Go out weary and empty. Return strong and full.
August 2, 2013 by
I’ve hiked up to the lookout tonight where I have a splendid view of the Sawtooths roiling and heaving like stone sharks. There was a thunderstorm this afternoon with a delicious deluge of rain and wind that wiped all the dust away. There is a new fire burning two peaks south of my mountain. I watched the jumpship fly over with boys and cargo, pressed two fingers to my lips, pressed my fingers to the sky and spoke, “Be safe, my friends.” I’m watching the fire burn. The column looks pretty from up here. Almost anything can be pretty, from a distance. The smoke is pouring up and drifting west up a series of valleys and draws, dulling the sunset to pinks and oranges. The air smells exquisite after the rain, wild and good, medicinal. I’m watching the clouds. I feel simple and easy tonight. Happy and sound. The wind is in my hair. The last light of day is on my skin.
I’ve brought a thermos of peppermint tea. The wind is cool and I pull a sweater from my pack. I make a little nest and sit down to write for a while. I wish the sun would move slower. I wish my pen would move faster. I wish Tater Tot would stop barking at chipmunks. I wish I was sleeping up here tonight. I don’t want to go down to the dark of the forest. I want to be here with the wind and stars.
Today:
June 27, 2013 by
I woke up.
I was tired.
I made coffee.
I ate something. I don’t remember what. Maybe toast.
I answered emails.
A butterfly flew into the Airstream and I managed to catch it with a finger tip and carry it outside. Those wings looked worn.
I placed a metal order by phone because the internet quit working. It has a habit of doing that.
I packed a bag, started a truck, drove down the mountain, picked up a package at the post office, picked up lunch to go, filled the truck with a half tank of diesel and drove out of the valley.
I stopped at a lake.
I found a wigwam.
I sat in it.
I felt confined, by my very self.
I took my braids out and removed my boots and socks and then sat down in the wigwam for a while longer and watched a rainy sky turn to something blue. I threw sticks for Tater. He loves to swim.
I walked in the lake. Barefoot. The rocks hurt my feet. I collected driftwood and Canada goose feathers. I looked closely at wildflowers.
I felt more free. I felt less tired. I felt more myself. I felt wild.
Tater was chased by a doe. I was chased by the doe. I felt bad for the doe. I think she was protecting a spanky new fawn or was on the cusp of giving birth. She was probably in deer hysterics. What’s worse than any female being pushed to hysterics? Poor thing.
I found a killdeer chick. I held it. Its mother was in a panic. I set it down and walked away. Its feet were ridiculous, as they always are. I found a killdeer chick last year, too, but it was older. It fell in the river, by my feet, while I was fly fishing. I threw my rod down on the bank, leapt into the river and fetched it from the current. It had such intelligent eyes. I set it free. Its mother was also in hysterics. Poor thing.
I met two lovely men. I talked to them for a long while. They liked Tater Tot. They want me to make their wedding rings.
I got in my truck and drove home.
It rained.
Then it quit raining.
The sun came out and the sky looked so blue and full of hope.
When I arrived at the Little Cabin In The Woods, my little forest was on the cusp of dusk. I changed into my running gear and took the dogs out for a spin. The light in the trees was beautiful. I leapt, like something feral, over the puddles and mud on the road. I felt strong and alive.
I ate leftovers for dinner.
I mixed myself a delicious gin and tonic with extra lime and garden strawberries. It is delicious. I am sipping it now. The berries are so scrumptious. I don’t want to eat anything but berries ever again.
In a moment I will retreat to my bed with a book and a cup of tea.
And a cat.
I miss Robert. This was a very fine day.
A handful of the random and a dash of trees.
June 17, 2013 by
Last week was a nice week. I finally feel truly settled in here, and know I am because Robert and I spent the weekend together driving back roads in our truck, hiking into little lakes, fishing, reading, kayaking, sipping iced tea and simply enjoying being together and being in love. We’re still in love, you know? Really in love. We’ve been married for nine years but I still feel like I’m nineteen and seeing him for the first time, every single day.
Speaking of love, I am head-over-heels-rump-over-tea-kettle crazy for the woods. Stark raving mad. Cuckoo! Berserkers for the forest. I was like this last year, too. If I see a big ponderosa pine tree, I have to hug it, or stop and gaze up at it, dumb in its marvelous presence. I am filled with such deep appreciation. Laying my palms against the trunk of a tree makes me feel close to God. It’s like I’m completing a circuit, there with my feet on earth, my hands on a tree, the tree against the heavens. It’s electric. Sometimes it makes me cry, the very aliveness of it, the smallness and hugeness of it.
Tree jottings from this week past:
When we live here, I am continually dwelling on the idea of trees, the very essence of them, I mean their steadfastness and nature of servitude.
——————————–
Why can’t people be more like trees?
————————————–
The forest is a boisterous place. It’s often described as a bastion of quietude and peace but I should choose to more clearly define it as a place free of human racket. Isn’t a respite from humanity what we are truly seeking when we go out into nature? I write this from the loft deck at the cabin and all around me is bird racket, the various pitches and frequencies of buzzing bugs, a raven shouting at the wind and beating his wings on the thinness of air, the rapid fire rattle of chipmunks and squirrels, the watery sound of the tree tops surfing the breeze. It is loud here. There is sound swirling all around me, tinged and punctuated by the pizzicato of many living things, but I am not made weary by it like I am the sounds of traffic or the spill and shrill of humans in conversation. Here, in the forest, it is anything but quiet.
———————————
This is mid-June. I see and feel the forest cresting, reaching and stretching for the climax of full bloom. The green is still fresh and new, rich with the effort of merit. The trees don’t speak, but I know what they are saying, up there, up high, when they clap their leaves and chime their emotions under moon and sun. I pin a bright badge of respect to the bark of every tree I pass. Oh, good, tall, stalwart friends.
————————————————
Trees for president!
————————
A forest is a fortress, the very thing to hold me safely in.
—————–
I’ll never get over the ways a ponderosa pine tree wraps its bark, branches and needles around the wavering curves of daylight. A pondi is a wrangler of sunshine, a true cowboy of a tree, a tall stout thing that gentles the sky, draws it in, makes it into a brave partner and friend. In the kind and splaying hands of the pondi, the spirit of the sky is never broken. Every needle is a fragrant feather, a remembrance of earth and stone, a glimmer of ground and a tiny defeat of gravity. How I love the ponderosa pine.
Jottings:
June 10, 2013 by
I hiked up to Copper Glance, hoping to do a little fishing. The lake had a sheet of ice on it so I hiked up the snowless ridge line to the North of the lake and eventually stopped to eat an apple and enjoy the views. Not a waste of a day at all. Simply divine.
The swallowtail butterflies are resplendent, a flittering wisp of my childhood. I chase after them, willing them, begging them to land on my open hand, to stick to me with the lonesome velcro of their thorny feet. The tangerine orange of the Airstream door romances them deeply. They try to lick at it for nectar, bonking into it repeatedly as their wings whir, fooled over and over again by the shout of the hue.
———————————————
It seems impossible that this is the skirt of June and eternal daylight and the rising, rising, rising until we reach the peak, the crown of day, the solstice. I wonder where I will be on that short night? I wonder which dress I’ll wear, how many braids I will weave into my hair? Doesn’t it seem sad that the bulk of summer, the heat and green reaching of it, comes so late after that long, that longest June day? I fear I already begin to miss these lengthy days, before June is even here. I look too far ahead instead of living here and now. It makes me melancholy, to be far seeing. My mind dwells on fading and eventual loss when I see life as life coming instead of life actual and arrived which is the very truth about now and here. Why do I do that? Live outside of now? Do we all do it? Let ourselves fade into the distances of past or future, instead of residing in the strength and full color of now?
I cut off all of Robert’s hair. He asked me to. It wasn’t a Sampson and Delilah situation. Not at all. Now he looks like a beautiful barn owl with his heart shaped face. Perhaps that’s why he is so good at flying, because secretly, he has very broad wings.
—————————————
I miss Robert when he is at work during the day. Moving to the Methow Valley for six months of the year makes for more than just a geographical transition. I also have to adjust to living much more seperately from my best friend and husband. It’s hard, at times, to make that shift. There are sudden, wide gaps in the structure of my life that can make things feel rickety and unstable.
“I was just passing by
when the wind flared
and the blossoms rustled
and the glitterling pandemonium
leaned on me.”
[Mary Oliver :: Goldenrod]
Everything here is a direct, boisterous reminder of my childhood. I feel I must be slipping and sinking into the gentle innocence of a simple, beautiful life; a life uncomplicated by grown-up things. The forest takes me back. We fall asleep to the sound of night birds, a fleet of frogs on the marsh below the cabin, a pair of owls in halting dialogue at dusk. If it is breezy, the wind in the douglas firs and ponderosa pines sounds like the rush of water. Air is a current of its own sort. During the day, there is the sound of ruffed grouse calling out for love, the very drum beat of my childhood. There are awkward, wild turkeys on the road as I drive down to town; the black eyes and white tails of the deer. The wildflowers! Oh! The wildflowers. The land is rupturing with a bevy of color and a cacophony of scent. I walk around with a thousand soft sighs on my lips because this is love. I am in love. I love it here.
I am guilty, at times, of working myself into complete exile. It’s just how it is. I put my head down. I forget to eat. I am grumpy and rumpled outside of the studio. I reside in this strange land of metal and gems and everything else falls by the wayside. Forgive me.
—————————————————————-
Today: Two osprey, two mule deer bucks with their blunt antlers bundled in precious velvet and a tremendously close encounter with a white tailed deer (a doe). Also, a red tailed hawk above the twin leaning ponderosa pines on Lookout Road, and a snarky raven using the cabin roof as a landing pad. Bear scat, East of the cabin on the road where it grows thick with alder. Pizza for dinner.
I saw a blue racer snake, belly up, dead on the road while I was out running. The ants and wasps were already doing their tiny butchering. In the morning, the next day, it was gone. Nature is so quick to put everything to good use, even the dead.
————————–
Here in the shade with the ferns, the stones are sinking. Everything in this clearing seems heavy with the promise of gravity. Even the wildflowers lean in the afternoon light, fat with dust and seed. But I, I feel myself rising.
I ran past a patch of wild rose blooming. That is the scent of pure pink.