I was up in a high place with a friend for afternoon tea today.  I am head over heels in love with this big piece of wild country.  Do you ever find yourself falling in love with the land around you?  I mean, really falling in love, badly, terribly, righteously — like the love for the land might crush you into pieces and you can’t really tell where you begin and end when you are walking across it, threading a tight path around aspens and sagebrush, and squinting at the douglas fir as they glimmer in the sun and wind…because the very dirt and root and tooth of it all has become you?  Maybe you feel there’s a seamless nature to the interface between you and the stone and the air and the mountain slopes?   Maybe this is what animals feel:  simply and truly a part of it all, born into belonging with their claws, feathers and fur.  I love this land like I’m going to be lost if I lose it.  And I suppose, in a way, I would be.  For right now, I have to be out in it, every day.  Being here makes everything in life so rich and good.  Food tastes better.  Sleep is deeper.  Comforts are pure luxury.  I think this is the way it’s meant to be, the way it was always meant to be.

I didn’t know I would miss being in thick timber this much.  This afternoon, I went up to where the big trees begin on the mountain and simply entered into the forest to be with the trees, to get a little mud on the hem of my skirt.  This is the first time I’ve driven Mink Creek since coming home and it was so tragic to pass by all the houses and juniper forest that burned up during the Charlotte Fire this summer.  People are rebuilding.  There are charred stumps and black tree skeletons reaching up and over the hills.  So many homes were swept away by that fire.  I’m always amazed when some sort of natural disaster destroys a huge city that is built on a fault line, or in reach of hurricane or tsunami — that level of chaos is beyond my comprehension.  I get lulled into a false sense of safety in in the interior West.  But the truth is, this is wildfire country, things burn to the ground during the fire season.  Life is licked out of the timber, licked out of the land by forest fires, the way a dog takes water from a bowl.  People suffer.  I remember when we first moved here, RW took a look at some of the housing developments on the West bench in town and would say, every now and again, “All those homes will eventually burn…”  The past fire season proved him right.  I guess that natural disasters are a bit like a big bad wolf (no offense to wolves), they turn up from time to time, pound on the front door and threaten to blow your house down…it’s just a part of living on planet earth, so it seems.

 I saw a dandy of a buck while driving — a six-by-six mule deer with two does!  I cut a handful of douglas fir branches to bring home.  I would have stayed out longer but I could hear something on the ravine rim above me, it seemed to be following me, walking parallel to my trail as I made my way along.  Tater began to act strange, whining and carrying on, placing himself on the wrong side of my body when I told him to heel, looking anxiously into the trees above us.  I couldn’t hear any bird song, whatsoever, which is always a good sign to me to get a move on.

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There was snow here last week.  It’s sloughing off now, running down the willow bark in tiny, bulbous beads, dropping into the creek flow and being muddled forever in a series of torrents that grow wider and wider as they flow West.  Left behind is a forest filled with spindly textures and autumn colors flaring up between the steady green of douglas firs.  I saw more robin nests than you could ever imagine but I didn’t take a single one home with me.  I’ve become picky when it comes to nestering, a nest snob if you will, choosing to take only the prize specimens home with me.  There was a series of weeks last year when I brought home three to five nests a day.  Robert said I was out of control.  In hindsight I think my nestering behavior was a little out of control.  Do you ever have that happen to you?  I mean, have you ever suffered a total loss of self control in the face of curious beauty?

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I feel so quiet right now.  Whenever this happens, I fear my words have all dried up and I lament the loss of them until some glad, unseen moment arrives and they spring forth once more, like water from stone.  It’s always surprising and relieving, to feel like a source again, to feel that rich surge of meaningfulness when I put pen to paper.  In the meanwhile, I feel restless and impatient with myself.  Sometimes it’s hard to take a little grace…a little grace just for me.

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Also, for the sake of sharing all good things, I’ve been reading this, this and this (which never gets old).  I can’t stop listening to this:

And this made me cry.

Holy smokes!  I vanished for a moment, didn’t I?  Well.  Last week was a bit of a zoo here, it quite literally transmogrified into something with blustery accoutrements, then there were some technological glitches, then I went on a three day bird hunt with RW and friends over near Hagerman, Idaho and my oh my, let me tell you little beauties, being out in the hands of the sun, wind and snow was exhausting in a bright sort of way — all those extra things I carry with me, the excess invisible baggage that accumulates over periods of time, tends to be scrubbed away by the elements when I’m out on the land here.  It’s one of the gifts Idaho never stops giving me.  We hiked about eight hours or so, every day, in the broadness of the weather, sponging up the glorious wild of the earth beneath our feet with every step.  At night, stinking sweetly of sagebrush and stone, we ate scrumptious food in a cozy little straw bale house and sipped good drinks and tea and talked until we fell asleep right where we sat.   I found so many tiny treasures on the hills and in the canyons. RW found me a quirky little mule deer shed.  The dogs hunted like grinning champions with hearts that are three-sizes-too-big-for-their-barrel-chests and even (mostly) when we were freezing cold and couldn’t feel our hands, we were zesty and joyful.  What a wonderful trip.  What a glorious way to land back in the wide and gracious arms of this beloved state of mine.

Things I have especially enjoyed lately:

The clawfoot tub (naturally), my yellow and green cowboy boots, baking, running my mountain, receiving mail in my cute little mailbox, catching up with our Idaho friends, dinner parties, Snake River wine, snow, warm kale caesar salad, fresh eggs from my hens, the strength of the wind, the bowing down of the sage, the Hungarian partridge whipping their wings at the breeze, milk from the Buhl dairy…

You know, it’s just so…easy…being free.