Arizona Views

February 20, 2022 by

I’ve been away in Arizona! We had such a wonderful camping trip just north of the Mexico border in the sky island ranges that rise up out of the desert like stone crowns. I love this trip so much, we’ve been taking it for years! It feels so good to be in the sunshine after the deep dark icy cold of winter. We stayed in many beautiful campsites and, as always, we ate fresh on the road by hunting quail over our dogs which is such a pleasure and adds so much depth to a journey across a landscape — to take a place in with ALL my senses leads to such a deep understanding of an ecosystem. I highly recommend it. Go out, discover a place with all five of your senses and belong to it — breathe, touch, smell, see, hear and consume that biome. Nothing strengthens my heart and soul like belonging to a piece of land beneath a fathomless sky and having the memory of it pulsing in my veins and feeding the marrow of my bones. Too beautiful.

The highlight of this trip for us was seeing the sandhill crane migratory flocks just North of Douglas, Arizona, at a place called Whitewater Draw. We stayed the night and reveled at the miracle of thirty thousand cranes leaving a slough at dawn. Telling you about it, recalling the memory here with words, invokes awe and wonder. If you find yourself in Arizona in February next year you must take the time to experience this phenomenon! It’s spectacular.

I’ve been settling back into the studio while Robbie has been outside working hard to pull the farm online for the spring planting season. I’ll give you an official farm update in a couple journal posts wherein I’ll share with you some of our big goals for the 2022 growing season. It’s going to take an immense amount of planning and work but I think we’re going to shoot the moon! Robbie says by this fall he will be able to legitimately call himself a farmer.

I missed sharing my journey with you!

It’s good to be home and I hope you are all better than well.

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September 2, 2021 by

I find real reality incredibly satisfying (I mean, not the screens, the here and now, the pulse of what is alive and warm and connected and feeling). A cup of oolong tea brewed on my truck tailgate in a cold morning breeze. Eyes stinging and a throat tinged with soreness as a smoked-out sky bears down on the landscape. Tater Tot on a beautiful point in sagebrush along a transitioning string of timber. A blue grouse flushing and banking hard away from the eager muzzle of my shotgun. Reading a book by headlamp in the bed of my truck — fictional futuristic totalitarianism — which feels far away from the stars and the night sounds that drift up out of the panorama I am camped in…but maybe it’s right outside, floating around like a bad idea on a smoke-stained breeze. Tater hanging his head over my shoulder as we drive a little deeper in. Waking up to a bluebird sky, the smoke blown off in the night, the look of the lake in the sunshine, white capped and lovely and clean. The aspen! Two legs to walk with. Two eyes to see with. Two ears to hear with. Hands sliding over Douglas fir branches, smooth and soft. The scent of the lodgepoles. The clump of lupins, raggedy and sunburnt and late blooming, the last of the season. A cup of hot tomato soup I made in my kitchen last fall and froze to save for days like these when the evenings are cool — salty crackers crushed up on top, growing floppy in the steaming liquid. A sense of being brave hearted, strong minded, grounded and sure of hand.

I was here. It was real.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2021/09/02/16177/

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Southwesting on Roads Less Traveled

February 25, 2021 by

Last summer, when I was tired and lonely, I told Robbie I wanted to take the horses, dogs, and shotguns to Arizona for the entire month of February to camp, eat wild, and soak up some sun. There is no better place on the planet Earth to be in the month of February than Arizona. As it happens, our trip trickled into New Mexico and then into Texas where we found ourselves stranded for a week during the great blizzard of 2021 (we were alright but Texas was very not alright). As a result, I had one of the worst birthdays in the history of my life which we made up for a week later when we celebrated with wonderful friends in Santa Fe before driving the rest of the way home to Idaho.

We had some disasters that we managed to overcome with some luck and the help of good people who chose to be generous neighbors to absolute strangers. We rode our horses almost every single day in wild, beautiful country. We dry camped on public land the entire trip, in wild undeveloped spaces, alongside dry creek beds, under live oaks, beside windmills and sand dunes.

When the sun was shining it was warm and delicious and my arms and face and shoulders turned brown as my body soaked up all that vitamin D. I relaxed for the first time in a couple of years. I read books. I worked on some projects with my bead loom. I ran on soft two track through cactus and boulders alongside granitic monoliths. I watched the sunrise and sunset. I did what I wanted to do every single day.

Tater did a great job hunting up quail for us which we proceeded to roast over campfires and eat fresh for almost four straight weeks. Son of a Gun turned into a teenager and had his first lessons on quail as he simultaneously learned about cactus. I shampooed my hair with water from a BLM guzzler a couple of times and let it dry in the sun as I rode my horses in the warm desert breezes. For the most part we were dirty, suntanned, well fed and covered in horse grime most of our trip. What a dream!

We met up with a friend. He had been big game hunting in New Mexico and joined us to bird hunt for five days. We had a blast chasing quail together, laughing our heads off, carefree and happy. I felt like I was with a band of brothers. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

Naturally, I stone shopped along the way and managed to procure and transport home a lovely load of American turquoises. I’m thankful I had a stone budget at the time because handpicking in person is always the best way to choose gems.

On a side note, I think since we bought the farm I have been unable to recover from these fire seasons that come year after year. Over all the years Robbie has been fighting fire I’ve had a fatigue take root deep in the marrow of my bones, and in my soul, a fatigue I’ve been unable to shake for some time. This trip to the sunshine with our horses and dogs and each other was so restful for me. It wasn’t really a vacation for me, it was bigger than that, it was a time of recovery for me. I’m grateful we were able to go.

I’m looking forward to getting my studio up and running again this week! We are unpacked, the house is in order, all the critters have settled back into this wonderful Idaho life we’re built for ourselves and I’m dreaming of moon bright silver paired with stone.

The roads less traveled are the best roads to travel and after they wind and climb and descend and straighten out again it’s sweet as heck to find ourselves back where we started. The horizon line is a beautiful mystery and the curve of the earth is a generous smile.

I hope you are all well and finding the silver lining in every cloud.

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