pocatello — Page 5

Just the cheatgrass, the sky and I.

September 10, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

After spending the entire day looking at my computer screen, answering emails and Etsy convos, ordering supplies and sourcing stones, I ran for the hills this evening.

Tonight, it was just the cheatgrass the sky and I;

burning bright and burning out.

Looking West:

Looking up:

Looking East:

Bracing against the wind and watching the world fade into night:

Sometimes, when I sit on a mountain top, I look around me and I ask God this question:

When you made the Earth, why didn’t you make a little more Idaho and a little less of everything else?

I’m a greedy and ungrateful little lady. I know.

That reminds me, did you know Idaho is one of the five states in the union that holds the most wilderness area, in terms of overall acres? No wonder all the wild things move here.

Keep it wild, my sisters and brothers, keep it wild.

Claws, fangs and bushy tails,

The Plume

RAWR

PS I just fell head over heels into THIS.

Filed Under: idaho, pocatello, rocky mountains

September 4, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Greetings, salutations and a gladly glorious Saturday to you all!

I’m just home from the market. It’s a wonder I managed to pedal my bike home; I had a huge bag of veggies, a mittful of sunflowers and wee Penelope spilling out of my panniers. I was sure I was going to tip right over on a couple of turns I took whilst wending my way back to The Gables but I didn’t.

I suppose that’s the thing about tumbles, they always occur when you least expect them and when you think one is coming, it doesn’t.

Yesterday I saw a pair of fighting hummingbirds

zooming at each other by the concord grapevines;

cheeping like mad.

I thought to myself, if those fellows can’t live peacefully how can there be any hope for humankind.

I’m not usually so fatalistic, usually I can only see the good and the beauty in everything, but I suppose those hummingbirds caught me in a moment of soul frump and feeling grump. Really, animals fight within their own species rather often whether it’s rutting elk, horses establishing pecking order or dogs dominating each other.

I suppose the difference between animals and humans is that we fight over things like world dominance, oil, fouled up NAFTA agreements and ridiculous arguments over which personal liberties should remain personal liberties.

Sigh.

Let’s just all eat a piece of peace.

I’ve got to keep looking up to stop myself from looking down all the time.

All of that vague musing aside, there were these things:

1. A really beautiful nine mile run last night. Zooming over rocks, in and out of mountain shadows, wetting my hair in the cool of a spring creek, Farley on my heels, a covey of Hungarian partridge on the wing and the rustic rattle of tall, dry grasses waiting for their blanket of winter white.

2. My first day back in the studio. The humming of machinery. The smell of chemicals. The spark of my torch. The toothy grind of my saw blade deep in metal.

3. So much social activity. Firefighters. Friends. Cold wine and yam fries on the patio down at the train tracks beneath the West bench.

4. My mailbox. Stuffed to the brim with all sorts of amazing bits and pieces.

5. The brightness of the stars here. I missed them while I was in Washington.

6. The beets I’m roasting right now in the oven, that earthy, jewel magenta scent is filling the house. They make me feel swaddled in organic health.

7. This book. Which I flip through at night before falling asleep. It makes me feel normal (maybe even beautiful) when it comes to having collections of dead stuff piled up about my home. In point of fact, my dear friend Sue just brought me a full length shed of her boa constrictors skin. That sounds gross, but it’s really beautiful in texture and coloration. I’m going to put it on the wall.

8. Nesting. It happens to me this time of year after I’ve taken a lot of trips and collected a ridiculous amount of sticks, stones and shells. The rearrangement of my home, my furniture, my collections. Making the collections in my studio relevant with respect to my current inspirations. Cleaning said studio. Taking my coffee and tea slow on the front porch where the wind can ruffle my feathers.

9. Catching up on my correspondence. I’ve written so many postcards this week. Just random jottings to let people know I’ve been thinking of them. I fell right off the letter writing wagon these past couple of months which is unusual for me. I’m pretty passionate about the art of letter writing and to have not made time for it this summer has been a big mistake.

10. Officially and with great anticipation, counting down the handful of days until RW comes home. He’s on the brink of the end of his fire season and has actually already decided when he’s coming home. We have so many decisions to make when he comes home; our plans for the fall, winter and spring; the trips we want to take and the experiences we want to make.

I can’t help but wonder what this past week has held for you.

Why don’t you tell me?

I ask because I really do care to know.

So much of my relationship with you is one sided.

You know so much about me but my knowledge of you is so limited…

How does your Saturday fare?

Are you also obsessed with roasted beets?

Are there sunflowers on your kitchen table?

How does your soul feel?

Love, tea roses and tail feathers,

The Plume

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2010/09/04/778/

Filed Under: plume gables, pocatello

You, Me & The Wildflowers

June 27, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

The Wildflower Festival,

last night,

on the side of a mountain.

Liquid sun delicious wind friends of sweet mountain view green valley rumpled earth tender wine barking dogs dancing kids flower power smell those flowers bucking around wild things of the West.

I met some fellow from the East Coast (a lovely little narcissist) up on the side of this hill who told me all about his life and his dysfunction and about his dislike for Pocatello because no one was friendly (NOT FRIENDLY??!!! Um. Were you in a different Pocatello, Idaho???) and it wasn’t at all like what the West should be. He said he hated it so much that he drove to Jackson and Yellowstone (!!!) where he felt so much more at ease — probably because he was with his own kind. Those places are some of the trophies of the West but they aren’t who WE are.

I listened with open ears.
I listened deeply with an open heart and heard what he really had to say and saw his brokenness for what it really was and when a friend finally came along to safely drag me away from his ranting he reached out and gave me a hug like we were old friends. Like we had connected in a real way as two human beings in hip high wildflowers on the side of a mountain. I said, as I walked away:

You know, I don’t know where his notion of what the West should be like came from but he’s got it all wrong. This is the West. We make it the way it is. And if you come from somewhere else and are blind to our true spirit, or if you come here expecting something else, then you make yourself blind to the beautiful reality of this space and you shouldn’t stay because you’re just cramping a horizon that would otherwise be wide open.

This is all to say, if you come West from someplace that isn’t West, keep your eyes and your heart wide open. Not everyone is a soft spoken cowboy or punchy cowgirl, there’s a blend out here, like there is everywhere, a steady blend of mountain, plains, river rock, stout hearts and crumbling facades. It’s where old meets new and new meets old. If you can’t see that, you’re missing the possibility of it all and the view from the vista is going to seem tarnished.

The entire experience directed my thinking to the actual true definition of the West. What makes West West??? Is it the people, the land, the space, the elk or a combination of everything wild and free out here? I’ve got a libertarian/independent streak a mile wide in my heart. I like to make my own decisions, I like to work hard, I like to range free and have as little meddling as possible in my life from outside organizations. I don’t like to be told what I can and can’t do. I don’t like to conform. I like to have space to buck around in. I like to put my head down and kick my heels until there’s nothing on my back and I’m light as a feather. RW does too. We know the difference between right and wrong, we believe in Love and laying it down as a foundation for our relationships with all things (humans, animals, land, The Holy), we believe in space. It’s why we live where we live and how we live. This isn’t a political statement. This is how I am. This is how we are. Give me the choice and I’ll gladly choose for myself. Tell me what to think and what to do and I’ll balk, dig in my heels and not go gently.

Not at all.

You could probably label this as a rebellious spirit but I like to think

I simply have an overdeveloped sense of free will.

Does any of this ranting define the West?

And furthermore, if I was living in the East, would I seem Western to the Easterners…would I carry this vastness with me and wear it on my sleeve like a steady down valley draft for everyone to feel?

If you aren’t from here, this chunk of:

pasture, lake, river, mountain, foothill, prairie, grasslands, slough, stone and wind…

how have you always dreamed this place would be?

And if you are from the West,

what is it to you?

And how does your existence help define it?

Are your heartstrings made of barbed wire?

Do you know that song that makes the tall grasses bend down at the knee?

Does your soul meander like a spring fed creek down the side of a mountain?

Does the wind know you by name?

Do you drink the sunlight and tame the bees?

Mine do. Yes I know it. It does. Yes. I do.

If you come West, come see me, we’ll sing the sun down together and breathe that wide open breeze into our bodies and rest on our sides in the grass like rocky ranges rising up. We won’t do as we’re told, not always, but we’ll always do what’s right.

In the sun, under the shadow of the West edge of the Rockies,

we’ll warm our bones with music, spun gold and tall grasses.

When the moon rises, full and bright

we’ll whirl wildly about the night.

Filed Under: idaho, mountains, music festival, pebble creek, pocatello, rocky mountains

Let’s go walking:

June 14, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

It’s so good to be home again!

I missed the hills.

I know!

I’m ridiculous.

I was only in Salt Lake City for a day. Actually, I was there from 4PM Saturday afternoon until 2AM Sunday morning. Which reminds me, something needs to be addressed:

Imogen.

She sang to me. I was there in a crowd of people. No one knew me except for her. When she sang there’s beauty in the breakdown I knew just what she meant and I couldn’t help but cry a little bit and I didn’t find her weird at all. In point of fact, it was refreshing to see someone behaving normally. I had my camera with me and every now and again, when the large tree on stage was lit neon violet and her glass baby grand was booming with sound and the bass was thumping me in the chest, I thought to myself:

Self, you should take a photo of that.

It’s amazing.

But then I realized I didn’t want to share the experience. I wanted to bottle up ever moment of it JUST for me. I’m sorry I’m such a hog! No I’m not. Ok. I’m sorry just a smidge.

One thing I like best about Imogen, I think….is that she constructs songs….the way I construct jewelry. We have our dissimilarities, she and I, of course, but there’s something about the way random things weave in and out of her music that reminds me of some of the things I have built. I’m not saying this because I feel a need to be connected with her. I’m not obsessed. I just understand some of the structure of her songs in a solid way that could easily be translated for me — into jewelry or small sculpture. I’m not even sure what I mean by this except while she was playing her music, I felt something stir and then there was an easy understanding that fell down to me.

Which is why it’s only fair that someday I WILL share something I have made with her the way she has shared what she makes with me.

If she comes to your town, you need to go.

You really do.

And a short but important list of thanks:

Thank you RWK for loving me. I miss you dreadfully. Sometimes I dream of getting tangled up in a parachute with you and I wake up with a dog in my arms. It’s ok, but I’m not so keen on all the kibble breath and snoring. You are the delight of my heart. I always believe in you.

Thank you KJK for encouraging me and for praying those bright lights into existence on the corners of everything I touch, and here, steady on my fingertips.

Thank you HMO for being eversteady.

Thank you luminous old big world for being so full and so real.

Thank you Muse for picking me back up! I know there are a lot of us to juggle in your dexterous fingertips, I know, so thanks for noticing that I’ve hit the ground and for swooping down and lifting me up and into rotation again.

To everyone who has taken the time to write to me, email me, or send me something in the post these past couple of weeks — you make emailing and checking my snailmailbox a complete joy.

And thanks YOU.

You mean the stars to me.

PLUME

Filed Under: idaho, pocatello, walk

The Littlest Birds Sing The Prettiest Songs

April 19, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Sunday was a day of discovery at The Gables.

I found myself working for hours and hours in my studio, completing old ideas, satin finishing projects I dug up from the depths of my workbench and when my work was finally through I tied shoes on my feet and flew up to the hills.

A steady stride carried me up through the sage, past hillsides of hip-tall Midas grasses, past the Russian olive grove, through the cool damp of the maples and the white limbs of the aspen, over one spring creek and then the next and then high enough that it was only the junipers and I aloft on down valley drafts and the heady scent of scaled leaves in the spring sunlight amidst stubborn patches of snow. I tried to watch the ground as I ran but my eyes were drawn up, time and time again, to the tree tips laced with Idaho blue, which is exactly where I was looking when I found this.

It took an easy climb and the quick snap of a branch to retrieve it. It fit in my palm so well, it was as though it was slip cast from my hand. Inside, the detritus of last year. Small, disintegrating grey turds and a pair of matched leaves; weathered and crisp. It was otherwise empty. A small grey abandoned house, slightly aslant in the wind, timbers hanging on by mere threads. (And in the corner of the bedroom a sun bleached nightgown fluttering on a hook.)

Who, in this world, takes the time to build a home of sticks, grasses and spit anymore, but for the birds? They keep our hope buoyant on their matchstick legs. Bright eyed. Beak clacking. Wings folded in prayer. Complex songs and offerings on their tongues, weaving melodies and warbles like women at looms. Balancing the world on their flight feathers, diving in the breeze and stalling in the gales. And at night, heads under wings and a soft coo to anyone who will hear.

And then in the garden, nestled between two tulips, memento mori, free of the stench of death, cobwebbed and crusted with dirt. The smallest skull with a perfect beak but a throat song long evaporated into the living landscapes of Idaho.

Translucent in the sun.

Creatively designed.

Placed there by the tides of time and the provident hands of God for me to discover and thoughtfully turn over and over again in my fingertips.

Birds of the past,

I wonder what wings my way in the future.

Filed Under: birds, city creek, idaho, memento mori, pocatello