Rapture of the wild.

November 14, 2015November 14, 2015 / Gin Getz / 3 Comments

Since I was a child, I have spent hours at a time sitting with her, on her, connecting, as intimate as making love though quiet and without fanfare or explosion of emotion. Sinking, entering, merging, becoming. Finding selflessness and oneness. Connection. I have slept upon, wept upon, bled into her, fed her and she feeds me, tended to her, loved her like a child, a mother, a sister, a friend, an old wise woman. When in greatest need of answers, I turn to her. In my hardest times, I leave and commune with her. For me, she alone has the power to heal, connect, give, love, and allow. And teach us to find the wisdom and truth within our selves. It is there. There, here, it’s all the same. Because of the ultimate connection. We are of this earth.

Recently I returned after fifteen days alone by the river, with my dog, allowing the Artemis in me to run wild. In the cold and snow and darkness and solitude, it is easy to find peace and quiet, easier to look within, look around, connect, feel, understand. In undisturbed practice, we have the opportunity to fully open and receive, tune out and tune in, merge and become the teaching. Then the integration…

The lesson now is in bringing this peace and understanding which grew and thrived in solitude and nature with me back into the “real” world. It’s one thing to find peace in retreat. But what good does this do if we cannot bring it back with us, integrate and implement our greater awareness and understanding in our day to day life.

Already I live in and with and of the mountains, and still at times I am disconnected with the powers, wisdom and love of the Earth. Summer does this to me, with the tourists and distractions and noise. Motors and mouths and everything we do seems to be for them, our way of maintaining us, our life here. Like the Buddha, learning to practice, to find peace within reality is enlightenment – for me the challenge is in learning to find peace and connection during the tourist season, when humans are surrounding, around, a part of my otherwise wild life.

Still, after a long hard season with so many people (yes, relatively speaking…though I find I am one who gives so much, and do not establish and honor my own limitations well, a common trait among the female souls), the time alone in nature rejuvenates. Were I a rich and able man concerned primarily with my own enlightenment first and foremost, turning my back on my wife and child and having others feed and care for me, I too perhaps would sit for months until the answers came. Yes, we know he then spent decades after this sharing and teaching, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here. I can’t just go off and sit under a tree for months on end. I’d starve. I’d freeze. My husband and son and all my animals would starve and freeze! But I am not. My path is different. I am a woman. As such, I give, I nurture, I care, and I love. I sense and I feel and I nourish. And as I am these things, the answers and wisdom and understanding come through these things. Through my service of being daughter, sister, mother, wife, midwife.

Buddha tells us we all have the wisdom within, and within us too we have the path to the way if we are willing to walk it, to sit it, to contemplate it. And the way is different for us all. It is work. It is time. It is obtainable by each of us. If we are willing to commit. I am. I waver. I return.

And it is closer every time.

She is my healer. My guru. The teacher I seek when I need guidance and answers most. The community I yearn for, in soil and rocks and trees and fallen leaves, in wind and rain and snow and blazing burning elements found high above treeline in the thin air and intense sunlight. In the hawk flying by in curiosity, and then away, far away, a pin prick, and then nothing but blue sky.

I meditate with softly closed eyes, face towards the low autumn sun, and the light and warmth and radiance enters me, fills me, overflows, and we become one, all of us, everything, everything on this beautiful planet. And yes, everyone.

It is the everyone that is harder for me to connect with and understand and even love than the everything. How interesting then that I should be called to midwifery, to serve my sisters. Indeed we are given the lessons we need to learn. The earth knew. My sisters know. All I can do is trust, and serve, and love.

Stirring.

April 13, 2015 / Gin Getz / 11 Comments

There is an intense clarity found in springtime in the high mountains. It is not beautiful, but real and raw. It hides nothing. Like a truth you cannot escape. An inner stirring as the outer winds churn cold and biting from over the Divide.

It is not a stunning time, but one of stark realities. You are left to face yourself, your world, in all its plainness. Earthen tones and unadorned branches that may snap in the strong gusts if not full and plump with awakening life and the memory of remaining flexible. A time to weed out the weak, prepare for the upcoming unfurling. Last year’s brown grass strewn with grey branches like abandoned dreams. I pick them up as I walk by and stack them in burn piles to clean up when the wind dies down and we’re ready for a quiet evening.

There is no draw here for tourists now. Instead this is the time to drag the pasture and fix fences, repair gates and clean up back roads. It is a time for work, not for fun and pretty and light and laughter and languid appreciation of abundant natural beauty though there is always that too no matter. It is quiet at first tired breath, then exhilarating in its wild rapture with roaring river and winds that blend into their own inseparable harmony.

It is not a time to blatantly behold, but rather discretely observe, for what you are witness to now is her nakedness. Soon she shall dress, slowly, in preparation for what will be.

Some days you’re fooled into believing it’s all over or just begun and then you wake to temperatures in the teens and dig into frozen ground and remember where you are in spite of longing for longer days, warmer rays and shorter shadows. Shade cast from the remaining white high hills obscures hopes of lush and green and leaves and blossoms for some time to come.

It’s quieter around here without the goose. I confess I snuck down to Ute Creek to check on him. Only once. There was a big flock newly arrived of geese, ducks and smaller birds enjoying a warm brown open pool in the otherwise still ice covered expanse. And about a hundred yards away on a stretch of frozen mud, was one solitary goose looking back towards the others. What do you think? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

In the meanwhile, there’s this independent hen… Ever hear of such a thing? In all my years of raising chickens, I never had. But sure enough. We got one here now. One of our free range hens decided she is not in need of flock nor rooster (though he’s quite in need of her and tries often to herd her home). Instead she prefers our porch, picnic table, the wood pile outside our front door. Go figure what’s worth scratching for in there. She’s outside our cabin at any given time of day. Though I’ve never been liberal in giving credit to a chicken’s sensitivities and insight, it’s as if she knows she’s in a bird friendly zone (it is indeed with my very active bird feeder) and a family in need of a feathered friend.

And then.

Yesterday we pass by the lake of open water miles down river below our ranch. Bob drives slowly as I have my head out the window and that wind is cold. I’m looking. Carefully.

No, that’s not him, I say and he drives on.

How do you know, he asks me. I just know.

Stop. Here. No, not that one… but that one there could be… slow down… pull over!

Rikki, I call.

The one with the big head and the low honk flies off to an island a short ways away and fights with another one before landing. Rikki never behaved like that, I note to self, and then I realize this: He is a she!

And there she is, with another female. Swimming this way from the far bank.

Listen, I tell Bob. I can hear her before I see her. I know her voice. My Rikki!

She is calling to me. We holler, back and forth across the cold grey water…

She remains in the water, closer but never too close, talking together all the time, back and forth, as the dog runs along the bank and I wonder which of us Rikki misses more, but I sense that she won’t come clear to us, and she shouldn’t, and she doesn’t. And although I’d love to sit next to her and stare into her warm brown eyes and just chatter as the two of us have done so many times before, her distance feels right. I am happy for her. She has found her place. And it is beautiful.

I am humbled to realize how wild the wilds shall always be, and how domesticated I remain.

I stand to leave in the brown grass along the bank and kick someone’s spent shotgun shells littered along the spring soil.

After words.

May 28, 2014 / Gin Getz / 23 Comments

Yes, lots happening. It’s Spring. You know. Same for so many of you.

Among a lot of other good things, the final editing of The Last of the Living Blue is underway, and we’re now completing the Afterwards. This may be part of it. And even if we cut it, I would like to share this with you now.

I’m down at the building site where the snow from the latest storm just melted and the clay of the cut open earth sticks to my boots like concrete. The foundation is poured. When the ground dries and cement cures, we’ll be back at it. Next with the logs which have sat dormant for the remainder of winter awaiting their fate. Becoming home.

At my feet is a gosling. A fluffy yellow and grey critter that at only a few days old swims across the creeks I jump. He showed up in the middle of the work site when we were setting forms. With a steep cliff down to the river on three sides, and the gravel road and torn up ground on the forth, how did he end up here, on this high harsh bluff above the Rio with no sign of other geese close by? Forrest heads off to explore the ravines and finds no potential parents, siblings or nest.

You don’t want to interfere. You want to let the wilds be wild. But you can’t just turn your back, walk away, knowing what its fate would be. I think that’s why they make babies so cute. You’re going to do all you can to care for them. Against all logic and principles and belief in non-interference. How do you draw the line at compassion? You don’t. So you have a baby goose in your house and find yourself cutting dandelion greens and walking to feed the horses very, very slowly so the little guy can keep up.

A friend tells me it must be a sign. Neither of us know what he might symbolize but you get the feeling it must be something, for some reason, for you can’t help but wonder why here? Why now? After having him in our lives for several days and becoming rather attached to the little stinker, I’d say the message he brings us probably has something to do with patience, love, slowing down and nurturing. He sleeps between Forrest’s feet at meal time and when I don’t feel like walking so slowly, Bob’s got him on his lap when I head out to take care of chores. I swear your blood pressure drops when he chirps sleepily on your lap.

I don’t have time for this, I want to say. Grinding chicken food, picking greens, carrying him about and cleaning up after him. Make time, my friend says. I know. She’s right. So there he is now, tucked into my vest, cheeping softly while I write.

Another May comes, is almost gone. The foundation for our home is laid. Concrete in the earth. A sense of permanence, wanting, needing to belong. These are my roots. Solid, grey, thick footers. Something to hold me down, connect me further with the land. Something to remain long after I am gone, my son and his family, generations thereafter. Long after the scattered seeds of the blue spruce turn into a forest of new growth, and the new some day turns old.

This season has been one of strewn spring snows. The river roars rich and brown and the reservoir is higher than I have ever seen it. It feels healthy. The grass on pasture is already lush enough that the horses hesitate when I call them in for hay. We no longer talk in terms of drought and fire bans and fear of lightning. We think we’re off the hook. It’s over. Long gone. The treed hillsides even look green. Am I seeing things? Sometimes we see what we want to see.

The season begins. Traffic on the road (well, at least a few motors a day), summer homes dusted out, smoke from other chimneys, voices at the trailhead. Even the UPS trucks drives in (and once again, a welcome sight).

I feel lost and need to find myself again. It is hard after a winter of silence and solitude. I try. I want to try harder but then find myself worn thin because I’m so tired of trying and I am left wishing it would all come naturally and it never does.

There is an emptiness and detachment that comes over me as I lose the voice of the trees around this time every year when the air is filled with people things.

I think of the conversation I had with a colleague last week who tells me he finds equal beauty in man and nature, and is fascinated by the precarious balance and blending between the two. A relationship, a dance of life.

Why can’t I see the beauty in this interconnection? Why do I too often see the fault?

Finding balance in this land of extremes.

stellers jay

A walk through the trees to Sweetgrass Meadow and I’m looking for the truth. I’m looking for answers. Is it over?

I stop to rest, sitting on a fallen tree alongside the edge of a small clearing. If you look up to the top of the north facing slope, it’s a hillside of grey and brown blue spruce. Down at the edge of the clearing, many trees are still green.

Here, I am close. In them. With them. Among my beloved blue spruce. I sit silently, look closely.

Behind green needles, I see clear fresh sap dripping from slipping bark like so many tears.

Has it ended? This wrath of beetles that devastated our forest. Has it finished its destruction?

Is the drought over? Is the aquifer refilled? Fire danger a thing of the past? I know the million acres of dead trees won’t return to life, but what about the ones left living? And what about the beetles? After such a mild winter, I wonder.

I want to believe it’s over. The spruce trees around the ranch and at the edge of the opens meadows across river are still green. I have not yet seen a bark beetle. With all this moisture, this beautiful spring, surely everything will be okay, I tell myself.

If I am to have blind faith, I shall find it in the wind and wilds.

sunday morn 2

sunday morn 3

Suddenly Spring.

April 24, 2014April 24, 2014 / Gin Getz / 8 Comments

~
Suddenly it’s spring and you’re busy and no matter that the days are longer, there still aren’t enough hours in every day, or energy in the body to do all you want to, need to, should do…

Tired, a little sore, and somewhat sunburned, and yet it feels good. Just a little longer out there, one more thing, and do you really have to go in just yet? Paper work begins to pile.. Bare hands, wool cap stuffed in the pocket of your unzipped jacket. Only to pull that cap out five minutes later as the next snowstorm blows on through. Yeah, welcome to Colorado. Chapped lips, eyes parched from the wind, mud and snow banks, and geese in potholes on pasture. It’s Spring

Outdoors work is great, but sometimes I need to go beyond, to see and feel her in silence. Out there, alone together. Be a part of this progression of the season.

Walking with the dog for the first time on semi-solid ground out there in a passing storm miles from my house which is miles and miles from any other around here now. And suddenly the roar of what sounds like a jet engine across river. Rotten snow descends the mountain in a violent rush.
I’m glad I’m here, not there.
~

~
A raw wound
You’re left bleeding
by the side of
the road that leads out of town

To a place you’ve never been
and you remember
Anything’s better
than here

an open mouth of
Fish underwater Breathing
through muddy waters Gushing
down brown slopes

Did you think
it would be harder?
Did you know maybe you are

right where you belong

Moon rises later now. I walk the dog with flashlight in blackness as clouds cover even the tiny sparkles up above that usually light our way. With melted snow, even the ground is dark. Finding significance in the insignificance when I look up at the stars. Or is it the release of significance that brings us peace?

A pair of miller moths gently bang against my window as I sit at the table back in by the light. It’s mid April. Funny the things we are seeing.

In the early morning hours, moonlight floods the cabin. In the quiet and still, here on the sofa with the wood stove hissing and crackling behind me and the sky turning a dusty blue, I could sleep. I could close my eyes and let go and listen to the familiar sounds and be comfortable and warm and drift off. I know I should be writing…

Wake up! It’s spring. Plenty to do. Get up, get out, get to work…

The guys are still asleep. Life with family. My life is not just about me. It’s We. My decisions affect us all. And although I may not have the freedoms I once had, I have so much more. I’ll pass on what I had and am grateful for what I have. Yes, and still want so much more. Thank god it’s only “mid life” I’m in.
~

~
Continuing work on The Art of the Portrait. Because there is beauty within every one. Looking through a focused lens helps us filter what may be otherwise blurred by our own tangled minds.

These things are not found in the fast and easy nor with instant gratification. A metaphor for society.
~

~
I leave you with this. The Art of the Selfie?
Go ahead. Laugh. No one should take themselves too seriously. When really, what I’m working on is the Art of the Portrait. Since I don’t have a lot of willing victims around here, I have to run in front of my own camera from time to time. Okay, keep in mind a few things here. First, I’m almost fifty. Second, I don’t wear a stitch of make up or dye my hair. Third, I spend a lot of time outdoors… Yes, yes, I know. Excuses, excuses. But what we’re looking for the light, the composition, the essence if you will. Capturing a mood. Not a pretty face.
Is it self gratification or seeking understanding? A reflection within. A sense of who and where we are in the bigger picture. Only more often than not, we rush it and compromise results and are too quick to move on to what’s next. What is your place? What is mine? Ever changing. How do we define our place of in between? It is our nature to need to know.
At “almost fifty” I am not the wild young woman I once was. I don’t care to go back there. It was fun, I survived, now I’m done. Yet still so far the wise old crone so quick to offer advice or silent in her seemingly eternal wisdom.

Who’s next?
~

Remains.

March 31, 2014 / Gin Getz / 5 Comments

Remains of last season.

Reminders of what could be.

And where I shall remain.

Stirring frozen waters.

March 21, 2014 / Gin Getz / 12 Comments

Stirring frozen waters.

This is dedicated to the angry old man who was so afraid of noise all he could hear was his own shouting for silence. And for the folks so busy tooting their own horn they miss the symphony behind them.

I wrote this article a couple months ago for a magazine I thought would be brave enough to publish it. They were not. Am I? Silly question.

This piece may break some peace, stir some waters, ruffle feathers, raise fur and churn up mud so comfortably settled at the bottom of the still forest pool. My sincere apologies if I offend any individual and I hope to hear your response and opinion if so. You matter to me. My intention is to share my view, and in doing so, open eyes. Maybe even open a few hearts, minds and souls along the way, but that is asking a lot of a little article. It’s long. Take your time. I hope you will enjoy.

So the other day…

We’re at the Rio Grande Reservoir Dam. The westernmost edge of the nearly 110,000 acre West Fork Complex fire that burned deep into the Weminuche Wilderness last summer. It stopped here in part because of the powerful prompts of the powers that be. The District that owns and operates this dam, and depending on how you look at it, owns a lot of the mighty Rio Grande. When the fires erupted in June, the crews were here working on the hundred year restoration of the dam. Water is powerful. Here in Colorado, powerful enough to hasten firefighting efforts, mechanized and otherwise, into the Wilderness and keep the fire from damaging more of the fragile water shed or dam restoration efforts.

In the snow, the charred trees to the south and east look like the pencil hatch marks of a black and white drawing. The hills are somewhat sensual in their stark exposure, now revealing the undulations, curves and crevasses. It’s beautiful in a different sort of way.

I forget about the burn some times. Out of sight, out of mind. Finally. The scars on the land will last a lot longer than ones within me. Left quite an impression on us in early summer as our family remained on the otherwise evacuated mountain while the hills below us burned. And then later after the rains began we’d stare at the gathering thunderheads and wonder. I remember friends in San Fran after the big shake up of ‘89 that would wake in a sweat when they felt a rattle for a long time afterwards.

An hour ago, my husband, Bob, rode his snowmobile here to meet his cousin, Ty, who is coming up from the farm on the valley below to play in the mountains for a couple days. He’s also delivering the Cat tracked skid steer. Bob’s new toy. Yes, you could say, Bob’s Cat. And our big splurge. The secret weapon for building our new log cabin. We’re cutting down all the beetle kill, which I guess means all the trees, on our land along the Rio now while the river is frozen, dragging the timber back across, and stockpiling, all in preparation for building our new little family home this coming summer on the bare bluff above the Rio.

That’s why I’m here now. I need to ride that snowmobile back with Gunnar on my lap, the almost eighty pounds of semi-feral- almost-four-going-on-like-six-months-old German Shepherd dog, while my husband slowly follows in that Cat. Otherwise, I’d manage pretty well to stay away from even this white ribbon that hints of leading to civilization. It’s not that I’m anti-social; it’s just that I like to be alone.

On the way here, Gunnar and I alternate between running and walking along the six and half miles of packed snowmobile track from our home to this spot. Just past Halfway Hill, there’s a dead moose spread across what would in summer be a road. The head, spine, and a few legs are still intact. It’s like a speed bump in the snow. I can see from the tracks that Bob drove the snowmobile right over it. I lift it up and drag it to the side of the road. Gunnar sniffs. He does not care for rancid meat. Not much remains. The spine is already speckled with bird droppings.

Just past the pile of bones, I feel it before I hear it, and hear it before I see it. I’m like Radar. By the time the helicopter comes round the mountain, I’m standing there pointing my big old SLR camera with telephoto lens (no, I do not own a smart phone with built in camera, or any phone for that matter, there’s no cell service around these parts anyway; and yes, I do run with this big beast of a camera around my neck). I recognize the yellow. Same one that came up two weeks ago in a storm looking for the Big Horn but I think when he got this far, they were happy to leave. The pilot flew directly over our house and all he got to see was my horses huddled against the fence and maybe some crazy woman running around in the snow. Wild life indeed.

There’s not a lot of noise around these parts in winter. You learn to recognize motors. We’re at the kitchen table at breakfast and walk outside if we hear an airplane. Funny thing, funny for lack of a better word, is my horses get buzzed a few times every winter. They no longer flinch when the copter flies over head. Let alone run like we watch the moose do from the kitchen window, out there across the deep white pasture trying to seek shelter in the trees. I don’t know if the needle-less timber provides much shelter anymore.

Now, the pilot sees me and does a quick 90-degree maneuver, high tails it over Finger Mesa and out of site. I wonder what he thinks when he sees some woman way out here ready for him before he knows I’m there, with a camera pointed at him? Better that than a shot gun. I’m guessing he’s heard of me. Not a lot of other half-feral women live out here.

I continue on, Gunnar blazing the way, following Bob’s track to the dam. This is where the plowed dirt road that eventually leads to a plowed paved road that after a while leads to a little town ends. And this is where the snowmobile track that leads to our cabin and then into the great white yonder up to the Continental Divide that may seem like the end of the world to some and the big back yard to us begins.

There are people around in summer. An abundance of Texas tourists, ATV riders, fishermen fixed up in Cabela’s finest, hunters in camo and blaze orange with big diesel trucks that they drive even to their office in some flat land town but here actually might get dirty and kick into four wheel. Maybe.

I live for winter. That’s our time. Me, my husband, our four legged and feathered friends. Our son, when he’s not off to university or like this winter, working at the South Pole. (You might say growing up here was in preparation for such a position.) No one has lived here before us, and probably, no one would live here after we move, if we ever do. High and harsh as this mountain is, I’m in no rush to leave. And it’s not summer now. Those tourists are a long ways away right about now.

Only, here they come. One, two, three, four, five, six… a parade of big diesel trucks moving up the mountain and pulling into the little snow packed parking area at the dam. Safety in numbers. Only that’s not why I live here. The wildlife would probably say the same if they could speak, or if we would learn to listen.

It’s not tourists. Not really. It’s the Colorado Division of Wildlife. I wonder what they’re here to chase down, shoot, tranquilize or trap today.

The herd of trucks drive up and stop dead in their tracks. They’ve arrived at what they may think is the end of the world, but for us is just the beginning. I can be sure my presence is not a welcome sight. My support, or lack thereof, is not unknown. It’s kind of fun being a little woman intimidating a bunch of big men.

Turns out to be the moose’s unlucky day. We cringe to hear this. Last time they went for the moose, four were killed in one day. The tranquilizer didn’t work very well. Oops.

One more cow moose was left for dead a mile below our ranch. We watched over a span of several days in sub zero weather as she lay there still in the open snow, and then she was gone. She was one of the lucky ones.

Before that, there was the lynx project which I understand they finally tiptoed away from with their tail between their legs. It’s 1998. Global Warming is getting hot in the headlines. But hey, let’s see what happens if we trap some lynx from up in Canada and bring them over 1500 miles down to the Southern San Juans! There might be a few that remain. Most starved to death, or high tailed it back north where they belong. I hear a few got hit crossing a highway on their way. Several years before they scrapped their attempts, I read the program was called a success based on numbers. That year, they counted more kittens born in the litters than they recorded deaths. I always wondered: how many dead did they count?

Today, they’re here to collar the moose, they say.

Right. So, I’m thinking, the plan is this: they’ll chase down the already taxed moose from the air, sharp shoot and tranquilize it, hope the tranquilizer works this time, strap on a collar, and hope the animal makes it so they can go back to town and watch the wilds from the comfort and convenience of their computer on their desk in their office.

Today, I keep my mouth shut and fire up the snowmobile instead, call the dog who jumps on board and off we go, back up the mountain to the safe haven of our home, wait for my husband to slowly follow in the Cat, and then sit back and watch the helicopter fly back and forth for the rest of the afternoon, right over our house or across our pasture. I know my horses won’t be any more bothered than me. But I worry about the moose. I hope they get the tranquilizer right this time.

Revealing.

March 19, 2014 / Gin Getz / 6 Comments

Another big moon comes

and goes as

the season of life

and death that is

spring unfolds

somewhere, maybe

here, maybe

tomorrow today

as the cat lays in

the grass planted

last fall inside

the kitchen window

and waits.

And I wait impatiently for the horses to begin shedding their shaggy coats just so I can have reason to spend more time with them as they bustle about on dry dirt and vie for the attention of my curry comb and close breath.

A mourning dove shows up early, lured by warmer air only to find no more than small patches of open ground, not ideal for a ground feeder, and the seeds I throw out daily are of no interest.

Down at one of the few open places where the Rio Grande runs clear and black like licorice beneath her otherwise still white ribbon, a pair of Mallards swims from one end of the open place to another and fly off as the dog and I cross river, me on snow shoes, he on broad feet with long fur between his pads that have only rarely touched bare earth in so many months.

Spring approaches the high country like a chrysalis revealing.

After weeks of crunching more numbers that I have since… ever… and straining my eyes where by my reading glasses no longer seem strong enough, I’m done playing architect, done with our house plans. We await the opening of white pasture and the cutting into ground, and in how long, too long, not soon enough, we will be in there living, breathing, walking around,, parking muddy boots by the door, sitting at the kitchen table with burning candles and full plates, watering house plants, baking bread, making love, kicking back in my claw foot tub and writing while the sun comes up in my nook.

So much for the simplicity of a little log cabin. These drawings, ten pages from the bottom of the concrete footer to the top of my writing nook, seem so complex. Does it help or hinder to have plans drawn up by those who have built, not just those who have planned it on paper? I do not know, but I’m ready to put down my pencil and pick up my draw knife. I’m ready to build, to break ground and pour cement and peel and stack logs and with tired muscles and sore hands sit back at the Little Cabin and watch the new one come to life.

New!

January 1, 2014January 3, 2014 / Gin Getz / 10 Comments

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.

~

~

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.

~

~

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.

~
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.

~

~

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.

On this Christmas Eve.

December 24, 2013 / Gin Getz / 12 Comments

On this Christmas Eve.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

Fine tuning point and purpose

December 27, 2012December 27, 2012 / Gin Getz / 13 Comments

when I wake I
remember what
is outside I love
but in my head
is not where
I want to be

You know I never meant for this to be a travel log. Quite the contrary. It was always meant to be about home. Building home, making home, home making. Homesteading. But it’s not, is it? Though I think it was four years ago when High Mountain Muse first began. Seems long ago and far away now. Though the view outside the window looks just about the same as it did back then. Maybe less snow this year. That’s a problem. But I don’t want to discuss that today.

Maybe I’ve lost my way. Maybe I’ve changed direction. But look! Here I go. I’m changing again.

After our adventure last winter battling the Empty Nest syndrome by flying my own coop to Northern Washington, I was pretty sure I was ready to return, settle down, stay a while. But it seems I am not done. I can’t blame the Empty Nest syndrome any more. I should be over that. (Or does one ever really recover?) Maybe it’s just Itchy Feet.

But I think it’s more. It is about life. About passion. About a wild desire to experience life, full and rich. About tasting life, not just reading the recipe. And diving in. Not just touching your toe to cold water and being afraid to dive in.

I’m diving in.

Time to think about packing now. We’re two weeks away from launching. I hope you’ll join me. Sit back, tighten your seatbelts, and enjoy the ride.

But first, I’m here. Now. And that’s still the best place to be. (Especially with our son here with us!)

hold steady the camera
to the mountain
my muse
and breathe in another shot

ingrained

chiseled somewhere in
there where I am
reminded of
the smell
of crumbled aspen leaves
and pine sap
spruce bark
and the odor of the bull elk
who left his bed of melted snow
to silently blend
into pale trees
and wood smoke wafting from
the cookstove chimney
lingering out on pasture
where the horses should be

ingrained

Trying not to write is like morning without coffee. Very incomplete, but without the headaches.

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