idaho

May 10, 2022 by The Noisy Plume

We are having such a spring here on the steppe, I’ve never seen anything like it in this part of the country and the old timers are saying the same. The desert is luminous with green growth for the first time in forever. I’m seeing incredible lupin displays where I’ve never seen a single lupin before. It worries me for this summer and fall since all this tall grass will become fuel load that will lay as tinder until someone or something sparks it up and we’ll find ourselves contending with ripper sagebrush fires. I always have fire on my mind. It’s an old habit.

We’re working long days — 8am-5pm in the studio for me, Robbie outside running errands, fixing things, building things, moving water, tending critters, seeding hay, planting our garden. Then a run and/or horse work, then dinner, then to sleep at 10pm. Like clockwork. It’s amazing how much more I can milk out of a day with a little commitment to discipline and routine.

I’m waking up every morning right before the rooster crows. I love to beat the roosters. My bed is warm and cozy but I’m excited to begin the day, to live the day. I wake Robbie up and I tell him, “I’m so excited to live this day. I must get up!”

It’s hard to say what the best part of my day is. I’m having so much fun in my studio right now and running the steppe with the dogs has been magnificent but being on the back of a horse under this big Western sky and riding through this sagebrush sea where I can fall in love with a landscape and feel my sense of home and my sense of belonging and tether my mind and heart to gratitude for my good fortune and my ability to work hard with passion — to live here in this wide open, liberating space, to be gleaning my inspiration from a well crafted and well lived life, to be living in reciprocity with land and animals so that there is balance in my life (I take but I also give)…to be in my own mind thinking about all of that while I ride a horse through the wind in this special place…it can’t be beat. It’s the best. It’s transformational.

This is the first spring in years that I am not on contract with any companies for modeling jobs or catalogue shoots or influencer/ambassador work and it’s been great. I’ve been torn for some time now over working for these companies, lending them my name and my story to represent goods that are being manufactured overseas. It’s something I’ve struggled to reconcile with my personal values. A “Made in China” label seems like such a badge of shame to me these days for so many reasons I’m not going to get into here. I’ve been tapering off my work in this realm for years, saying no to all the projects and jobs that came my way, until finally everyone stopped asking. This spring I am totally free to do my own thing and it comes as a relief to me to immerse myself in this season, to be traveling on my own terms, to be fishing and hunting just to fish and hunt (and maybe write about it), to be pouring myself into my studio work and other creative efforts, to be using my cameras for the joy of it…to have realized that I do not need to monetize everything I do. What a great transition out of one thing and into another. I’m thankful for all the experiences I had, good and bad, while working in the outdoor industry and now I’m thankful to be out of it and focusing on simply developing my own crafts, growing and hunting my food, and having more energy to spend on my friendships, my horses, and my burgeoning interests.

Anyway, I’m just thinking aloud this morning. I mostly wanted to say howdy to you and tell you I’m thinking of you. Have an amazing day where you are. Eat great food, hug all the people you love, spend some time breathing fresh air and moving your body, smile at lotsa strangers.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2022/05/10/16518/

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: horses, idaho, the west

Alone Season

March 8, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

It’s the time of year when I have to learn how to be alone again. We elected to send Robbie out to the southeast for early season work this year. The paychecks will be nice but more importantly, early season work allows us a little wiggle room during the fire season with regards to annual time off. There’s more bandwidth to work with if we want to take a week to go horse camping or haul our boat over to Henry’s Fork to fish. Those trips are very important to our little family come June, July and August. They re-glue us a bit, slap a bandaid on our relationship until the end of the fire season when we can take care of any rips and tears in our marriage.

This roll of his is three weeks long which isn’t very long at all in the grand scheme of wildland firefighting — one winter he did nine weeks of early season work!!! How I suffered! That said, I find I have to make some major adjustments as soon as he departs. He takes care of so much when he is home from keeping the firewood pile stocked, the wood stove lit and meals on the kitchen table to morning chores and grocery runs which really frees me up to stick to a rigid daily routine that balances studio work with writing with my physical (and spiritual) needs for time outdoors. As soon as he leaves I have to find a way to take care of all the aspects of my jobs as well as every thing he does around here. It’s a lot to manage. I can’t be a coward about it. I have to be utterly religious about how I approach my days and stick to rigid bedtime routines if I want to keep the boat afloat.

I also have to be kind to myself when it all goes to hell in a hand basket. Because it will. And it does.

Last Saturday, Resero was chasing Hawk around in the big hayfield and that painted horse of ours ran himself up on a metal t-bar post in the far corner of our fence line. The post went up and under his skin atop his ribs, tore up some of his rib muscle and was generally horrific looking. As soon as I saw the wound I ran to the house to phone the vet. And allow me a moment to offer up my thanksgiving to God for rural large animal vets — THEY NEVER SAY NO. They never fail their communities. They are hardworking, down to earth, capable and reasonable animal doctors. My vet was two hours out on a dairy call but I loaded Hawk up in the trailer and simply waited in the kitchen with a few cups of tea while I waited to roll out.

We managed to get him all stitched up and he’s healing nicely but what a heartbreaker to have that sweet boy of ours hurt so badly. It’s taking some of my time to doctor him every morning and night with his medications and this afternoon I’m hauling him back over to the vet to have a check-up and his drain tube removed. I’m guilty of treating horses like they’re invincible because so much about them is miraculously strong and magical. I think they can go anywhere and do anything but they’re made of flesh and bone and saltwater just like I am.

This is all to say, it’s stop and start around here, two steps forward and one step back. I try to celebrate my small daily victories. This morning I cleaned all the floors in the house which have been niggling me and taunting me for almost two weeks. They look beautiful and it was time well spent. Sometimes when I stop to deal with the task that has been nagging on my soul it tosses the doors wide open on the rest of my life so I can move about freely again.

Somedays I feel fussy in the studio. My eyes drift off my work to the wide blue sky outside my big studio windows. The angel on my shoulder keeps asking me when I’m going to go outside, when I’m going to run, when I’m going to hike, when I’m going to ride my horses. On those kinds of days, it’s best to shut everything down and simply let myself go, gallop, get scrubbed clean in the wind and sunshine so that I can return to work changed and unshackled.

This is the start of the alone season for me and I’m not afraid. I know how to do it. I know how to be.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: fireseason, idaho

Linger

February 10, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

I was telling a friend recently that the new year is a funny thing. We act like we get to go forth with a clean slate on the first day of the year but everything feels the same: life is all piled up all around, wobbling and wibbling in the wind. Despite all this “starting over” new year stuff, life is replete with brimming inboxes, half-finished projects on my studio bench, the letters I need to respond to, the grocery lists, the shrinking wood pile, the unreturned phone calls…stacks and stacks of living to do, tasks to never catch up with — part of me wants to catch up with it all and take a moment to swing the cat by the tail but I know it’s impossible. There is no amnesty! The new year demands us onward!

Well, I’m in rebellion. As usual. Big surprise.

I guess I can feel the shadow of the fire season upon us and I just want to take my doggone time. Some switch in me has been flipped. I can’t do this dawn until dusk workworkwork business anymore. There has to be space inbetween when I can let my hair down, put on my muck boots and a good wool layer and step out the door with the dogs to explore the river bank, unfold my lungs, crackle my back, listen to the rapids and the herons and the hawks. I’ve got to be able to saddle up and ride out if the sky demands it of me. Most importantly, I’ve got to be able to do these things without a guilt ladened heart, without apology. I have this one life to live, I want it to move more slowly, be more moderate in pace. Adagio…allegro…somewhere in between.

Today, down on the river, after breakfast but before second tea, we went strolling. The sky was breaking in the West, clouds shoveling off North and South of the canyon, a slip of blue sky on the horizon. Song birds were winging and singing, the river a blue rush of mountain water headed elsewhere. I lingered there, blond as last years rabbit brush blooms and just as easy in the wind.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: home, idaho, snake river, winter

January 13, 2019 by The Noisy Plume

Recently, in an interview, I was asked what winter is about for me. What winter is to me has changed over the years. It used to be about skiing and skating and winter sports and snow and loving the cold but the fire season has changed all of that for me, and our geographical location has changed winter for me, too. When we lived in Pocatello, I used to drive a quick 15 minutes to nordic ski in the timber on Scout Mountain in the Mink Creek area. It was wonderful. I even skied up there in the night, with a headlamp and the dogs — which I CRINGE at now — I was mountain lion bait but I survived and I’m thankful for that.

Now that I live in one of the most temperate areas in Idaho, snow is hard to come by. I ski the wintering grounds up from our farm and Sun Valley when the snow is good and time permits but winter isn’t really about skiing anymore. These days, in winter, I’m concerned with exploring in the studio because I don’t have much time for rabbit trails in the summer when I’m farming and gardening. Winter is a time of creative freedom for me. Winter is also for making memories. I just want to be with Robbie and have a beautiful time with him. I want to keep it simple. I want to squeeze every moment out of every day we have together before the fire season begins again and we get ripped apart.

Today we did that. We made memories. We squeezed every minute out of the day. We hauled up to the wintering grounds (which are just a skip away from the farm). We saw some incredible bachelor herds of elk. We rode through miles of undulating sagebrush. We stopped for a picnic lunch and a fire — elk hotdogs with kraut and all the trimmings. We rode some more. Our horses went beautifully. By the time we reached the truck and trailer again our hands and feet were cold and we were glad to have the day over with.

It was simple. It was beautiful. I just want to live my life and live it well. Sometimes all of this other stuff inhibits that simple desire of mine and I have to get scrappy and fight for simplicity and purity. Fighting for simplicity seems counterintuitive. Simplicity should be the foundation of our lives, at the very heart of our existence, but we get thrusted into warp speed by this modern world of ours.

Do you know what I want? I want to put on jeans and a hat, saddle and ride my horse through miles and miles of sagebrush, cook an elk hotdog over a fire, hang out with my dogs and my fella, watch the sky roll by, think about things that matter and brush off the things that don’t. Simple.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2019/01/13/14371/

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, winter