Last night, Tater and I stole up the mountain for a couple of hours of forest walking and stream bending. For the interior West, it’s tremendously lush and fresh feeling up on the mountain at the moment. Every step deeper into the woods has a gal swimming in the clean and musky scents of a forest unfolding. The creeks are running thick and crystal clear with the last of the snow melt. As I walked past all the green unfurling, I think the fiddle head of my heart managed to fan out into a broad green, wind capturing face of delicacy and bright.
I love everything about my forests here. I love the shushing of the tallest sentries, catching the breeze in fine fir needles and stomping their roots deeper into the earth. I brought home some Douglas fir branches last night, they are settled in vases around the house, slowly releasing their fine spice into the tranquility of my home. I love the easiness of the spreading wildflower patches, the promise of color and food for the bees. Last night, I loved that funny little male mallard that came zooming out of the dusk, flying directly down valley with the creek flowing beneath his beak and his flight feathers squeaking in the wind. I love being out there with a dog by my side, so I have someone very quiet with whom I can share a sense of exploration and wonder. I like to sneak around, because everything in a forest is kind of sneaky. Sneaky moose on stiletto legs. Sneaky elk with bugle hearts. Sneaky beavers chewing on their cottonwood tree trunks. I get sneaky too and walk softly in my little cowboy boots.
Every time I go up the mountain, I see the same things, but I’m always amazed at the small changes, the growth, the flux in chroma, the deeper bends in the river curves. I wonder, if all those trees look down at me and notice the small changes that take place in my heart and soul on a regular basis?
Night came on quick and the air became cold. I found myself wishing I didn’t have to go home, that RW could come out to meet me and we could cook hot dogs over an open fire and drift to sleep under a blanket of starshine falling through ponderosa pine. But last night, such a thing was not to be. I hiked back out to the truck with Tater and we drove home to hot dinner and warm beds, but that expansive space inside my ribcage that I keep open for beautiful things that widen the soul felt illuminated and fresh.
Happy Friday to you merry little beauties. Have a rich weekend.
xx
Thanks for taking us into your beautiful forest – it looks fresh and peaceful, teeming with life. Happy weekend!!
ALWAYS my pleasure. Thank you for being here. xx
you have helped my weekend begin with a rich start.
may your ribcage expand to collect even more beautiful things to widen your soul in the coming days, including tonight’s beautiful moon.
xx
Oh…the moon…the moon. xx
Please write a book.
I second that emotion!
Here here!!
xoxoxoxoxoxox
🙂 Thanks, dear Plume, for taking us with you.
Thank you girls, for always encouraging me on this topic. I will write a book. This I promise you. Thanks for believing in me. xx
Happy weekend to you as well, lovely woman. I hope the moving preparation is coming along swimmingly.
Oh it’s coming…we still have a couple of weeks before we hit the road so it’s not do-or-die right now. Thankfully!
I needed that. The quiet sneaky-ness of the forest and animals, and you in your little cowboy boots. Thanks for letting me tag along.
I’ll be your sneaky-weaky any old day. x
i can hear the tall trees swaying from here! That’s why we love hiking in the woods too… it’s as if the concrete of the city blocks the very ‘life-force’ of nature from seeping up into our souls. The woods are those ‘thin places’ unfettered, unblocked… so close to heaven you can feel the Spirit moving. Happy weekend you. xo
Mel
needle and nest
AH!
TRUE!
The thin places…..love that. x
Happy Friday to you…I am sure those trees look down at you with pleasure! xx
I hope they do. Happy Friday, M. xx
Your photos make me want to go hiking/camping in the worst way. Also I LOOOOOVE your boots!
Then go! What ever could be stopping you? Nothing can be so important so as to keep you from the woods.
yes to it all. ‘specially the photo of you looking up and tater looking all wonky.
[i love it that tater matches your boots.]
xx
HA HA! He just hopped out of the creek and was shaking and quaking!
I think your corner of the earth might be easier to love than mine. (Is that a sin?)
I don’t think that’s a sin. No. Your corner of the earth is lovable — you just have to find the very best good in it, even if it’s a scraggly little wildflower growing up out of a crack in the sidewalk, give it your love.
Happy Friday indeed!!!!
Oh The Earth…Her beauty abounds…I love her
hope the rest of your weekend was just as lovely : )
love and light
The weekend was A-OK!!!
xxxxx
Endless Streams and Mountains
By Gary Snyder
Ch’i Shan Wu Chin
Clearing the mind and sliding in
to that created space,
a web of waters steaming over rocks,
air misty but not raining,
seeing this land from a boat on a lake
or a broad slow river,
coasting by.
The path comes down along a lowland stream
slips behind boulders and leafy hardwoods,
reappears in a pine grove,
no farms around, just tidy cottages and shelters,
gateways, rest stops, roofed but unwalled work space,
—a warm damp climate;
a trail of climbing stairsteps forks upstream.
Big ranges lurk behind these rugged little outcrops—
these spits of low ground rocky uplifts
layered pinnacles aslant,
flurries of brushy cliffs receding,
far back and high above, vague peaks.
A man hunched over, sitting on a log
another stands above him, lifts a staff,
a third, with a roll of mats or a lute, looks on;
a bit offshore two people in a boat.
The trail goes far inland,
somewhere back around a bay,
lost in distant foothill slopes
& back again
at a village on the beach, and someone’s fishing.
Rider and walker cross a bridge
above a frothy braided torrent
that descends from a flurry of roofs like flowers
temples tucked between cliffs,
a side trail goes there;
a jumble of cliffs above,
ridge tops edged with bushes,
valley fog below a hazy canyon.
A man with a shoulder load leans into the grade.
Another horse and a hiker,
the trail goes up along cascading streambed
no bridge in sight—
comes back through chinquapin or
liquidambars; another group of travelers.
Trail’s end at the edge of an inlet
below a heavy set of dark rock hills.
Two moored boats with basket roofing,
a boatman in the bow looks
lost in thought.
Hills beyond rivers, willows in a swamp,
a gentle valley reaching far inland.
The watching boat has floated off the page.
●
At the end of the painting the scroll continues on with seals and
poems. It tells the a further tale:
“—Wang Wen-wei saw this at the mayor’s house in Ho-tung
town, year 1205. Wrote at the end of it,
‘The Fashioner of Things
has no original intentions
Mountains and rivers
are spirit, condensed.’
‘. . . Who has come up with
these miraculous forests and springs?
Pale ink
on fine white silk.’
Later that month someone named Li Hui added,
‘. . . Most people can get along with the noise of dogs
and chickens;
Everybody cheerful in these peaceful times.
But I—why are my tastes so odd?
I love the company of streams and boulders.’
T’ien Hsieh of Wei-lo, no date, next wrote,
‘. . . The water holds up the mountains,
The mountains go down in the water . . .’
In 1332 Chih-shun adds,
‘. . . This is truly a painting worth careful keeping.
And it has poem-colophons from the Sung and the
Chin dynasties. That it survived dangers of fire and
war makes it even rarer.’
In the mid-seventeenth century one Wang To had a look at it:
‘My brother’s relative by marriage, Wên-sun, is learned and
has good taste. He writes good prose and poetry. My broth-
er brought over this painting of his to show me . . .’
The great Ch’ing dynasty collector Liang Ch’ing-piao owned it,
but didn’t write on it or cover it with seals. From him it went into
the Imperial collection down to the early twentieth century. Chang
Ta-ch’ien sold it in 1949. Now it’s at the Cleveland Art Museum,
which sits on a rise that looks out toward the waters of Lake Erie.
●
Step back and gaze again at the land:
it rises and subsides—
ravines and cliffs like waves of blowing leaves—
stamp the foot, walk with it, clap! turn,
the creeks come in, ah!
strained through boulders,
mountains walking on the water,
water ripples every hill.
—I walk out of the museum—low gray clouds over the lake—
chill March breeze.
●
Old ghost ranges, sunken rivers, come again
stand by the wall and tell their tale,
walk the path, sit the rains,
grind the ink, wet the brushes, unroll the
broad white space:
lead out and tip
the moist black line.
Walking on walking,
under foot earth turns.
Streams and mountains never stay the same.