writing

The view from outside the circle.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

Sometimes it feels like you’re the only one out there, on the outside, looking in, and you wish you could be in there too.  In the circle. A part of it all. Accepted. Allowed. Included. Embraced.

But maybe that’s not where you belong. And you remind yourself it’s okay. And that you’re not the only one. There’s a lot of us satelliting society. Not quiet fitting in to the norm. Maybe that is the norm.

Remember, stars were born in darkness, creativity sparks in stillness, passion takes root in the void.  Some of us need silence. That’s the only way our souls can sing. Maybe being on the outside isn’t such a bad place after all.

Somewhere out there, beyond the circle. Apart.  In your own unique space. Loving the time, the place, the peace and calm, the beauty and space for the imagination to roam wild. And maybe that’s where the circle extends after all.

Since completing my Long Quiet Ride, several people have shared links to other folks who are doing or have done long rides. Seems like lots of folks out there are doing it. Maybe what I did and am writing about isn’t so special after all, though it sure felt huge at the time. And as I am deep in the throes of writing about it, it is not feeling any smaller.

Still it was a long, quiet ride. Quiet was a prevailing theme. Most of it was not shared. I couldn’t share it. First because I didn’t want to get in trouble for being where I was and going the way I went. Second because I chose to remain present, with my horses, where I was, with the people I was meeting – not distracted by a screen. But most importantly, it was not something to be shared at that time. It was an inner journey as much as an outer one. No, even more so. It was a pilgrimage more than an adventure. Something not meant to be shared until the trip is behind you and has settled into your weary bones and weathered skin and well-earned graying hair.  

It is tempting to compromise one’s trip for recognition and financial support – but that is a different trip.  I was encouraged to make it a TikTok challenge –  and though the idea of being “something” and “someone” tempts us all, truth is, dancing center stage is not my trip and so I bowed out. I think I’m one of those who dances like no one looking because I believe no one is. At least most of the time. Bob looked. And I’m glad he did and still does.

The story I’m writing about and will share with you soon is something I did for me – proving myself to myself. I’m  too old to still be trying to prove myself to others. At least, I should be over that. By now I should have learned to live without acceptance and approval from family, community, society – though I think we’re hard wired to want and even need those things. It’s survival. Fitting in. Being a part, not apart.

Some things we never outgrow.

Some of us never did fit in.

The outlaw, outcast, outliner, drawing outside the lines, living outside the circle.

It’s not what we want, but at some point, we accept who we are, and learn to revel in the freedom it brings.

Those of us outside the circle dance in the stars rather than with the stars.

What if there were no boundaries? Nothing to contain us, define us, confine us? What if it was all open space and we were all in it together?

Opening the circle.

We see the same moon.

We breathe the same air.

I am not separate from you.

I will not turn my back, close my eyes , close my heart.

May I forever be the curious child. Reveling in the sovereignty of days before assumptions, separations, road blocks and blinders closed my circle.

May I always be able to open a conversation, a harmonious song, a melody blending notes, a whole composition, as a holy act. Dare to dream of a life exempt of boundaries and barbed wire, locked gates and closed hearts.

Instead, having the courage to craft an open circle big, broad, wild and free.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Unfurling.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

I’m trying to keep this short and sweet. But lo and behold, you know my tendency leans towards long and deep. And often a little dark.

It’s a section I’m working on from A Long Quiet Ride.

Something I was going through then.

The motivation for that journey. Kinda like the cattle prod or kick in the butt that drove me down the road.

I didn’t really understand this then.

It’s hard to have clarity when we’re fully fixated on just trying to stay afloat.

It takes time, safety and love to look back and figure thing out.

And then… write about them.

Alas today in the still dark morning at the kitchen table by candle light, the pen poured red across the journal page.

A few thoughts emerged from that mess. Bare with me as I untangle the fragile, sticky thread.

I’m at that threshold, facing transformation.

It is the day that breaks me down. One of them. There are a few.

Tomorrow I will mop up the pieces. I get a lot of practice with that part, too.

In the meanwhile, I’m standing there, vulnerable, exposed, naked if you will. Torn open from the soul.

Wondering how many more layers of the onion must I peel. What else can I release? What else will I lose?

I want someone to peel the skin from my snake, crack the shell open and let my chick emerge. But we both know part of the process is painful.

If every day we die, some days more than others, than every day we can be reborn.

Birth isn’t easy. It’s messy, you know.

Transformation can be painful.

Leap, the story goes.

The first step I took toward facing who I was becoming, was almost my last.

Like Alice, I fell, and fell, and fell.

Finally finding myself on solid ground, barefoot I stepped onto the frigid deck in the tenebrous storm.

The only light was something still within me, scarcely flickering.

And then the wind stirred the spark, barely bringing it to flame.

And slowly, something within me raged. Transformation ignited.

Rising, somewhat slow and feeble. Nothing powerful and profound like the Phoenix I would have liked to be.

More like a delicate butterfly recently emerged from the sticky cocoon

Slowly unfurling damp delicate wings

Waiting for first light

To see what the net she wove, her chrysalis, did.

~

The birthing of the Crone.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Let it bleed.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

This old photo popped up online recently. Always liked it. (Thank you, Bob, for taking it probably 18 years ago.) And always loved that horse. Quatro. I used to call him my Marlon Brando. My bad boy. In a good way. He could step out like no one’s business. And flip around faster than a flapjack if I got the pack line under his tail.

He is long gone. It happens. We grow. We age. We die. Our horses even faster than us. Our dogs even faster than horses. We hold them all dear in that box found beside our heart, maybe a part of our heart. A secret place no one knows but you. Mine is full. So full. Too full it feels at times as I cram more pain, more heart ache, more loss and regrets, and always more love, compressed with time and tears and a tinge of bliss.

I imagine mine to be a small metal box, with lock and key, perchance like an old diary I had as a young girl back in the 70s into which I poured out my pre-teen grief. That diary turned out to be no more than cardboard and was easily torn open one day in fifth grade by Paul Procnoun whose desk was right behind mine. I still remember his name. A wanna-be boyfriend. It didn’t charm me. What do we know about love at age ten beyond if you are loved, or loved not enough? This was his way of expressing a crush on me.

I was crushed.

It ripped open a part of me.

Sharing is still hard to do.

I’m sitting here trying to write A Long Quiet Ride. This morning started my third re-write. Is turned out to be harder than I planned (most things are), and taking far longer (most things do).

Sharing.

How do I share what I saw out there? What I did? Who I met? How I felt? Stories of the kindness of strangers. And the blindness. And the often unorthodox way we made our way through.

Stories.

That is all I have to share. And yet it frightens me at times to do so. Like ripping open your head, your heart, the past. It hurts in a place I cannot see but from which I cannot tear myself free.

As Ernest Hemingway may or may not have said: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

I am bleeding.

And for those of you who are writers, you’ll understand this: My darlings are bleeding too.* I am killing them. One by one. They disappear from pages, screaming with a light bright blue highlight on their way out. Vanishing into a sky of white screen.  

So begins re-write number three, in a pool of blue blood as mine pours forth forever fiery red.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

* Thank you, Marc, for the reminder…

A teaser.

/ Gin Getz / 1 Comment

I guess this is called a teaser. From “A Long Quiet Ride”… words in the works.

I lay in bed, sheets warm and worn, pacified by gentle wind from open bedroom windows. I’m listening to the song of the river and my husband’s gentle breath. He lays beside me, still asleep, limbs still intertwined, back to belly, belly to back. My nose in his neck taking in his familiar scent of sawdust and hay. The lullaby of crickets and tree frogs slowly fades into the chatter of early awakening birds, wrens and robins, phoebes and flickers, as the sky begins to take on color with fomenting light, and the honey fragrance of flowering madrone find its way in moving air through yawning windows.

Here I am. Sleepless beside my sleeping man. Listening to white noise drifting up through morning’s breath. Serenaded by the ever background murmur of flowing water over anchored rocks, reverberating with the promise of perpetuity.


Somewhere already out there, my thoughts ramble though my body remains still, savoring the familiar. This bed. The wind. The warmth. The fragrance. The old dog, the young dog, both in their beds on each side of ours. Even the view of familiar curves like broad, ample hips as are the hills peering between waving oak leaves out the open window. I hold a little tighter to Bob and he lets out a dreamy sigh.

Ah, the carrot that lures the horse back to the barn. And the rider.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

January leaves.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

With a wooden palette strapped onto the forks of the tractor, Bob makes a platform upon which to stand for washing the high windows overlooking the river. Hillbilly ingenuity. Not OSHA approved. Tends to be how we do things. And we get them done. I think of all the years we ran the guest ranch business and weekly window washing of these huge picture windows on the south sides of several rental cabins was part of the Saturday morning workout. On second thought, I’d rather not think about that.

Now the windows sparkle and the river course shines luminous, unencumbered. A heron perched in a lofty ponderosa just up and to the right of Bob’s head as we linger at the breakfast table catches my eye. We’re not in a rush to get back out there. It’s cold. Takes a while for subtle winter sun to do its thing. The heron, we notice, is waiting too. He’s up there preening as the sun clears the mountain to the east. Even as I open and close the window between us to take his picture, he’s going no where in a hurry.

Later I sit at my writing table, and with newly clean windows front and center, the view is distracting. Long shadows seemingly dancing through fir trees across frosty ground on the shady path. The radiance of the river. The intrigue of gnarled branches and swollen tips on ancient oaks. Birds. Don’t get me started on them.

Keep your head down, I tell myself, and get back to work. We’re getting there. Writing is slow. Hard some days. Some days I just wish it were done. Not unlike the journey I’m writing about. Well, not quite that challenging. Though it is somewhat amusing that writing about an adventure takes longer than taking the adventure. What’s with that?

It could be easy. There’s an easier way. There’s this tab I could click on my computer screen. It says, “help me write button.” Really. What’s with that? I’m not going to find out what it does, how it works, but even seeing it freaks me out. As in, is this the future of writing? Is this the future of creating? Of art? I don’t like it. I’m not going there. It took me until two and half years ago before I even got a phone. I’m still cursing it, but it’s a mighty powerful tool. Will I one day say the same of AI?

Yet I can’t help but cringe. Can computers be programmed to create? To feel? What about imagination? Art is an expression of the human experience. It is emotive. Are we programming computers to try to do this for us? To express passion and pain, grief and joy, fear and comfort, loneliness and belonging? All of these are shared through art. Can we resort to machines for conveying these universal emotions, this part of the human experience, or the experience we once called human? The uniqueness and best of life lies in our capacity to feel. Feelings are the delicate threads that hold humanity together. They are tested severely right now in real life. Hope lies in allowing our hearts to sense these threads that hold us, weave us all together. Art in all its shapes and forms helps us convey those threads. Seems to me, what we need is more depth and clarity to the real deal, not a quick cop out. We need to both feel deeply and see the humanity in everyone. That is where beauty lies, even in diversity and differences. Or maybe even because of those things.

This is the creative process. Creativity, expressed through writing, painting, music, dance, any of the arts, draws humanity together with these fine threads consciously woven of mystery, wonder and awe. This is a universal truth.

What happens if we take these cords away? Is that where discord arises? Can computers feel? Can they be compassionate? At what point will we draw the line of progress?

I wonder how far from the consciousness of emotions will we wander, and what the threat to their expressions entail. How far we may go? How far from creating, from feeling, from compassion, from the human experience? When will know the limits, know when we are going too far?

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

On rain and writing.

/ Gin Getz / 7 Comments

If the two were together, black ink would be smeared across the page, some Rorschach picture divulging my secret psyche. Not, of course, to determine what the image reveals, but rather what I choose to see.

Alas, they remain apart.

And this is what I see.

Out there, outside fragile weather worn glass separating me from the elements and allowing continual comfort from the wood stove as long as I remember to stoke it, rain continues.

Everything is drenched – beyond saturation – running off in drips, smears, pools and rivulets. Streams pour around fence posts and tree stumps; puddles amass in deep imprints left behind by horse hooves; the meadow is a marsh.

Pounding rain on metal roof deadens the roar of the river. Puddles gather on the deck, the driveway, the pasture.

The chickens seek refuge in the dog house while dogs do the same by the wood stove, soggy obstacles to overcome on the living room rug.

Inside rain gear hangs dripping by the back door; boots still damp when you slip your sock feet into them. Towels used on soggy dogs never seem to dry, while splatters from their shaking fur leaves white cupboards speckled brown.

The horses are pissy, flinging their heads, telling me to turn it off and I wish I could. Days like this I wish they could come lay by the woodstove, too. Instead, mid day they stand under the roof where they spent the night, wishing they were somewhere else. We never stop wishing. Because, you know, we never forget what it feels like to lay in soft lush grass while the sun enwraps us in its ethereal embrace

In the garden, roses finally quit trying to bloom. What a run they had this year, clear through to the last of the year. And yet as I walked through the rows earlier today, trying to be gentle in my bulky muck boots in search of some collards or kale for tonight’s stew, the humble, hearty calendula stood brightly defiant, refusing to succumb to battering rains, continuing to share her sunny smile. The yellow and orange seem out of place, adding to her gentle resistance.

For now, I sit at the table in front of the window that looks over the ghostly glow of the computer screen and scribbled open notebook, down toward the swollen river, through saturated moss and lichen growing like eerie bedclothes on every leaf-bare branch of gnarly oaks sprawling the distance between the river and me.

The stillness of the keyboard counters the constant motion of the river.

Some days my fingers do not dance. As if they wonder why, what’s the point, when what I want to do is give. But I look at the blue screen between the window and me, and wonder if it’s worthy.

Sharing the story of something in the past takes me there. Sometimes I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to be there. It was hard, scary, lonely. It was also big, bright, and beautiful; expansive in view and of soul. It brought me back to life. Maybe to the point of living more than I ever had before.

There was so much I didn’t share. There was so much I couldn’t share.

I am struggling to share that story now. The intensity, the wildness, the hugeness I experienced out there. The wild side I could not, would not share as I was riding (or walking or being shuttled) through it. Some things need time to ripen, to age, to roll around in the mouth to find their full, rich flavor. Or to sit on the shelf and collect dust for a while, which doesn’t hurt a thing.

My attention easily drifts out the window. I get dizzy watching the river rage.

Stop it. Get up. Away from the table where I sit for too long. Get on the ever damp rain gear and muck boots and get out. Out. Out there, in it.

Let the moist air plump and swell me and get the dogs dense coats soaked clear through to their skin again as we laugh at our folly and splash through puddles the size of ponds and marvel at the beauty of watching bountiful drops of water fall from overhanging branches and do their circle dance on the surface.

A moment later, the dogs stir up a heron from the salt pond, rising silent, arching upward as a graceful, majestic bow. Somehow primitive, ancient, blue-gray against tan-brown winter woods. I hold my breath and feel goose bumps rising beneath all these impermeable layers separating me from the elements.

In the blatant and natural simplicity surrounding me, I choose to watch herons rise and rain fall and puddles shimmer as a waving mirror. I choose to listen to ravens calling and the river roaring and rain beating down on the roof overhead. I choose these simple things over and above more complex things like news feeds and programs, with AI masking the mystery and magic that is really there, right in front of us, if only we take the time to look, to listen, to feel.

I would rather stand defiant like unpretentious calendula.

I would rather rise up, lighten up, and shine.

Even through this leaden sky that might otherwise try to hold me down.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Out there.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Open the door and dive in, out there.

Into morning fog so thick it leaves sheen of droplets covering your heavy coat and the dogs’ coarse fur.

Turn to close the door to the comfort of the woodstove and Christmas lights and a still half filled cup of coffee behind you.

Suddenly engulfed in wet whitewashed morning air, you feel as if you’re swimming, trying to stay afloat on solid ground, your head above water, somehow struggling to breathe.

Step out into it, shrouded as if in a daze, a dream, an altered state, as the season spirals around you like sufi whirling, almost a madness to dance the year to an end. Heading into new moon, as even the night sky darkens before solstice this year. A powerful dark presence stirring within, feeling somehow more so than most years, or is this how you selectively forget each year?

And all around you, defused energy washed over in morning fog and sparkling frost as if waking from a dream while the sun finally clears the hill to the east and you watch horses stand like sundials, flat side to the sun; a heron sitting stoic in the tree in need of the warmth it brings.

And the day begins, beautifully.

Back in where the wood stove hums and Christmas lights twinkle and that coffee is still warm in my favorite cup.

And my mind is haunted by places I have been and am reliving in words alone.

My stomach bunches up in a twisted knot as I write along with where we rode along.

It’s scary to tell you what I did, how it happened.

But scarier, of course, having done it.

A Long Quiet Ride.

Tangled in the isolation of writing, as it was in the isolation of riding.

Writing about it takes me there and my breathing becomes tight and shallow; nostrils flare, jaw tightens, teeth clench and my heart feels like it weighs as much as the saddle I hoisted up on the horse each day.

It was the loneliness I have ever been. I don’t want to be alone now. I want to take you with me, sharing the smell of damp leather, fresh sweat, horse hair when I brush them each morning or better yet at the end of day as I slip off the damp saddle blanket that will be the pad upon which I sleep that night, and the horses heads are down in some place lush with field grass, tangled barbed wire off to the side, and the primordial call between a pair of nesting sand hill cranes like a beacon, leading the way, for where they nest, we always find tall greenery and fresh water and a safe place for the horses, and me.

And just out of reach, just beyond the thread of searching for a sense of belonging, that ever and continuous theme for me as it is for some many of us, I thought that journey was going to be about inner strength and independence. Prove to myself (and everyone else) that I was strong and capable. Beyond badass.

Found out I wasn’t and don’t need to be.

See, I set out expecting some solo trial for me and my horses out on the open road.

No people, please.

People scared me more than all the bears, bulls and bugs I slept beside; barbed wire gates and snow banks that stopped me cold in my tracks, as well as maps and apps I never could figure out.  

I just wanted to be alone.

And then I was, and no longer wanted to be.

Funny thing is, people turned out to be what the trip was about.

I’ve had a lifetime trying to perfect the art of being the outcast, outlaw, outsider, off gridder, misfit, black sheep, stray cat and/or rebel without a cause. I daresay I’ve done rather well.

People were not my thing.

That journey turned me around.

Rather than it be an adventure based on independence, something I’d always known, I had to learn about interdependence. That was new to me. And it was force fed. Trial by fire, thrown under the bus, sink or swim – call it what you will.

This is what it taught me.

People are good.

Yes, you heard me right.

Never thought I’d say that.

If you know me at all, you never thought I’d say that too.

It’s hard to relive it. Though of course not as hard as it was to do it.

But now the challenge is in sharing it. Writing the real story.

And my fears are no longer about finding good grass, fresh water and a safe place to rest my horses.

It’s finding the right words. It’s wondering if I can write this story well.

Humbly I bow my head as my fingers get work.

No longer gripping well worn reins, lifting packs or pulling cinches tight. Now dancing freely across the keyboard, watching stories come to life.

Looking within for a different kind of strength.

The strength to share.

May it be a good story.

And may I share it well.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin

Waiting for the moon to rise.

/ Gin Getz / Leave a comment

Tonight I sit out on the deck wrapped in the well worn poncho as I have found myself held in this heavy wool so many times before this night. My feet are on the railing; my head tilts back. Behind the now leafless old oak that shades the deck in summer appears the waning moon. She glows silver across the night pasture where fog spreads thick as sea foam. I can hear the gentle shifting of the horses in the barn, and the ever present hum of the inky river just a stone’s throw below. The dogs are beside me. Silent and attentive, staring out into the black beyond, waiting. The bears have been keeping them busy with the warm weather and bright moon.

Overhead, through lace of slender branches of this sprawling tree, few stars glint like Christmas ornaments hanging in the sky.

The ever present sound of the river blends into the darkness and becomes a noise you forget you’re hearing.

There is only a simple silence.

Time and space to breathe.

We settle into the season of long shadows, long nights.

Like the bear. That’s what this season of slowing and settling calls for.

Here in the far north of California in the land of big trees, big rain, big swaths of blackberries and poison oak, the bear does not necessarily hibernate so much as simply slow down. From the recent barking of the dogs, I don’t know how much they’ve even done that. It’s been a mild season so far. Garden roses still bloom. Stores remain plentiful after a bountiful season of lush grass, mushrooms, madrone berries and acorns. It’s easy to see what they’ve been eating by the scat they plainly leave randomly along our quiet dirt road.

With two big dogs, I don’t get to see those bears much. Usually just a big blob of a bear butt running up a hill. Sometimes up a tree.

Still, I feel it, and I’m sure the bears do too. Now is not the season of plenty, but of holing up. Slowing down. And turning within.

The rooster does not crow until some time past six in the morning and the horses come in for the night around five. That makes for long evenings, time for baking, reading, writing, board games, enjoying long lingering dinners lit by candles and twinkle lights, snuggling on the sofa with a couple of cats, reading aloud together, soaking in hot baths… these are winter pleasures.

In spite of the mild weather we’ve been having, we heed the call of the natural exhale after spring/summer/harvest/fall running around full speed in what feels like endless daylight. For those of us who work outside as long as the sun shines, winter is the time to transform into an indoor cat, at least during those long nights. Winter is a reprieve. A blessing. I long for it by the end of summer every year. Time to breathe. To let out a long, full, deep exhale. Before the anxious inhale of spring begins anew.

Garden roses still abloom…
… in December.

Seasons, like emotions, these ever flowing, passing states, one folding into the next like whipped eggs whites or cream.

When what I want sometimes is to hold onto forever. Something solid. Never changing.

As futile as clinging to ocean waves.

Rather than accept and appreciate the inevitable.

Ebbs and flows, tides and moons, the occasional passing storm.

Tonight the tide is low. I feel melancholy.

I want a drink. Come on, you say. Go ahead. Just one.

Alas, for some of us, it doesn’t work that way. Maybe this time it would. This time I could. I’d be okay. Holding the firm stem in my fingers as I swirl the familiar luring fragrance emanating from the liquid red velvet lit from the glow of the kitchen lamp behind me. And then let it roll across my lips and linger on my tongue like nectar – silky, rich and smoky.  

No.

It’s nearly seven years since I went sober, yet some days (usually nights) I can imagine drinking so vividly as if it were just yesterday. Some days it feels like it’s not getting easier. Tonight is one of those nights.

I’ll get over it. There’s power in reminding myself I made it this far. I can keep on keeping on.

Use your grit, gal.

And grit, well, that much I got.

Things change.

Today, tomorrow, yesterday.

Every day is different. Even on those days when what I feel is so familiar. When what I feel is that “ground hog day” replaying over and over and over again.

Wake in the dark. Tuck the blankets back around Bob. Pet (and step over) the still sleeping pups. Get the fire going, the coffee on, roll out the yoga mat and get down on it, stretch, meditate, light a candle to write, then as gray daylight waxes across the meadow of chalky fog, head out to let the chickens out, feed the horses, walk the dogs.  Return…

Grounding in the familiar. This simple life. A life though maybe a little different than yours, so similar in so far as both of us probably turn in each night thinking we didn’t get half as much done as we planned to do.

There are books and poems to write, horses to teach and dogs to train, bread to bake, wood to split, roses to prune and a compost pile to turn, a barn wall to rebuild and basement walls to trim out, rocks to stack and dirt to move and the damn floor needs to be swept again.

I want more time. Or maybe more energy. But that to-do list never seems to go away, just flows from one set of priorities to the next. It’s that ebb and flow thing once again. And at the end of each day, we hope we made a little headway, though how often do we feel we’re drowning.

Today.

Grounded, not because of the place, the view before me, but because of the feeling within me.

And under me. Crow, my old faithful horse. Beside me, Bob and the dogs and the last of autumn’s sweet air that allows us to feel the sun on ungloved hands and my graying hair still free from the confinement of a winter cap.

Sometimes you find yourself…. Exactly where you belong. It’s not a place, but a feeling, something inside.

For me, it’s a wild place, sounded by wind through leafless trees and the cadence of hard hooves on soft dirt.

It’s finding myself on the back of my dear horse where I’ve found myself for thousands of miles before this one.

And time stops, or no longer matters.

And I’m just there, the bones of my pelvis padded by Crow’s warm winter coat.

The sound of my breath, his breath, the rhythm of his footfall.

It’s watching my horse’s mane shift and sway as he walks, like ripples in the river into which my open hand reaches, sinks in, and already knows the softness it will touch as my fingers intertwine with his black mane.  So familiar, the feel of bare hands in soft hair, deep into the comfort of the back of his neck. The familiar fragrance of freshly cut fir trees and wild mint as the horses cross the creek, mingling with their sweet musky sweat in the oddly mild air where my legs are wrapped around a familiar warm back, without a saddle between us to sever the connection.

It’s turning to see Bob in his own world beside me, comfortable and content on the back of the new horse, Jesse. He’s perched in a place where he’s been holding space since long before I was born, and I smile. He may not see it. I’m riding in front. But he knows it. He always knows it. If he wants me to just let go, to relax, to forget about all the should-woulda-couldas, to just be, and to smile, get the gal on her horse.

This feels like home. On the back of the horse. With my husband and dogs close by and the soft sun and leafless trees and the smell of those leaves, now grounded, brown and brittle, through which the horses walk. Today there’s no need to train or work or get somewhere or get something done, just be with the horses, the land, one another. Where we belong.

It is a return to center.

Coming back home, within.

Until next time,

With love,

Always love,

Gin

Something I created.

/ Gin Getz / 4 Comments

Here’s a thing. Not my usual, that’s for sure. It’s a little book. A weekly planner. Nothing fancy, but kinda sweet, and something I really need. See, I was looking for a new planner for the new year, something clear and simple, pleasing to look at on my desk all year, and even somewhat inspiring. Couldn’t find what I was looking for… so I made it myself. How about that? Just a little something I created for me… but then I thought some of you might like it too.

This is how it turned out:

https://www.blurb.com/b/12650115-be-her-now-2026-weekly-planner

You see, there was this. My coach challenged me. And you know how I am with challenges. This one was a helluva lot easier than building a cabin in one summer off grid at 10k feet, or finding my way from California to Colorado, with my horses.

“Get a coffee table book out with your poems and photos,” she said. Well, that’s a bigger project than I have time for right now. My hands are full getting “A Long Quiet Ride” complete. So this is what I created instead. The photos are with the theme of “awakening and unfurling,” thus flowers and branches and leaves, which you know I’m wild about. And the weekly quotes are from my “Be Her Now” journals and posters crafted years ago.

All in all, it was a fun project, and it came out well. I’ve never done anything like this before – but I think it’s lovely, and hoping some of you might think so too. Maybe that coffee table book can happen next year.

In the meanwhile… this project is done, this challenge complete, and I rather love how it came out. So much so that I thought, who knows? Maybe you would enjoy it too. So if you have any interest, you can follow this link, check it out for yourself, and purchase a copy with the company that printed mine.

https://www.blurb.com/b/12650115-be-her-now-2026-weekly-planner

If you do end up checking this out, please let me know. It was a fun project and a good challenge. Thanks for the prompt and push, Marijane!

~

Until next time,

With love,

Always love,

Gin

Stripped. Bare.

/ Gin Getz / 2 Comments

Lit from a window with dark and drama as if a Vermeer farm house woman painted on old canvas, weathered and worn with time. Where is my pitcher, my cup, a book held just so, or an open letter draped in my perfectly poised hand?

Instead, I loom mighty over a laptop, screen cold blue and buzzing, surreal, unimaginable back in baroque days. Both the computer and me.

The window is open. Damp air thick, smelling of wood smoke wafting from another clean up fire Bob is burning. And the sound of roosters competing in a crowing match, one on the river side, one by the garden. Diligent guards, knowing the hawks are close by. Allowing their ladies to peck and scratch through the fresh layer of damp decay.

And always, over and through it all, here has an ever present thrum of river. The sound a ubiquitous murmur, something that’s always there though so familiar you don’t always hear. Similar to that of traffic I was once used to in other days and feeling far away lands. This is what I hear, here and now.

A gray day. Ancient oaks with spindly outstretched arms like old woman’s fingers, gnarled and swollen from too many years gripping the shovel, the hoe, the broom, the wooden spoon; stand silent over ground matted with leaves still a robust brown covering ever green grass and rich black earth.

The writing desk, before which I’m perched, and upon which my lap top resides, this week brings me out beyond this familiar view to strange places on the open road where I once was. It’s that vibrant green and lush of late spring. The sound is of horses walking in unison, clip clop on some unnamed logging road or alongside a foreboding highway where cars and trucks zip by without meeting eyes or noticing the oddity of a woman riding along miles and miles of barbed wire fences, locked gates and “no trespassing” signs, still somewhere in the north of California.

A Long Quiet Ride, coming back to life in words. It’s not always easy to share. Of course it was harder to do. How does one share what happened out there? How do I bring you with me?

Conserving my words as I sit and stare out the window above my desk.

Wanting them to flow forth for the work at hand.

The book that’s stirring, simmering and working its way out of me now.

Yet poems are what mess around in my mind.

And what can a gal do but play with them, with a mischievous smile and twinkling, rolling gray eyes?

Evening now, leaning back with bent knees.

The familiar feel of warm worn leather holding the bones of my back.

I’m on one side of the sofa.

You are on the other.

Your feet are bare, broad, firm and warm.

While mine look half your size, wrapped in striped wool socks, holes in the toes worn through from wet leather boots left by the door beneath a dripping slicker.

Feet entangled, intertwined. An easy touch. Mindless and comforting as toes play with one another, finding familiar places to be.

While rain pounds down outside onto saturated deck shiny with water coating each old wood board, shimmering alive with pounding rain. And inside the old wood cook stove crackles and casts an amber glow into the half lit room smelling of the last of this seasons roses, rubbed down dogs drying by the fire, and chicken soup simmering on the stove.

We’re quiet.

You are softly spoken.

Teaching me to conserve my words.

A challenge for this rambling mind.

Lost in thought as silent phrases spill across pages of the notebook pressed against my thighs.

As I look up to meet your eyes, looking into, through you and back into me.

Entangled.

With words.

Sitting alone with my muse.

This weekend was rich with poems, poets and a coffee buzz. It’s hard not to succumb to the words that dance in my mind and twirl along my tongue as I read them aloud.

But now is time for story-telling.

So back to work I go.

Until next time,

With love, always love,

Gin