Uncategorized — Page 76

NOW CLOSED :: Nine Sweet Years :: GIVEAWAY

August 16, 2016 by The Noisy Plume

Thank you all for celebrating with me and for the kind sentiments you left in the comment section on this post. You’re the best.

The winner is comment #86 — randomly generated, of course.

I’ve never had a man win a giveaway before but there’s a first time for everything! Mister Andrew Bell, you’ve won this Caesura Necklace for your beautiful bride. I hope she loves it.

Again, thank you all!

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Way back yonder in July (which seems so long ago now), The Noisy Plume turned 9 years old which means I’ve been messing around with metal for a full decade now. Some of you have been with me from the very beginning and some of you found me only moments ago but I want to tell you thanks, with all my heart, for being a part of my little world. I couldn’t have built my tiny empire if it wasn’t for your tender loving care, your appreciation for handcrafted jewelry, your craving for images of wild spaces and the words to go with them. I’ve grown, learned and changed so much, so has this little business of mine, so have you…and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The bottom line is, I love to create for you. I’m not going to stop. Here’s to many years more of you and I — of us.

As always, simply leave a comment on this blog post to enter your name in the drawing for this Caesura Necklace. I wish I had 100 to give away. If the spirit leads you, I am giving away a second (and different) necklace over on my Instagram account and I’d love to see you drop your name in the hat there, too. Men, enter your names for you wives, daughters, nieces — all are welcome and I am happy to ship internationally. I’ll leave this giveaway open until commenting tapers off and I feel like closing it, regardless, don’t delay entering!

I cherish you.

Roll on, you beauts.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: giveaway, jewelry, thank you

Eden

August 14, 2016 by The Noisy Plume

There is a road less traveled, paved with thin air and pine needles; I rode it by his side, bumped up and over the pass towards the sky. There was a pool, out of the way, where the stream sliced granite, the cold water chilled deeper by conifer shadow and fern. There were fish, fractal rainbows painted with thick parr marks, spirits willing but mouths too small to swallow our flies down. There, we swam, crawled out onto the boulders, half-naked and primordial — Adam and Eve in a perfect garden for two. Time passed, every hour, every moment holy. We quit our fight against the seconds of the day, we quit our grappling with minutes lost, the hours of life were without expiration dates and we allowed them to slip, with grace, over our heads and shoulders in quiet benediction.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: fly fishing, idaho, public lands

Take me to the river. Dip me in the water.

July 31, 2016 by The Noisy Plume

I love this sequence of Hilary paddling class III on the Main Salmon in an inflatable kayak. I went down something similar on one of those…how do you say…SUP boards? I ate crap. Real bad. Apparently lungs aren’t meant to hold water.

That said, I’ve never minded vigorous river baptisms. I don’t even think I mind being pulled under water, like a spindly rag of seaweed, tossed and turned like a pair of lacy undies in the washing machine. I like the bright and squinting moment when I pop up into the sky once more, hear the rapids heavy with fizzing air all around me, gulp down some oxygen, and then go subaqueous once more.

I think I like it because I’ve watched the fish do it and they seem so joyful when they reach up and kiss the seam of air that stitches the river to the sky. But also, to be in it, to sense the power of it, to be lifted up and dragged down by it is to know it. To know it is to understand it. To understand it is to love it. To love it is to respect it.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, oars rafting, riverlife

Beast Mode

July 29, 2016 by The Noisy Plume

I’ve been coming and going so much these past three months it has been impossible to really sink into any fresh ideas in the studio. I’ve found it best to simply embrace some small scale production work. It’s so much fun! It’s straightforward. I sit down and I make a batch of one thing. I make as much of it as I can until I am ready to make a batch of a different design — I go into beast mode. These are rings and necklaces and earrings that I cannot seem to make enough of. I fall into an easy rhythm. I’m past the point of persnickety calculations and problem solving. I simply make. I make, over and over again and the making is a meditation. My mind wanders towards the light. I talk to myself, the dogs, the cat. I miss him. I think about my impending late evening run in the grasshoppers and gold. I think about swimming in the river, feeling the smooth green run over my pulse points to cool me, vein by vein.

I’ll probably carry these designs into the fall and probably into part of the winter, too. And gladly. I love them.

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Idaho is beginning to burn. The sky above the Snake River is heavy with smoke today. I watched it drift in and turn the sunset deep orange last night while I was running the dogs. I begin to worry for him this time of year. Just a little. I fret. Just a little.

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I finally acquired a very grown-up thing — it’s called a coffee bean grinder. I like it. I grind my cute little coffee beans in the morning, make a squatty little French press, add my milk and enjoy the heck out of that cup of coffee. The sun rises over the canyon wall in a terribly beautiful haze, the river swirls, the herons (the herons)…

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Tater has been starting his day by rolling in some heinous carcass somewhere so once he comes home after his death-bath I drag him outside and shampoo him with dish soap because nothing else will strip the stink of decay from his fur. He’s disgusting. But I love that about him. He’s so much more macho-wolf-y than the other dogs.

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We bought a farm in June. We closed on it in mid-July and the people we bought it from are so great. There was no penny pinching niggling negotiation. There was only straightforward neighborliness. One day we were standing in their kitchen with them celebrating the official sale and purchase of the place and they simply said, “Hey, do you guys want the washer, dryer and fridge? We don’t need them.”

Yes!

We will move in sometime in October after all this fire season madness. I’ll be able to sneak in, by the end of August, and begin painting and gleaning furniture. Our bed is in the Airstream in McCall so I have, quite literally, been sleeping on a Thermarest since May. I’m over it. I’m really over it right now because it has a hole in it and I cannot seem to find the time to patch it. It’s ok. There are worse things. I just pretend I am always sleeping out under the stars with a stone for a pillow and the huge loft window kind of makes that a not-pretend thing anyway. That said, I look very forward to having a bed and sheets and blankets again.

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I read until I cannot keep my eyes open at night. It seems a good way to fall asleep. This summer, I have liked:

Barbarian Days

My Brilliant Friend

The Journals of Grace Hartigan

Wabi Sabi

Dakota

The Cloister Walk

Thousand Pieces of Gold

River of No Return

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And finally, copper Birks. How could I resist?

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: thinking aloud

Visitation

July 23, 2016 by The Noisy Plume

I am boiling water for coffee when he arrives. I am aware of his presence, I cannot see him yet, I only hear the whirr of his wings beating the air into an invisible froth. I look to the left and he appears, as suddenly as any lovely surprise. He hovers inches from my face. He is bold. He is curious; so am I.

It is disconcerting to have his sharp, nectar sipping beak so close to my wide open eyes but I remain that way,

still,

welcoming,

resolute,

gripping the olive branch of my heart,

with peace on my lips.

He comes and goes over the solid tick-tock of an hour, maybe more. Watching me, returning repeatedly to hover inches from my face — his eye contact is earnest, I think I see tenderness there and a glimmer of omniscience.

I sit and sip my coffee. I watch him flit through an open truck door, buzz around the interior space, checking out my digs (the truck pales in comparison to the nest he built with his lover), he zooms out the opposite door and returns to hover at my face, speaking some inaudible language that I cannot answer, or hear, or understand.

He lands on a willow branch above the chattering creek and watches me from a distance. The morning light is golden, turning his emerald feathers to jewels. His breast is pale and flecked with umber. I think I have a crush on him or maybe this is the ultimate phileo love.

He is my brother.

Eventually, he leaves me and I decide I will remember this place as the place I had an excellent sleep, the place I cooled my feet in the creek, the place I met a cherished friend.

Filed Under: Uncategorized