idaho — Page 22

My True Childish Heart

April 7, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

“I learned to value only that which truly activates what is in my heart. I came to value those experiences which activate my heart as it really is. I sought, more and more, only those experiences which have the capacity, the depth, to activate the feeling that is my real feeling, in my true childish heart. And I learned slowly, to make things which are of that nature.“

[Christopher Alexander :: The Nature of Order, The Luminous Ground]

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A friend emailed this quote to me recently and it prompted pages and pages of writing over a period of two weeks. I began to compile a list of the things my childish heart prefers — that is to say, the things I cherished when I was a child, not really objects, mostly daily experiences I had while growing up on remote warden stations in the National Parks of Canada. I want to share some of that list with you now!

My true childish heart prefers:

*playing alone, most of the time (which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy playing with others — I was prone to wandering off on my own, and was content to be so)

*being in boreal forest (a spruce, jack pine and birch blend is nice)

*star gazing and wondering at the northern lights

*beaver ponds, narrow creeks, mossy forest floors

*tall grass, or a tall crop (wheat, canola, flax) — standing in tall grass or a tall crop

*collecting rocks, twigs, bugs, wings, feathers, bones, tadpoles, frogs, frog eggs, crayfish, leeches

*building snow forts, snow caves, forts in hay bale stacks, forts in aspen stands

*building, in general

*the sound of ruffed grouse drumming

*falling asleep to the songs of wolves and coyotes

*riding horses bareback

*fishing

*cleaning fish, generally dissecting things and investigating the insides of animals

*making whistles with caragana pods, blades of grass, reeds

*watching my dad do woodsman things: pack a packhorse, run a chainsaw, chop wood, build a fire, ride a horse, drive a snow machine, shovel dirt, gut a fish…

*climbing trees

*reading books

*rubbing the cheeks of rabbits (which brings them great pleasure and causes them to grind their teeth which sounds a bit like a cat purring)

*being under overturned canoes on the edge of a lake in a thunderstorm

*swimming

*twirling on ice while figure skating

*running/going places fast

*morning light filtering through a tent wall

*peppermint tea

*sewing

*any kind of baby animal, the wilder the better, rabbits especially

*keeping hens and collecting eggs

*hunting for the secret place the cat hid her new litter of kittens

*the sound of horses chewing oats

*cooling off in the horse trough on a hot summer day

*being made meek by a sudden storm

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At times, my childhood seems a lifetime ago. A girlfriend of mine, last summer, asked me what I was like when I was a little girl. When I went to answer her question, I realized I’m the same person (in most ways) as the little girl who grew up feeling she owned Riding Mountain National Park. My life isn’t much different either. I still spend hours out on the land, most days. I like peppermint tea. I make whistles out of grass blades and it seems there’s never a moment when I’m not exploring…or noticing the world around me. I know I have been changed, burdened, and freed, time and time again, by life experiences and interactions with humans, by loving and losing and loving and losing. But the changes have not been for the worse, but for the beauty of growth and betterness. I’ve been able to keep a good grip on my true childish heart, more than most, and I’m thankful for that. I don’t feel I’ve lost my way in adulthood, I’m thankful for that too. Who were you when you were young? Who are you now? Who would you rather be? I have been turning these questions over and over in my mind, pressing at the answers like they are rumpled cotton beneath a hot iron; they lay out before me now, crisp and white, new and beautiful, ready for the wearing.

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On Friday morning, I went up Gibson Jack. It was a wonderful, woolie spring day. The creek was ripping right along, fat with snow melt and rain. The trees were beginning to think about buds and root-moving-rock-splitting. After exploring the creek and laughing at the antics of the dogs, I laid down on the forest floor and watched the sky through the trees, simply being restful, aware and allowing my senses to drink in the world around me. I thought to myself:

Not enough people take the time to simply linger a little longer in the wild places. We pass through the forests, across the plains, under the arms of the mountains — we hurry on our way to somewhere. We forget to notice the sky and feel the wind. It would be better for us to linger, every now and again, to afford ourselves a full taste of the world around us, to slow our heartbeats and sink gently into the earth. Maybe, if we’re lucky, we will remember our true childish hearts, and feel a spirit of youth and freedom rise up in us.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, thinking aloud

One Fine Morning

February 17, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

This morning, the sky is wild and tumbling. It makes me moody and introspective. I am out walking. When I dip down into the cottonwood stand in the dry gulch of Cusick Creek, the wind sounds like a far off freight train that never quite arrives. I look to the tops of the trees as they groan and rattle. It’s amazing, the strength of trees, the vertical stairways of flexible cambium beneath the brittle and frayed edges of bark, the way they can bend so deeply without breaking. I wonder what there is in me that manages the same kind of strength, what it is about my structure that allows me to stand up to a devil of a wind as it rakes and lashes at me? There’s a new cottonwood down, probably a victim of weather; I wonder if it was simply overcome, or if it gave up? Can trees give up? Though they live a life of service, I tend to believe surrender isn’t in the nature of trees, or anything wild and natural for that matter. Maybe humans are different because we can suffer the infliction of a crushed and broken spirit? (there is the matter of domestic animals which, at the hands of humans, can suffer crushed spirits and are therefore in a separate category from wild animals and human beings) There’s a kind of broken, terrible bad in some people that just spreads, like a virus, into others, crushing as it goes. I don’t see the same sort of affliction in nature. There is always a will to survive. A coyote in a trap will chew its foot off. There is never a question of when to give up and let go. Even when wild animals are dying, at the teeth and claws of each other, or at the hands of a hunter, they continue to fight for life. There is only the effort of living, every moment of every day. It’s amazing. I take notes. Copious amounts of field notes.

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This beautiful world of mine is washed in muted hues: stony violet, chalk, drab taupes and tans, vague greens and the occasional patch of gold where the light hits a mountain peak or a clump of sage. It’s stark and madly howling out here. The colors are just as I love them: fleeting, shifting, melding, brewing, perhaps even indignant, as though they do not want the added contrast of bright light to birth them into full strength. They cannot be captured. They run rampant in the hands of the wind, flickering and mutating, they scurry on the ground like a thousand velvet voles. My attempts to describe them are in vain. They leap in and out of appropriate adjectives as the sun pushes forth from behind cloud sail, and then slides into cover again.

Tater Tot is galloping about like a little psychopath. His eyes have the crazy look he’s infamous for. He disappears into the sage and in a moment I hear him yipping for joy. A covey of Hungarian partridge bursts into the air and is carried away like grains of pepper in the terrifying gusts of wind. Tater Tot commences his chase. I don’t have the heart to call him in. He is joyful, the way a trout is joyful when it leaps out of water for the sake of feeling the sky rub at its rainbow flanks.

I turn my back to the wind and take my hair out of the clip that holds it. Instantly, my sight is covered in gold silk, I have hair in my mouth, hair stuck to my lips, it stands up on end as the wind rolls over and under it. I’ll have to use a garden rake to get the knots out when I take my bath in the evening, but it’s worth it to feel free and unfettered for a moment. I’m like a mustang in the high desert sage flats, sure footed, strong and replete with life. I sling my camera strap over my shoulder, call Tater Tot in to my side, and break into an easy jog on a frozen trail.

I head east-southeast, toward the growing light of the day.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, thinking aloud

Night Skijor

February 9, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

Tater pulls with such heart and charisma. Not many dogs will pull like this. I see him throw his weight forward, the strain of his strong little body tugging against the flat straps of his harness, the tight little muscles on either side of his hind quarters bulge as he pushes off with his back feet. He is too thin. I might be too. We are skijoring and it is nearly night. I am up in the clouds, where they have bent low over the tall cap of Scout Mountain, the heroic peak at the South end of the Portneuf Valley. With Tater’s help I am flying through white on white on white. The trees are gracious, leaning phantasms, their shadows prickly and darkly spreading are a kind of harbinger of the cusp of night. It’s nearly upon us.

I keep my knees close together and bend them deeply with each double pole pass I make, letting my arms fly out full and reaching behind me. I can feel my shoulders and back turning hot beneath my various layers of clothing. I call out “YIP YIP” to Tater, which is my run command for him. He digs in a little deeper, I feel the tug of a power increase, a jarring little jerk at my waist where I am connected to him with a waist belt and run line. My quadriceps are burning. An owl flys from its perch in a stately douglas fir. There’s no one else around.

I didn’t mean to leave the house so late but the days seem so much longer now, than they did in December. I’m tricked into stretching the daylight hours out further then they can really stretch and I realize, halfway up the mountain, that I’m going to be skiing down in the dark. I call Tater to a stop, pull my pack off my back and rummage around for my headlamp. I’m glad I thought to bring it. I put it on, over my toque and check to see if it’s working. The batteries have been jiggling loose lately and it’s been prone to randomly shutting off. I put my pack back on, flip my pole loops over my hands and wrists, and call Tater onward.

I love doing things in the dark, in the woods. It can be terribly lonesome and spooky. At times, it makes one pine for the light, count the minutes until sunrise. On nights when the sky is clear as a spring creek, it feels almost cozy and crystalline, quiet and thrumming, peaceful and bright. It’s cloudy tonight, and snowing gently. On a clear night, I’d be marveling at the cosmos spread out above like a picnic for the eyes — blue twinkle and dusty milky way with a scoop of glittering horizon line graced with a tilted, fingernail clipping of a moon rising through the sky. But tonight, the night is thick and dark. I think I feel it pooling around me as I move. I dig harder with my poles and feel my heart rate rise a little more as I push myself harder. Tater responds with even greater heart and haste. The sooner we make it to the top, the sooner we can come down.

The greater our ascension, the thicker the cloud. Visibility is poor now. The temperature has dropped and I can feel the snow hardening beneath my skis. I call out encouragement to Tate, to comfort myself with my own voice, to let the wild things know we are coming. We are breathing hard from physical exertion, it’s as though our breath has turned the world around us to alabaster gloom. Tater veers to the right and looks up at the tree tops, a large shadow of a bird rises up, in an awkward flap of wings, swoops about in a bumbling loop and settles once more in the same tree.

Oh! The top! The top! I praise Tater for his hard work, unclip his harness from my waist belt, command him to heel at my left hip and turn my skis North — it always feels so natural and relieving to point myself North, I wonder if all Northerners feel this way? It’s cold now. I can feel the roots of the air wending about my cheeks and lips. My braid is frosted over. I zip my jacket hood up higher and push my mouth beneath the edge of my neck warmer. I press the button on my headlamp and there is light! I begin the steep, downhill journey back to the truck. The snow has turned slick and fast, crusted over with a veneer of ice. My skis jump in and out of ruts as I snowplow hard on tight, steep corners. My knees are growing weary. Tater keeps pace at my left hip, never leaving my side, and I sing out loud, as boisterously as I can, the Canadian anthem in French because the sound of my voice diffused through the timber seems to roll back the dark. It’s hard to see. I fall down once when my left ski bounces out of a rut and smears slowly over a pile of frozen coyote scat. I manage to catch myself and draw my body in from the brink of disaster, but sit down hard anyway and laugh out loud over what tripped me up.

We zoom lower and lower, my legs struggle to control my speed now. I’m tired. Suddenly we find ourselves at the gate, just beyond is my rig. I unclip my bindings and crunch over to the truck where I drop my skis in the back along with my pack. Tater and I hop in our ride, I turn the key in the ignition, halfway to warm the glowplugs, and the rest of the way to turn the engine over into a growly purr. I turn on the radio, a Keith Urban song is playing, I tap my finger tips on the wheel and sing along as we make for home.

When I reach the house, Robert is in the kitchen cooking dinner. My face is still stung pink by cold wind and cloud kiss. He asks me how it was and I declare, “Beautiful and terrifying. I’m so glad I went.“

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: communion, idaho, skijor, winter

Where A River Is Born

February 5, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

We went to where a river is born. We try to go every year, in the dead of winter, at least once. It’s one of my favorite Idaho places. Not everyone has seen the birth of a river. It’s magical and majestic. We often think that rivers are born under the squinting smile of early spring when the sun begins to wear at the snow and ten million rivulets combine like silken threads to make tiny ropes of water that twine together into great knots and swell into a mighty torrent; wild rivers eating away at the land, swollen and devouring as they drop away from the continental divide, and eventually rush to sea. However, some rivers, like Warm River, are born as full rivers from the very beginning and only become more full as they cross the land and collect smaller streams. Some rivers, like Warm River, burst forth from the face of stone in a mad rush of white water, cascade and trout spawn. They call such a thing a spring — and again, we think of springs as tiny, clear and dainty but they can be savage and tumultuous things, wiping clean the black slate of the earth. There are countless springs in Idaho. Water. Bursting forth from stone. On the surface, this state is dry as bone, true desert in some areas, but beneath the sage studded, crusty skin of the land there is water running wildly in every direction. It’s amazing to stop and ponder on all the things that remain just out of sight, the Earth processes that do not always make themselves apparent in broad daylight, or beneath the uncharted expanse of an evening sky.

I am reminded of the Old Testament story involving Moses who, when he loses his temper just before leading the Israelites into the promised land, angrily strikes a stone with his staff and out of that stone gushes a stream of water. I reckon it’s supposed to be regarded as a supernatural phenomenon, the water pouring forth from the rock, but it seems the most natural thing in the world to me, a girl who resides in Idaho, where water pours forth from the faces of stones quite regularly. This isn’t to say that a spring isn’t a magical thing — on the contrary, a spring is mysterious and magical. It is. Miraculous. An apt definition of conception, beginning, impetus, genesis. A curiosity in the most grand sense of the word.

At Warm Spring, I see the birth of the river, I see it rush forward, kinetic and spinning, it is born into rhythm and it cries out at the surprise of the light of day. The steam rises off the water as it meets winter air. The banks are lined in willows and douglas fir, tranquil with hoar frost. Down river, on the first bend, a family of geese is paddling in place. They beep and honk at each other, dunk their heads, waggle their bloomers in the pale gleam of a dawning day. Everything I see as I look downriver depends on the genesis of this river, the loosing of water from rock, the opening wide of the clutching hands of stone, the momentum of gravity, the overflowing of aquifers, the rise of gleaming batholiths, the melting of glaciers, isostatic uplift, general tectonics. I try to imagine this tiny river valley without a river and the very life force of what I see is cut in half, and then cut in half again, reduced in its visible bounty. In my imagination, it is different.

I think of the robust ecosystem Warm River feeds on its way to the Snake River: entire forests, an abundance of wildlife. It is drawn on to water the crops on cultivated lands, fruit trees, livestock. It is a responsible river. Its burden is, very simply, to be itself, to flow where it must. It must go to where it is needed, where it is called. Its waters are for all the wild things and for the tame things too. We drink the river, the sky carries it upward in contemplative streams of evaporation and makes rain, sleet and snowstorms with it. We seek it for its beauty and peacefulness, we swim in the deep bends under summer sun. The mosquitoes lay their eggs in musty backwaters and the trout leap for joy after a delicious caddis fly dinner. The moose sink their roman noses beneath the surface and tear the water plants up by the roots. The list of responsibility is endless. A river has work to do, simply by being, by flowing, by existing, by being born in the first place.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, skijor

January 20, 2013 by The Noisy Plume