On this beautiful autumn evening,
I am here.
October 23, 2011 by
Yellowstone
October 22, 2011 by
A small cabin on the edge of West Yellowstone.
Funny drinks.
Frosty mornings.
Nights filled with: wolf howl and elk bugle:
laughter and pranks.
Me in bed with the small one in my sleeping bag, curled about my neck or wound in a puppy circle between my knees.
RW restless with his kinky-train-accident-back on a rustic bed frame.
The snores of our friends and family coming from the
bunk beside us or
the next room.
Rosie on the floor by the stove, sleeping in glorious, fire crackling shabbat shalom.
Cooking on a woodstove.
Early mornings.
Blue light.
Log cabin cozy cast iron:
Has anyone seen the oven mitt???
The potatoes are finished!
Can someone deal with the cheddar?
Dinner by candlelight.
Red wine.
The slow hunger of the fire in the stove.
Dinner by candlelight.
Red wine.
The slow hunger of the fire in the stove.
That calm that comes with spaciousness.
Frost on the entire world.
Tall grass.
Golden sunrise.
Don’t-lick-the-truck-your-tongue-will-stick!
That broad back,
narrow waist,
swinging rhythm of wood cutting…boys, can I get some kindling?
Nope.
That’s not enough.
Boys in trucks and camouflage toting 30-06 rifles headed out for more elk hunting
on the snow laced razorbacks of Idaho
(a kiss good-bye, in the dark):
lodgepole pine,
3000ft vert (x4),
quakies turning orange and yellow under autumn sun,
wolf dens four feet deep in conglomerate rock,
grizzly bears hunkered down on narrow trails
shaking their blocky heads
and unafraid (take a wide path Jimmy, walk fast, don’t look back).
Yellowstone National Park
dressed in autumn gold
and the clear, rippling foil of running water in all directions.
The crackling of steam vents, the boiling mud, the turquoise pools of water burgeoning fresh from the earth’s crust.
My girlfriends and I cruising through
the space of the park.
Me, squeaking at every bison I saw,
counting the points on the bull elk.
Praying for wolves.
The quiet murmur of Old Faithful–
the stand up column of white wet hot.
The high places.
The closeness of God.
The thoughts I never spoke.
The speaking aloud.
A small and eerie lake formed by earthquake.
A bag of candy.
Two strangers at a trail head with the freshly cut pelt of a yearling wolf — that coarse hair and intelligent face stone still in the afternoon light.
A little sadness in my soul.
A snowflake on my arm.
A full truck cab
and Honky Tonk Tater Tot
snoozing sweet puppy chocolate velvet the entire way home.
________________
Yup.
That was West Yellowstone!
October 9, 2011 by
Yesterday was RW’s birthday!
Sometime last week I asked him how he’d like to spend his special day — though I don’t know why I ever ask because the answer never changes. We spent the day over in the Little City of Rocks area of Idaho hunting chukar, nibbling on a picnic and exploring the sage laced hills and coulees there. Hunting was a four hour hike up and across the rim rock and volcanic hoodoos of Little City of Rocks (not to be confused with City of Rocks by the folks who like to climb Idaho) at the end of which we were terribly sun beamed and wind blasted — I felt exhausted. Farley had run at least seven more miles than we hiked and he was exhausted too. We coasted back down onto the Snake River Plain, grabbed some delicious Italian for dinner with a friend in Twin Falls (lasagna is one of RW’s other birthday requirements — he’s like Garfield) and eventually we arrived home in Pocatello where we covered the tomatoes with blankets out in the gardens, belly flopped into hot baths and tossed ourselves into our warm bed.
It was such a splendid day.
You know, when you’re out strolling across the shifting hands of the seasons there’s an extraordinary amount of texture applied to all the senses. Those patches of lichens that are so busily lipping at the surfaces of stones seem
twice as thick and vibrant as they did in the summer months.
The small body of water in the sea of sage glimmers like holy
sapphire! The mountains in the distance, capped white and groaning with imperceptible
shakes and quakes, grind away at the sky and the blue holds the faint pulse of indigo crushed fine in the smooth bowl of the mortar.
It’s.
Nearly.
Too.
Much.
For.
Me.
To.
Bear.
I perish. I die in the wonder of creation, time and time again.
I move through it like I belong in it, like a wild horse owns the rock that trims its hooves, like rivers to the seas, like the clouds so designed and destroyed by the lift of the mountains
and the grace of the plains. I move. I belong.
This small body lives to leap up and over stones, scramble through thorny thickets with my heart beat glowing bright in my throat and there on the soft sides of my wrists. Then sifting, sifting like the river water sifts the silt, claiming clarity and purity as it flows. I am lost, divided, made whole again, raked into neat stacks by the tines of the wind and then spread out once more and drifting.
But I digress.
This was all to say, happy birthday Robert.
I loved being out on the land with you yesterday.
The wind burned my cheeks red and coaxed some tired coal in my soul into flame once more.
I hope you had a wonderful day too.
Let’s do it again sometime.
:::POST SCRIPTUS:::
I nearly forgot!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow
Canadians! I hope your lives have been
full of family, friends and blessings this weekend
and always.
:::POST SCRIPTUS:::
I nearly forgot!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow
Canadians! I hope your lives have been
full of family, friends and blessings this weekend
and always.
One Thousand Cows
September 30, 2011 by
Sometimes I don’t think I can love Idaho more than I do.
Then I go on a cattle drive with, quite literally, one thousand cows and about fifty cowboys and cowgirls keeping those bovine babes on the straight and narrow…
and then I love it a little more than I did before.
Here are some moments I captured this morning:
September 27, 2011 by
I’m so far from home.
Home is always so near at hand!
