of course more trees have died. Now we count the devastation in terms of mountainsides ravaged, add it up by the miles of forest, not the actual trees. You couldn’t count if you wanted to. I don’t want to.

We sit by the fire in the evening with our wet socks off and tired feet drying and hear one fall in the distance. Sounds like a gun shot. Only for those of us working in the woods, far more frightening. We don’t say a word and look down at our toes.

This year the spring has gone dry. The one by which we’ve camped for the past five years. Each year a little less water. This year, not enough to water a horse. We have six here with us. We walk further and let them drink at the river. Norman, the gentle giant, pulls up his stake and walks there alone. He’s usually back by the time we notice him missing. He never goes far.

Empty trails with the only tracks being that of the elk. Eerie. This is peak season. Not that it’s ever too crowded around here, and not that we are here to see people. Really, not at all. But somehow, this time of year, they belong here. Backpackers. Hiking the Divide. A few days. A week. A month. Maybe the whole trail in one long season, Mexico to Canada. Somewhere in the distance. Bright colors and big backs. Part of the landscape. Like afternoon monsoons, early morning dew, and deer slipping in between the timber as we lead our horses out to graze.

Where are the moose this year that have in the past been a regular part of our weekly viewing? Neither home nor here. I worry about these things, too. Has the low snow taken its toll on this species as it has on the Canadian Lynx trapped up there and brought down here, and did we really think they might remain? Those that didn’t high tail it and try to head home, slowly starve. Beautiful creatures with which we’ve played God. Despite the trauma of trapping, transporting and being dumped in an area hit so hard by climate change, we still say we’re doing good. I’ve yet to hear someone say this is good for the animal. I only hope my beloved moose, slow and lumbering through the willows in the snow banks and one of the few brave enough to tough out the winters here with us, will choose to remain, and maybe even thrive.

For the first time we see repulsive brown sacks squirming in the willows, an infestation of fuzzy caterpillars, little white cocoons. Miller moths. We have not seen them here before. Not this high. The willows, already weakened from the ongoing drought, are suffering further still as their branches are stripped to feed the chrysalis.

They don’t belong. Out of place, as grotesque as initials carved into the trees by passing tourists who somehow think this is ok. It’s not graffiti because it’s on a living tree? *

And trash. Tell me this, please. Who would come this far only to leave their garbage here? Some things are better left back home. Perhaps some people, too. And tell me this, too: who the hell packs in Diet Coke to the Wilderness?

I’m having trouble bouncing back, seeing the beauty, finding the good. The fire burned a part of me too. I bet if I went to town (which chances are I won’t for a while) I’d hear others say the same.

It was hard. We all lost something. A part of the forest. A part of us. Something we all deemed sacred. Why we are here. Our connection has been burned. If we feel deeply enough, we feel the loss. We are left somehow lost, lacking, incomplete.

It’s time to heal. Rebuild. We can’t go back but we can move on. Do you know how? I can’t wait for time to heal it all. I need to do something now.

Get me back to work. Stop worrying about litter and trashy folks, forget for a while about finances, fires, future decisions, and blasts from the past still haunting me. For now, just grab a shovel and get to work. For now, nothing else matters except moving dirt.

* Forgive me, as I know of one exception where such a memorial is sincerely a sad but welcome part of this land.

Gin Getz

On the intimate connection between person and place. Sharing words and images of wilds within and around.

weminuche wilderness

Standing Still Beneath Blowing Branches (Lessons Learned from Trees)

Progress to date.

Within.

Down…

The last of the living blue.

Today.

Diving in… the Ditch Diaries continue

Wild. Life.

My dirty little secret

Digging up dirt

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