wildlife

Close to home

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

If a horse could cry.  I can.  And I do.

Tears flow freely; rain does not.

I cannot stop crying and know my tears do not help unless they can turn to rain.  I am not a religious person, but I find myself praying.  For others.  For the mountains. The animals.  The trees.  My beloved trees…

I think of all the wilds, the wildlife, and what happens to them now, what happens next?

Here, we have rain.  Just a bit, though I suppose it is enough.  Or is it just luck?  Lightning strikes aren’t taking hold. The fire to the south of us is relatively contained.  The rest of the state is not as lucky. This time.  Some time, of course, it will be here. It will be us.  Our mountain.  Our wilds and wildlife. We await. This year.  Next.  Three years from now.  Who knows?  The time bomb upon which we balance precariously in hopeful ignorance.

In my dreams there is fire and smoke.

I can no longer appreciate the red of sunset, for fear it is inspired by flame, for knowing it is enhanced by smoke.

My country is burning.  Though not yet close to my home, I think of all the other homes, built and feral, up in flames.  Now we know it is but a matter of time.

Computer data, scientific models, and the Forest Service.  They said the beetle killed trees wouldn’t burn as bad. This summer, we see they do. Dead timber forests are safer than green, they said. But what burns best in my wood stove? Pardon my lack of science here. I wonder what happened to common sense based on observation of the world around us.

I read an article entitled, “Screaming Trees.”  The tears begin again, for I hear their cry.  How few have heard the silent wail?  We wear our blinders, find a green patch, turn our backs to the ravished red hillsides, and think it is all OK.

Until it comes too close to home.

Enwrapped by vibration

/ Gin Getz / 3 Comments

Lightning on the other side of the Divide where the clouds are steel grey.  A blinding bolt in the dark sky. A mirror image remains for a moment even through closed lids. Holding still, I wait and count and listen for the inevitable thunder.  Further away than I would have guessed.

The sound reverberates in a broad booming circle about us, bounding from the hard face of the mountains all around as we stand there in the center, protected in our little fenced yard, holding our spade and hoe. Waiting, awaiting, the certain sound and stirring.

Enwrapped by vibration.

The rain won’t reach us today.  I would like to smell the sweetness on warm soil and have the lettuce seeds and newly transplanted rhubarb and bunching onion softly sprinkled. But I can tell. The heavy clouds will loop around and loosen their load elsewhere, always elsewhere it seems. Except for when it’s here, and then it seems we are in the storm forever, forgetting what before and after sunshine feel like when the cold of mountain hail and rain surround us.

Not quite the banana belt. It was twenty five degrees this morning.  We’re still a month away before morning temps might remain above freezing.  And then, even then, I’d be a fool to count on it.

Quite contrary.

How does your garden grow?

Talk about an uphill battle, but I’m going to do it again this year. I’m going to try.  Lettuce and chard and kale, potatoes, onions and herbs.  Seeds spread out on my kitchen table of what I used to plant for spring crops when I gardened in California, here will grow in summer.  If I’m lucky.

And this year I’m cheating.  My husband brought me home starts from the greenhouse.  Tomatoes, peppers and flowers.  Geraniums in the boldest reds, so many shades, shocking and vibrant and really quite sexy.   Just ask the hummingbird who already found his way through the open sliding glass door to get closer to the brilliant blossoms.  Silly little birds.  Still seem so oddly out of place in the high country, yet manage just fine, even without the sickly amount of sugar so many humans think they “need.”

The chance of rain passes us by.  The dark clouds dissipate, or hide on the other side of the Divide, which is possible, for I would not see them for days if they chose to remain there.  And in the evening as the clear sky darkens for the day, the dog and I walk from the yard back towards home, smoke from the wood stove slowly waving like a happy dog tail as the temperature has already dropped to the mid thirties.

The smell of burning cedar.  Scraps of the posts pulled up, rearranged, fencing removed and replaced, because nothing stays the same, and we always find better ways. Even better places for the garden, now tucked in closer to the cabin, a little more protection from the extreme elements of the mountain.

We stop to listen, just the dog and me. There is a snipe’s flickering mating call to one side of us, and the bellow of geese on the other.  I imagine them there, perhaps no more than a pair, following the black ribbon of the river up to higher grounds until they settle in to the concealing darkness, wait out the night, and celebrate the first of light on the mountain in the morning with broad wings and joyous voices taking flight above the now silver flow of our Mighty Rio Grande.

Morning moose

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Early morning as the sky begins to lighten. I’ve been looking out regularly (and throughout the night) at my son’s mare due to foal today. A young female moose steals my attention now. She is lying in a patch of yet unopened iris out on pasture not far from the gate. The same pasture the moose have claimed for the past two weeks, and probably the same moose I’ve been cussing for grazing heartily on our already too limited pasture.

There, now, she is resting so close to my unconcerned herd. The horses, once so quick to spook and snort at the sight or smell, have become conditioned to their regular presence and mill about at ease. I watch her through the binoculars and the sky brightens and my vision improves. For the first time, I find such beauty in these otherwise awkward animals. She is a soft charcoal grey, I imagine touching her neck, stroking soft and silky, with the wavy hairs along her back like the mane of a horse, and her long nose, almost regal. I see a different side to her this morning, a shared familiarity, as she lies there. The female side. I’ve never seen their beauty, but nor have I shared this intimacy of a peaceful morning rest.

She’s up now, trotting off to meet up with the two young bulls she’s spent the spring with that must be lower down the pasture beyond my view, told by the direction of the horses heads, all turned in unison in that direction. The horses do not turn to watch her rise and leave. My attention returns to the expecting mare.

Beginning with the birds

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

Starting with the birds. 

The sky is alive. A speckled sky, fluttering with activity, motion, wings and song, as the snow continues to fall. Birds everywhere.  Black dots in leafless trees. Brewers blackbirds, nuthatch, starling, common crows, mountain blue birds, stellar jays, finches, juncos and grosbeaks. 

The shrill call of the redwing blackbird lends a staccato refrain to the gentle background melody of the robin.  Such beauty in their simple tune.

The ground moves, and upon second glace, down there with the doves, we see the cowbirds scratching at last year’s seeds, melting out a tiny patch of snow about them, leaving a tell tale circle of dark, wet ground when they fly away all together, all at once, only to settle back down almost where they started from.

During breakfast, while the snow falls in white feathered flakes, the long black bird I can only figure might be a cormorant or ibis (anyone know?) cuts across the view in a perpendicular line along the storm  softened horizon.

And then a raven on the fence post looking down. I follow his gaze to the ground.  Beneath a blue spruce we planted there years ago, now well established, a healthy young tree much taller than me.  There in the wake of the boughs, a ruffled mass of brown and spots.  I slip on my boots to inspect. The injured grouse flies off, the raven trailing, leaving a trace of blood and feathers behind.

At times I wish to intervene with nature. 

And then the weather.

A little bit of everything.  I have felt rain.  Seen our fair share of spring snow.  And then in one sunny day, the ground melts out, dries and promises us a productive spring.  The grass is greening in the moisture. When we can see it, beneath the regular coverings of white.

It’s up for grabs.  And we grab it all. A longing to see everything, feel touch taste smell each softening change of the season, experience the intimacy we have known and shared at a time when the mountain opens, beckons and still no one stays.  A bittersweet acceptance, knowing it will not last.  On one hand, such excitement.  On the other, a combination of fear and grasping for the past.  The latter is the weaker hand.  The past does not draw me like the future does.  Can we work to make a better past? Yet how many try? We can work for a better tomorrow. 

Remember the quote by Hunter S. Thompson:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a ride!’”

Seems not a popular view as I look around lives and towns and a country of safe and easy and holding on tight to memories and positions and safe choices.  But I like it.  I think I want to slide into home base.  Only quietly.  So I can hear the birds along the way.

I begin by listening.  In the darkness of the early morning before I look up and out, and remain safe and warm in my own little world, my home.

Still, even there and then, the robin’s song, the spring song, penetrates.  I am warmer still by their refrain.

Spring mornings are all about birds. A dramatic change from the silence of winter, when the only sound of birds is the slow scratching panic of the jays on frigid mornings as they await their handout, or the slow steady pulsing beat of one of the two ravens that share the cover of our trees all winter long.  Like the sound of air through the lungs of a running horse.

Now the morning cacophony as I step out under the sheltered deck to check on the horses before feeding time. 

These birds. Congregating here and now.  Regrouping perhaps, resting, enjoying their free meal after their long journey north.  Some will continue onward.  We won’t see them again until fall, if fall finds me still here. The rest will dissipate as the tourists congregate.

Many will head for the hills, for the shelter of higher ground and fewer people, dogs and roaring motors.  We will see them up at the ditch.  A fine place to meet again.

And then I will be gone.  And the birds will fare fine on their own.  And I will be out there feeding a new flock, in a new home, in a new land.

And so, about us. 

Though I guess I’ve taken up enough of your time for one sitting.

I’ll save the rest for next time.