In the Bright and Hard Hands of the Storm

[Last night in the shelter of Cusick Creek.]

[This morning, after the storm.]

Yesterday was some kind of tremendous beautiful.  It began balmy and suddenly, part of the way through the morning, the winds rose up and began tearing at the trees, raking the sides of the studio building, bending our massive blue spruce into diagonal arcs and pressing the plum trees down into deep bows.  When ever fierce winds arise I fear for the Austrian pine beneath which the Airstream is parked.  A dropped branch from it could ruin so much work and so many plans.  The Airstream is just a hunk of metal but it leads the way to so many dreams.  I feel badly for writing such a thing because it seems faithless, and I have so much faith in the strength of trees and the providence of God — and what is worry but a lack of faith and why should I ever fear the wind?

Before long, the snow came.  Wide, lazily looping snowflakes zooming and drifting in inconstant directions on the whims of the winds.  As I worked, I looked out the enormous studio window that faces West.  The world was growing more deeply white and I fell into a slow, graceful rhythm as I worked.

At the back of my mind, as I swung my hammers and pulled my saw, was a niggling desire that begged me to go out into the alabaster gale.  One of the things I love best of all is to be buffeted by the rains, winds and snows.  To be outside in the sun and the sleet, crossing land, bending willow and brushing sage.  It seems a girl can never truly know the land without understanding how the winds comb it, how the water trickles into the coulees and then flows as creeks down a mountain face.  Part of knowing is seeing the tempos of everything, understanding how the geology builds and wears in the weathers, and how the animals make use of the features throughout all the seasons.  How can you say you know your land and love it (if loving is sometimes knowing…for knowing can also lead to dislike, on occasion) if you haven’t yet laid down in the still-warm-bed of a doe, or collected hawk feathers from beneath the skeleton of a juniper tree or stumbled upon an ancient lekking ground that bursts with a tornado of bird wing, beak and beady eye each time you pass it in the lover months of springtime?

I always want to know the things that give the land, my land, a personality, a distinct face.

So I went out onto the land in the bright and hard hands of the storm.  I trudged up the dry bed of Cusick Creek where the big juniper grows.  I didn’t speak except to call at the dogs from time to time.  My mukluks pressed silently into fresh dry powder.  The bunch grass tips glowed blunt and golden in the winter might.  Atop the bench, the temperature dropped at least ten degrees with the addition of a vigorous wind chill and the snow was scalloped into swooping drifts — it seemed to come from every direction now as the claws of the gale lifted it from the ground, the sagebrush, the junipers.  It was whipped, crystal by clinking crystal, into wide swirls and loops, coiling in the air  before briefly settling to ground once more.  It was shooting down the thick layers of my scarf, cold there, crystalline electrics, and then wet on my neck in moments.  In my eyes.  My mouth.  My hair.  I squinted.  My fingers grew cold.  I wished for long johns beneath my corduroy pants.  I tucked my nose under the edge of my wool scarf and pulled my thumbs from their places inside my mittens so they could rest inside the warmth of my palms.

I looked out over the Portneuf Valley which had been narrowed by the grip of the storm.  To the West of where I stood, Kinport Peak was a memory.  The clouds and ripples of snow were covering the very roots of the mountain.  If I didn’t know better, I could have believed I was on sage flats instead of in the rugged arms of a mountain valley.

I walked on and eventually dipped down into the shelter of the ravine that holds City Creek.  I instantly began to warm, out of the rush and push of wind.  Here, the chickadees and juncos had found shelter from wind that would seek to backcomb their feathers.  The spindrift was falling in pools from the rims of the ravine, but the whistle of the storm was hushed and I found shelter too.  I could hear the merry gurgle of the spring water flowing beneath the ice and the wild clematis vines held the sweetest puffs of bloomed out fluff, like Persian kittens ripe for the picking.

Once home, I shoveled all the walkways, warmed my hands on a hot cup of lemon and honey.  I didn’t know what to make for dinner so I settled for snacking on vegetables, hummus and a thick slice of homemade bread.  Eventually, I poured a glass of hearty red wine, walked into the living room, laid down on the thick sheepskin that covers the red sofa, spread a quilt my grandmother made over the length of my legs, and read until I was sleepy.  The rose in my cheeks lasted until the next morning.

And so, another day was spent.