Winter River

I went walking with my camera and my wolf this afternoon, after I finished shipping out jewelry orders, after I went for a quick ski on the wintering grounds, after I did a good many things. I haven’t walked with my camera and a dog in a long while. It’s one of my favorite things to do. It’s relaxing. I take my time. I photograph whatever catches my eye. I look closer at what others might find mundane. I live in a spare landscape. Most don’t care for the steppe country. What I like about it is how I must wait for the beauty to emerge from this landscape. It is secretive, mysterious, it steps forth with caution and reluctance, like a jackrabbit emerging from a slanted sagebrush shadow. People who seek beauty and create meaningful lives in this landscape are patient and sharp eyed. Nothing is obvious here.

The riverbank is rich with color and texture this time of year. I see a blood red berry clinging to a slender branch, just hanging on, hanging on. I see the spent milkweed pods shaped like stocky canoes, soft still with the rot of fall but not quite ready to drop from their stems.

My wolf is sniffing around. When he disappears, I call his name, and so immersed I am in gazing at layers of delicate minutia, I am surprised when I look down and he is standing there at my hip, ready as a pistol.

I listen. To be near the river is such refuge for the soul. The color of it. The look of it frothing and writhing and endlessly flowing. The sound of it thundering relentlessly. Refuge.

The swans come in, elegant and elongated, drifting down to the eddy behind the big island. The wolf and I watch quietly from where we sit, in a stand of rickety brush, with our toes in the edge of the river water so we can pick up the pulse.