wilderness

Mid week in early May

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

By lunch the snow has melted. The grass is a shade greener. The high country remains frosted and the air that comes over the Divide from the West has a strong bite.

I take off on a quick walk to burn energy that might otherwise drive the boys nuts.  I’m not good at not doing much and the morning snow and afternoon mud has slowed me down.  The dog joins me, chasing off two separate bands of elk along the way. They are shocked that this little beast would run straight up the mountain towards them as they side hill into the trees.  He is courageous.  I cannot say fearless, for the dark of night and high waters still frighten him, and for good reason. But he is bolder than any other dog I have known.  Only now, after almost two years together, have I learned to understand and appreciate his big, brave heart.  He is a lot of dog. Not physically, for he is only seventy pounds or so, but his spirit, his soul.  Yes, my friends.  Dogs do have soul, and this one has a big one.

By evening I am finally tired enough to sit. I pour a glass of wine and visit with my boys on our deck, soaking in the last of the sun before it drops behind the far side of Pole Mountain.  Warmth on the back of my head as I gaze forward across our yard ripped up from gardening mayhem, across the pasture with the horses grazing upon the moist spring grasses while two cormorants that just arrived back in the ‘hood mill about the undisturbed, across the hills which ebb and flow down to the swollen banks of the Reservoir, high with waters retained from cutbacks, making the drought conditions appear so plentiful.  How far reaching our view from the front deck can be if we take the time to consider the reaches and impact of the expanses before us.

Today I am at peace.  Home is bliss.  And yet it is not because of the beautiful place. I am not so shallow to be impressed by no more than a pretty face. It is because of what we bring here, have done here, do here, build and grow here, give back rather than just take.  It’s a love affair. A swirling, churning, mixed up romance, at times still or drowning and other times exhilarating like wild white waters.  And like that of my marriage and relationship with growing son, becomes deeper, stronger, richer with time.

Going away and returning has taught me it is not the place.  For this place is also tainted with some of the ugliest I have seen in life.  I cannot bury these burdens but learn to rise above.

Sherie wrote, “You found home.  Hope the feeling stays.”

I know it won’t. I’ve learned that much. For you’re right, it is a feeling, and emotions change with the wind. They have no substance nor permanence, but impact us so strongly if we allow them to, and too often, I do.  This feeling too will fluctuate with the seasons and moods and events that shape us far more than the mountain. It’s not our surroundings that ground us, but our heart and soul, and yes, our loved ones.  I’m not above counting on and relying upon those I love to help me learn to live with not only where I am, but who I am.

On the outside, you might say a place like this is easier to find that peace within.  But you’re looking only on the surface.  And peace is not so shallow.  Look deep, stir the waters, and see more than the reflection in muddy waters.  The trials, tribulations and traumas I’ve been challenged with here have been harder and more painful than any I have been tested with in other places.  Ultimately, they helped (or rather, are helping, for it is forever a fluctuating process) me learn to find and make peace within myself, of myself, not because of my environment.

Likewise, with Don’s comment, and others you may see from Al, for example:  They are not as obvious, those natural, wild beauties found within city boundaries, but they are there, and open and free for the few bold enough to seek them out.  I was raised right outside and then within NYC.  I learned more about natural peace, beauty and serenity there than I did after six years in the barren hills of New Mexico. Because it mattered to me and I took the time to look.  Sitting silent along the Hudson piers to watch the sun set cast golden orange on the gentle ripples of the then foul waters.  Climbing to the rooftop to find the greatest silence and find a pocket view of the night sky sharing a secret moment with the full moon.  Like Sherie noticing all those things that so many might not see, the frogs, the sounds, the squirrels… the magic and beauty.  I cannot tell you how many near to here are surrounded with so much and see so little. It is more than the environment.  It is our heart and soul and ability to see and feel.  Or not.  For there is no doubt that wide open spaces can craft closed minds. It is always our challenge to open up, see, feel, taste and touch the world around us.  Dive in!  Or skim the surface.  The choice is ours.  Me, I’d rather dive in, fight the currents from time to time dragging me in a direction I do not wish to go.  And deal with the frigid waters, stirred up mud, and scratching rocks at the bottom  just for the chance to float calm and serene beneath the clouds reflecting on the glassy surface supporting me when the wind is still and water and mind calm for no more than a brief but beautiful repose.

(A friend and reader wrote yesterday to mention how interesting the conversations and writing in the comments can be.  Mine, yours, the prompt and interaction. I don’t know how many readers take a look at these, but I do know more of you still prefer to write me personally and directly – and that’s fine – however – sometimes there is a response I want to share or continue the conversation with, and I’ll take the risk to include it in a post – just to be sure you read it!)

“Call it what you will” Change

/ Gin Getz / 10 Comments

One advantage to beetle kill.  It’s not too hard to find a dead tree to fall  across the high spring waters.  And then I am on the other side.  Where I wanted to be.  As if I wasn’t far enough.  Not for me.

We are playing hooky from work.  I’m tired of fencing and moving the soil from my garden beds by shovel and wheelbarrow from the old place to the new.  The sun seduces and we are lured by the sound of the creek beside which we tread, as sweet as the Pied Piper calling…

We walk and walk surrounded by last year’s bunch grass, leafless trees and the swelling buds of the willows.  We see old tracks of the moose, set when the ground was still soft and damp.  New tracks of elk in the dusty top soil.  Our tracks.  None others.  This matters to me.

Dry and dusty.  Bogs that we have held our breath crossing horseback for fear of punching through and sinking in are already firm.  I don’t remember when they last were muddy.

The high country looks like early June.  Shrinking snow banks and exposed windward slopes. My husband kicks up powdered dirt behind him on his motor bike. Grass crunches underfoot. The creeks are running rather full but clear and we wonder if the high brown waters are finished for the season.  It used to peak in early June.  Then mid May.  This year it seems to me it was the end of April.

But there is no global warming.  Then what do you want to call it?  Call it something.  For something it is.  I don’t know what it is or why or how.  But I see it.  Look around.  Can’t you see the beetle kill, once green hillsides turning brown, the dried up bogs, the high country already melting, springs and little creeks going dry in early May?

Just a fluke year?  Then how come it’s been progressively worse since I arrived on the scene after the driest year on record, the start of the big drought?  I keep track of temperatures and in the last ten years, we’ve not seen much change.  But we are seeing the springs drying up, the aquifers dropping, bogs turning solid and hard. Birds arriving and nesting sooner.  High waters earlier each year.  This is nothing?

It is something.  You are not blind.

It is something.  I don’t know what, but I’m not clinging to the comfort of a closed mind.  I’m not claiming I have the answers or gripping to ones I want to believe in.  It’s not politics or religion.  It’s real and it’s kind of sad.  And maybe it’s a natural cycle.  Who knows?  But how can you be such a fool to believe that all of man’s raping of the land and burning of fuels to power our ever growing needs and greeds in such a short period of time would have no impact?

Only I believe the earth is stronger than you or me.  So though you may have a hundred years of coal left to burn, have at it.  Then fade away.  The earth might actually be better off without us.

An early summer tourist arrives on the mountain for a stay and I hear a generator being run for a microwave oven while we’re getting our power from the sun and burning dead wood that is all around us. Wood that will burn if not in my woodstove then when?  Or will man be God enough to suppress the wildfires and let the old wood rot.  Which up here where it is high and dry is longer than my lifetime.

And perhaps that’s it. We forgot how to look beyond our lifetime.

I want to leave this world a better place for my child, his children, and the generations after them.

There are consequences to every actions.  Cause and effect.

We are not God.  We are not Mother Earth.  We pretend we are one and think we can handle controlling the other, but I can’t say I’m impressed.  Some say we are stewards of the Earth.  I think we’re doing a crappy job.  We take what we want.  Burn, slash, rip and tear.  It’s all about bigger and better, shiny and slick.

I don’t know.  I look around on a day like today, with the only human trace a small path through the woods or drawn across the hillside, and I think it’s pretty darned beautiful out there. And I don’t think you or I could do much better than that.

What do you choose to do?  What do you believe? And then, what do you see?  There before you.  Not just books and papers and scientific studies and biased reports.  But there before. For real.  Open your eyes and look. And here, in a land you tell me love, though often no more than a week a year if you are lucky enough to fit that time into your busy schedule.

If you can’t see it, your eyes are more closed than your heart.

Compromise

/ Gin Getz / 12 Comments

On Monday as I clicked “publish” for my self-absorbed post full of insecurity and self doubt, I read it is my hundredth post at my “new” blog.  Added to 471 posts published on highmountainmuse.com, and 112 on highmountainhorse.blogspot.com.  As one friend says, that’s a lot of words.

I somehow question if there should be more.  Not more words.  But… more… I don’t know what. Answers.  Like, why am I doing this?  Where is this going? What is the point?  And even as I am unable to answer these questions, I continue to… write.

More… what? Purpose, direction, results.  Something concrete.  Something to show for all the time put into it. Something more than a lot of words.

Horse people will get this part.  Cyndee writes:  “I have a tee-shirt that says ‘The Ride is the Reward’. You know, all those hours spent feeding, mucking, doctoring & worrying in exchange for the complete freedom of time in the saddle, time to just ‘be’ – always looking for those few fleeting strides of perfect unity with your horse? There is no financial reward, no ‘atta boys’, it is simply who we are. Maybe you need a tee shirt that says ‘The Write is the Reward’.”

Some days all I see are more unanswerable questions, more desire for expression, improvement, diving deeper and/or soaring to new heights… and no interest in writing less.  More, more, more!  If only that “more” would get me somewhere.  Alas, it is the journey, not the destination.  So I am often told.  So I would like to believe.  And so I will question regularly.

Questions.  Compromise.  Trying to get somewhere but we don’t always know where “there” is.  And perhaps it does not matter.  Yes, it is the journey… I tell myself again.

We start off heading in one direction.  We learn and grow along the way (hopefully) and may find ourselves somewhere far from where we thought we were headed.

There are days I wish I married a farmer instead of a mountain man.  To be grounded, on flat land, in routine.  Though just as affected by the elements.  And just as connected with nature.  But we don’t choose who we fall in love with.  I think it’s one of the few things that is really out of our control.

But a mountain mama I suppose is what I would have been called even before coming here.  Those who knew me then… running a bit wild in the woods with my baby on my back and a couple of dogs beside me; quiet mornings alone with my dairy cow, my head resting on her flank, talking in a soft and soothing voice as my hands are warmed on her generous teats; learning to horse pack at the expense of innocent children who trusted me (hey, we always made it home alive…); out there in the rain with a shovel in hand, the moisture dripping from my face equal parts internal and external elements.

Compromise.  I think of this now.  I think of this often.  We can’t have it all. What matters most?  What are we willing to work for?  What are we willing to leave behind?  For at some point, something has to be left behind.

Here and now. The compromises to be here.  Extremes, so many extremes, from the elements to the tourists to the lack of air.  Shortness of breath as a way of breathing.  Wool hats and down jackets year round.  The endless chore of firewood, bucking, splitting, hauling, burning. Thirty days frost free and leaves on the trees for but four months. Complications with altitude that kills innocent colts unexpectedly.  The inability to fatten a pig or find a way to keep a small herd of cattle or flock of sheep year round.  Parched lips and bloody noses.  Sunburn and wrinkles.  In-laws, oh those few dreaded in-laws, who choose conflict and control, meanness and manipulation as a way of life. And the void of a sense of community, which became more bittersweet a compromise to be without after having spent the winter a part of such a wonderful one.

And what do I have?  Silence.  Solitude. Wilds.  Brilliant sunshine and radiant views.  Endless miles and mountains to wander.  Peace and love for the land like I have never felt before. Connection.  Admiration.  Adoration.  Of mountain, sky, river and air.

Why here, I wonder?  Perchance like falling in love.

Why we are such reflective beasts, when all other creatures are content focusing on a good rest, sex, survival and the next meal.  Ha, you say, we do that too.  Yes, that and more.  So much more. Too much at times.  How complicated our lives are due to thought alone.

So the best I can do on days like this is put down my shovel or my fencing tool, be still, take a deep breath, and look up at the sky with the ever changing clouds more brilliant than a painting could ever capture, cradling me and my wild world, and become lost in the roar of the spring river echoing like a distant orchestra from the cliffs above the mighty Rio, and count my blessings as a flock of blackbirds swirls around me in a joyous cacophony.

Take a break!

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

My dear readers,

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

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

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

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

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

Warmly,
Gin

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

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

Here and now

/ Gin Getz / 9 Comments

The simple act of replacing the calendar, changing the number we write on our personal checks or type on our business memos from 11 to 12. That’s it, nothing more. Except what we make of it. A big deal. A time of reflection.

I’m never one for resolutions, but big on reflections. This year I attempt to reflect less on the past, more on choices, paths, futures. Directions. But I have no crystal ball. Unable to look ahead, uncertain of the here and now, I find myself reluctantly turning back. Reflecting on the past. It’s comfortable, safe, known.

And confusing, because memory distorts the past. I forget sometimes why I left.

The big move. It was going to bring me to a new wild world. Raw land, and an open canvas, a new life unfolding, unfurling, one grain of sand at a time.  I anticipated a deep relationship beginning, blossoming. The slow initiation. Two fresh lovers unsure of one another, eager, reaching, curious, tasting, touching.

We leaped; a net appeared.

The jump itself is exhilarating. Then the dust settles and we look around and try to make sense of where we are.

Here. Now.

I return from a snowshoe where I crossed over others tracks. In hopes of not disturbing the skier’s lines, I found myself post holing on the side hill. I don’t understand the etiquette yet. Every place has a different set of rules.

I’m used to being alone. My tracks. My rules. As selfish as it seems. It is what I was used to. I shared those little lines about the mountain set by my humble snowshoes quite happily with the coyote and bobcat and fox and martin, and grumbled under my breath when the moose chose my path, punching deep holes, long strides, just wide enough for my snowshoes to tip over and suck me in to some great white abyss.

Was it last year I went three months without leaving the mountains, and saw eight people all winter? And I was content.

Careful what you ask for. After years of spending isolated winters or summers with Mother-in-law-from-hell and her entourage, small but damaging as it was, I said I wanted neighbors, good neighbors. Now I have them. I have met more caring, interesting, involved, active neighbors in one month than I met in ten years in Colorado. Mind you, they are closer here. But I’m certain it’s more a matter of attitude, not distance.

And yet, already I see that wonderful as this is, it’s not the life for me. A social life. My hermit ways are only growing stronger, more defined. I hear them now clearly, growling, snarling, sneering and threatening to rebel.

When out of one’s element, by necessity perhaps, we learn to define who and what we are. What matters most. What parts of the past have formed us and do we allow to carry through into our futures?

I am missing my hermit ways. You can adjust, loved ones have assured me, to a social situation. Yes, I can adjust, but do I thrive? Like a wild cat in a zoo? Is captivity the best choice?

It’s no big deal, I tell myself. Then why do I feel distraught? My eyes are burning and wet but refuse to shed a tear. There is nothing wrong and yet nothing feels quite right.

Perhaps when my horses are here, though even then I shall find myself a hobby horsewoman having horses without horse work. Another part of the definition I had formed for myself that was left behind.

And the greatest part of me left behind? The deep wilds. And my part in them. My connection to them. I turned my back and walked away. Severed the cord. And find myself left like a babe learning to breathe.

Perhaps I can learn to breathe here. Deeper, richer, fuller than the thin air of the high mountains.

In the meanwhile, I feel somehow empty. Gasping for breath. That fish out of water.

And find my mind, without the connection with the wilds around me, resembles a blank canvas, an empty page. There is a hollow void.

The choice, then, is how I choose to fill it.

Or leave it sparse, and turn the page.

Solstice Wind

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

And in the dark
The wind rises and twists and heaves
And circles me with a fierce embrace
Somehow lifting me body and soul

A black sky overcast
Void of sparkling depths
Air moist and heavy and balmy
The big trees that stand sentinel
I find finally moving dancing swaying
To a song I hear in the murmur of the wind

The forest comes alive
Here so trimmed and tamed and thinned
Now in the enigmatic depths of darkness
Whispering to be wild
In the deep ferocious bellow of the sky

Still somehow subtle soft contained
A secret promise remains held back
Unable to let down her hair
Throw back her head and howl
The hush of the mountain’s cry
A rumbling I finally feel
Low down and primal

Damn it, would you roar!
Let loose unsuppressed and unrestrained
Even the wind is sugar sweet soothing and polite
I want you to rip and tear
And burn and pulse
And let me sense your surging
Stirring
And I awoke
Looked around
And wondered what the hell I was doing here

Waiting for the darkest hour
As the wind teases
It doesn’t take much to arouse me
Set me off
And I am gone
Covertly covered by the wind

Remains of last season

/ Gin Getz / 5 Comments

The remains of last season
Visible as an odd curiosity
For I have not seen the leaves green here
Somewhat strange to arrive at the start of the dormant season
And wonder how life will transform and blossom

Now we approach darkness
Hesitant like stepping into frigid waters

The darkness does not concern me
I barely discern the difference
Here where day and night ooze and overlap
Lacking strong shadows and clean lines

Oh wild beast
Contained
By civilization
It does not become me
My eyes narrow and pulse quickens
I pace the cage uneasily

You pinned me to the wall
Did you think I would settle in softly
And not lash out?

It is uncomfortable
I shift awkwardly and cannot make eye contact

She stares back intently asking for recognition
Recognition I am unable to give
Only a blank stare in return
Shallow
Touching no more than the surface of the reflective glass before me

For a moment I become the Little Prince
Standing at the center of my little world
Silent and alone I can see forever and forever is not far
I call out and hear my echo
It is a small world
Too small
It is not that I feel large
Only confined

I see last season’s leaves still clinging to a dormant branch
And I see beauty in even that promise of what was
What will be
A certainty I am not yet comfortable with

Instead I curl up like a kitten in the windowsill
Basking in sunshine I only remember

Wild ways

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

If I were a wild river
Cutting at my own roots
Severing the past like grass to a sickle
Slicing cleanly through
Exposing a new path with each
Swipe of blade
Swell of water

Now no more than a
Down low moving
Ceaseless silent forward stream
Oozing seeping weeping sweeping
Close to freezing
The chant of monks in the woods

Warmer seasons bring singing waters
Rushing roaring ripping over rocks
Rejoicing in their wild ways
Scoring the bank with strong voice
Rhythm of pulse and force

I don’t hold back
A tempestuous scream
Dancing naked down the side of hill
Head thrown back and hair unbound
Bellowing like waves in the open sea
Aloft in my mind like memories
The pulse of power and passion
Releases me unruly and raging

Then a silent turn through the woods
Leveling out
A deer through the aspen
Disappearing in a flash
Quiet still silent serene
The pond of reflection
Nothing
For you to see
Only me
A face in the mirror I’m not familiar with
So much older paler tamer
I vaguely recognize her still
A second glance does not reveal
Anything beyond the surface of glass
The surface of the still forest pool

Rain begins with no more than ripple
And then an explosion of storm and swelling
Paint me with vivid strokes and colors
Cochineal crimson and raw umber
Emerald, amethyst, sapphire and tourmaline

Forget your civilized ways
For just a moment
Torn like pages from a book
Left to blow in the wind
Tangle in the untamed grass
And slowly decompose in the shade
Of the Blue Spruce
Whilst the Red Tail shares a lonely laugh above

But time demands
The path of the river revisited
Calm and contained again alas
Prim and proper
Clothed and clean
And see I can make that work too
Same waters
Different path

But this course of the river
Is not what calls me
Inspires me
Drives me
Wild

No more than a whisper

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Wilds whisper yet I long for their roar

In the hollow silence I listen for depth
The eventual splash of a bucket dropped into the well
Does not come

I learn to accept a bubbling brook tucked into the trees
When what I wanted was the bellow of the ocean
Crashing waves and endless horizons
Not before me but within me

Snow falls
Not so much a storm but a gentle covering
White wash
Settling
Erasing the past
A part of my passion and dreams
Colors
The horizon

Standing out alone
She adorns me with tiny jewels
Glistening silver and white
That last no more than an instant on my naked flesh

And then I am left
With nothing

Raven

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Silent are the wings of the raven as he passes
Casting a shadow long against the withered brown grasses at my feet
Laid over in the wind like hair in my eyes
Escaped from beneath the safe and warm confines of a wool cap pulled tight

Under a still grey sky
Laid out above like the inanimate object
I try to reach and reward myself with a soothing touch
Something warm, like flesh, soft and pink
But feel nothing
Only the weightlessness of the air above

Raven on the fence post
Static statue on a barrier to no where
No boundaries to define in the fallow field
Like some random spot out in the open sea
Just a few posts remaining
Semi upright
As time and gravity pull them slower than the eye of a generation might see
Old cedar carved deep with creases like wrinkles on an old man’s brow
Then surprisingly speckled with a shock of brilliant chartreuse moss
Unexpected life where one might suppose no more than death
And a tangle of wire coiled like snakes hiding in the tall brown grass
Prepared to grab the unaware footstep

The world around me as a mirror to my soul
Now tired and tamed and worn by the wind
Dreams and desires whisked away for the season
Seed heads reaching mid thigh
Dancing like drunken old men leaving the bar past midnight
Leaning on one another as they make their way down the twisted cobbled alley

Where does it lead me
As I seek a trail through the woods
No more than a tangle of vines and fallen trees
Leaves from the past scattered like forgotten promises

A stir in the stagnant air
Raven takes flight and the flapping beat
Throb like lungs of a running horse
A deep and guttural pulse as legs pour forth in a frenzied rhythm
Across the wide wild open plains

A breath I can hear and feel and smell
Warm and sticky and so wonderfully sweet
And for but a moment
I am carried through those parting grasses
And my dormant wild ways are awakened
For but a moment
I am unbound
And take flight with that feral black bird