Happy Birthday To Me

February 13, 2020 by

It is with immeasurable joy that I turn one year older today. We spent my birthday doing something we do regularly that some might consider quite extraordinary but I have come to know the whole of my life is extraordinary (I see it all with such bright eyes) so I enjoyed riding my horse for five hours in a beautiful place very much. We are home now, warming up, cooking dinner, and soon I will have my cake and eat it, too.

It is good to be alive! It is good to be well! It is good to be loved!

A beloved friend of mine once said, “If it’s in your heart to celebrate, then celebrate.” That’s exactly what I did this year. I love being myself and I am so grateful for my life, for the parts that have been easy and the parts that have been hard. All I feel today is thankfulness for one more breath, one more blink, one more sunrise, one more sunset, the feeling of the wind in my long hair and the smell of my horse sweating. At the root of all of this, and more, is simple joy.

Here’s to me. Happy birthday, me.

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The 13th

February 18, 2019 by

I had a quiet, private birthday this year.  We woke up to fresh inches of snow on the ground at the farm and after a simple breakfast we drove across the river to the wintering grounds and skied through the weather and sagebrush for a few hours.  The elk were down from the hills in huge groups and we kept our distance as best as we could, not wanting to bump them around too much in the fog and snow — they work so hard to conserve calories when the weather is bad.  The ski was magical.

In the evening, there was talk of going to our local hotspring for a soak but the roads were bad enough and the fire in the wood stove burning so brightly that we opted to hunker down for the evening with our books.  Some years I feel like celebrating my birthday loudly and other years I feel like sliding into my new age like it’s a pair of well-worn jeans — easy going and soft.

A pal asked me what new dreams I have for myself in this next year of my life and beyond.  I have so many.  I’d like to photograph my local mustangs and turn their images into a big beautiful book for you.  I’d like to offer private weekend workshops at the farm wherein individuals can come and make a piece of jewelry with me in my studio, cook some homegrown meals and wander the river canyon with me by horseback.  I’d like to refurbish a sheep wagon as a guest house and park it in the orchard.  I’d like to grow and sell cut flowers.  I’d like to work hard this year and get enough of a nest egg in the business bank account that I can afford to take all of next year out of the studio to write and publish a book of short stories for you.  I’d like two more beehives and a small greenhouse.  I’d like to see parts of Africa.  I’d like to do an artist residency in the Maritimes.  I’d like to go to Oaxaca with Becca.  I’d like to build a coyote fence along the edge of the rose garden, a raised strawberry patch with the rusted truck bumper I found on the river bank and a stalwart gooseberry row.  I’d like to do three high country backpacking trips this summer which I have not been able to do for two summers because of the workload at the farm.  Next fall I dream of working behind a new pointer puppy on the canyon rims, packing my bull elk (harvested by bow) off the mountain and our next trip to South Dakota where the moon seems so bright.  I have so many other dreams, beyond these, I’d better get cracking.

Thanks for being a part of my life last year.  My world is more beautiful with you in it.

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To The Dunes

February 14, 2018 by

A few weeks ago I found myself in the dark of our bedroom, wildly awake, my head lifted from the pillow with the clear thought, “Someday, I’ll be 65.”  I don’t know why I suddenly woke up or why that was my waking thought or why I chose the number 65, but I found the realization shocking.  I live in a way that makes me unaware of my age.  I’ve lived for a long time now, 36 years.  With the exception of a mostly dead thyroid gland, my body is healthy, agile, sleek.  My legs keep hammering when I run those long, sweeping distances of mine.  I’m small but I can carry a lot of weight over a great distance, my successful elk hunt this year is proof of this.  I don’t look especially weathered though that will come the longer I live in the high desert and I hope to accept those lines with grace and gratitude.  I have no knee pain.  I have some arthritis in my hands when the weather turns bitterly cold but this is a legacy of silversmithing and I do what I can to protect those little, working bones of mine.  I’m in great shape.  The notion that my body is going to age and eventually betray me is unimaginable, yet I know it will.  It’s the way of life to survive small deaths.  And so we go.

Time passes.  Time has passed.  Time is passing.  It seems like only yesterday I was a little sun bleached blond girl in the caragana stand out in the pasture, playing with romantic looking rusted tin cans and glass bottles I found in the treeline, barn cats by my side and the horses in the distance munching grass — but that was thirty years ago.  In most ways, I’m still that little girl.  It’s funny how many things don’t change in this tornado of constant change.

Yesterday was my birthday and we hauled horses out to Bruneau Dunes to ride for the day.  It might be my favorite birthday I’ve ever had.  The sky was bluebird.  The sun was warm.  What little breeze there was created the perfect blend of weather that whips the cheeks red and chaps the lips.  I live for that kind of weather in Idaho.  The sand and the brush and the wind whittled waves lay in light echoes beneath eight hooves.  We found ourselves feeling homesick for New Mexico which is where we usually spend my birthday, down in the sand country where the scaled quail live.

Yesterday we felt we had found a little pocket of New Mexico here in Idaho and we rejoiced in it.  The dune towered over us, its shadow slowly reaching for evening.  I marveled at the sand polished stones laying like dollars on the ocean edge.  All the gold on gold pinned down by vast blue, the buff of the rabbit brush, Robert on his yellow horse and the white sands shifting and roiling in every direction.  What beauty to behold.  Such beauty was ours.  We rode the dunes alone and in perfect harmony.

We circled back to the truck and trailer and cooked up franks with kraut for late lunch.  The dogs begged, the horses slurped water, the coyotes sang, we laughed when the smoke stung our eyes.  Our drive home was merry, I felt so full of joy and contentment.  Once, I felt such deep envy for people on horses on trails.  It made me want to cry.  I wanted that life so terribly.  I saw those nice folks with their trailers, hauling their stock to beautiful places so they could explore and camp and hunt with their steeds.  Oh, my heart yearned to have that same thing in my life.  To have this horse of mine is the greatest gift.  To haul Resero beyond our usual haunts, to have him in hunting camp this past fall, to be able to take him wherever I go is not just a luxury, it is a magical luxury.  This I know.

When I didn’t think my birthday could be more beautiful, Robert gave me my final gift — a bow.  I have talked for two years about wanting to make the shift from rifle hunting to bow hunting and last night he launched me in the direction of fulfilling another dream of mine.  It’s a gorgeous bow.  He was too good to me.  Now I must learn and master a new skill.

 It’s a good thing I’m only 36.  I have so much to do.

Note:  The palomino in these photos is not our horse, he belongs to our neighbors who have become some of our best friends — we are so lucky to have them living across our hay field from us.  They are too kind to let Robert ride their horses.  Every day I whisper a little prayer of thanks for them.

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Ivory

February 8, 2018 by

My birthday is next week!  Something I always do on my birthday, without fail, is wake up early and go out alone to catch the sunrise from a beautiful place with a thermos of tea and my journal.  I watch the day begin and I think about the new year of my life as it literally dawns on me.  My reason for beginning my birthday with the sunrise is simple — if everyone forgets my birthday and Robert doesn’t dream up anything special to do for me, and the day is mundane and we eat leftovers for dinner…at least I had that beautiful moment at the break of day and I have a sacred memory attached to that specific birthday of my life.

The other thing I do for my birthday every year (for the past decade) is I sit down and take the time to make myself a piece of birthday jewelry.  Today I made these outrageous post earrings for myself.  They have all the magical stuff — wapiti, crosses, fringe, nuggets of Castle Dome Turquoise and most sacred of all, the elk ivory I pulled from the elk I harvested this year.  This is magnificent, hallowed material that I hold in high esteem and I always said when I harvested my first wapiti, I would honor that animal by making myself an adornment with its ivories.

There are only two animals in North America that have ivory — walruses and elk.  Walrus ivory appears in actual tusk form while elk ivory is a tooth that is set in the upper jaw of the animal, a remnant of tusks.  What I like about elk ivory is its smoothness, the swirl of caramel coloring that can occur in the chewing surface of the tooth and also, the actually energy the material holds.  Elk are beautiful, yes, but they’re so much more than that.  They live in utterly insane country yet they move through it and over it like it’s a city sidewalk.  They are a phenomenon of the high country.  On my elk hunt this year, Robert and I watched a herd take fifteen minutes to cross a section of mountain slope.  When we followed them, it took us over an hour to cross the same terrain!  For those of you who have watched them in National Parks or on public lands, I’m sure you’ll agree that they are awesome animals, but to hunt this animal for sustenance brings on an entirely new appreciation for the species and plants the seeds of obsession in a person.

This is all to say, I’m so happy I took the time to make these eccentric little earrings today.  A friend of mine once said, “If it’s in my heart to celebrate, I’m going to celebrate.”  Those words stayed with me and I practice them as often as possible.

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Badlands Birthday

February 17, 2016 by

7I9A1966

I had a lonesome birthday this year.  I dropped Robert off at the Santa Fe airport on the 12th and he flew out to Arkansas for early season work leaving me with a big truck full of dogs, guns and harvested quail (on dry ice) to drive home alone.  I wish I could have lingered longer in the desert, camped, climbed out of the cold bed of the truck for more glowing sunsets, wandered, sketched, photographed and daydreamed…but work commitments had me busting my own butt to get home in time for everything that is coming my way in the month of March and April.

On the 13th, I drove the meager distance between Santa Fe and Durango.  I stopped to wander a lovely patch of badlands with the dogs, feel the wind on my soulbones and move my body a bit while the pups got their poops out.

I met up with friends in Durango and shyly admitted, during the course of the evening, that it was my birthday (probably out of self-pity, most of all) and we had good food and laughed a lot and the company had wonderful warmth to it and I made a nest on the living room floor and slept well and deep before striking out on the highway again, on Valentine’s day.

How I drove that day, crossing Colorado, Utah and then Idaho.  I drove like a wild pack of flying hammers zooming end over end on an unpredictable wind and made it home to the strawbale house on the river at nearly midnight.  I was exhausted and hungry and like any time I’m away for two weeks, everything in the fridge had gone to rot so I drank a glass of water and carried Farley up the ladder to the loft and fell asleep with my arm around him.

New Mexico seems like a far away dream now and I already miss Robert terribly.  What a beautiful winter we had!  I’m just starting to comb through my images from the trip and look forward to telling you all about it.

I wish I had some kind of romantic and whimsical goals for this next year of my life but to be honest, I’m simply hoping to keep hanging on tight to the things I value most and love dearly. The people.  The places.  The honesty of earnest, hard work.  The beauty of creating with my hands and heart.  Appreciation for and full-seeing of the gifts that are continuously raining down on me every moment of every day.

But for the grace of God go I!7I9A1977

 

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