winter — Page 5

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

Sunrise On The Snake

January 15, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

[sunrise on the mighty Snake River :: so peaceful and wild]

I’ve been away on a trip with the husband and dogs! It was magnificent! Idaho is top notch beautiful right now. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, winter

In the Bright and Hard Hands of the Storm

January 11, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

[Last night in the shelter of Cusick Creek.]

[This morning, after the storm.]

Yesterday was some kind of tremendous beautiful. It began balmy and suddenly, part of the way through the morning, the winds rose up and began tearing at the trees, raking the sides of the studio building, bending our massive blue spruce into diagonal arcs and pressing the plum trees down into deep bows. When ever fierce winds arise I fear for the Austrian pine beneath which the Airstream is parked. A dropped branch from it could ruin so much work and so many plans. The Airstream is just a hunk of metal but it leads the way to so many dreams. I feel badly for writing such a thing because it seems faithless, and I have so much faith in the strength of trees and the providence of God — and what is worry but a lack of faith and why should I ever fear the wind?

Before long, the snow came. Wide, lazily looping snowflakes zooming and drifting in inconstant directions on the whims of the winds. As I worked, I looked out the enormous studio window that faces West. The world was growing more deeply white and I fell into a slow, graceful rhythm as I worked.

At the back of my mind, as I swung my hammers and pulled my saw, was a niggling desire that begged me to go out into the alabaster gale. One of the things I love best of all is to be buffeted by the rains, winds and snows. To be outside in the sun and the sleet, crossing land, bending willow and brushing sage. It seems a girl can never truly know the land without understanding how the winds comb it, how the water trickles into the coulees and then flows as creeks down a mountain face. Part of knowing is seeing the tempos of everything, understanding how the geology builds and wears in the weathers, and how the animals make use of the features throughout all the seasons. How can you say you know your land and love it (if loving is sometimes knowing…for knowing can also lead to dislike, on occasion) if you haven’t yet laid down in the still-warm-bed of a doe, or collected hawk feathers from beneath the skeleton of a juniper tree or stumbled upon an ancient lekking ground that bursts with a tornado of bird wing, beak and beady eye each time you pass it in the lover months of springtime?

I always want to know the things that give the land, my land, a personality, a distinct face.

So I went out onto the land in the bright and hard hands of the storm. I trudged up the dry bed of Cusick Creek where the big juniper grows. I didn’t speak except to call at the dogs from time to time. My mukluks pressed silently into fresh dry powder. The bunch grass tips glowed blunt and golden in the winter might. Atop the bench, the temperature dropped at least ten degrees with the addition of a vigorous wind chill and the snow was scalloped into swooping drifts — it seemed to come from every direction now as the claws of the gale lifted it from the ground, the sagebrush, the junipers. It was whipped, crystal by clinking crystal, into wide swirls and loops, coiling in the air before briefly settling to ground once more. It was shooting down the thick layers of my scarf, cold there, crystalline electrics, and then wet on my neck in moments. In my eyes. My mouth. My hair. I squinted. My fingers grew cold. I wished for long johns beneath my corduroy pants. I tucked my nose under the edge of my wool scarf and pulled my thumbs from their places inside my mittens so they could rest inside the warmth of my palms.

I looked out over the Portneuf Valley which had been narrowed by the grip of the storm. To the West of where I stood, Kinport Peak was a memory. The clouds and ripples of snow were covering the very roots of the mountain. If I didn’t know better, I could have believed I was on sage flats instead of in the rugged arms of a mountain valley.

I walked on and eventually dipped down into the shelter of the ravine that holds City Creek. I instantly began to warm, out of the rush and push of wind. Here, the chickadees and juncos had found shelter from wind that would seek to backcomb their feathers. The spindrift was falling in pools from the rims of the ravine, but the whistle of the storm was hushed and I found shelter too. I could hear the merry gurgle of the spring water flowing beneath the ice and the wild clematis vines held the sweetest puffs of bloomed out fluff, like Persian kittens ripe for the picking.

Once home, I shoveled all the walkways, warmed my hands on a hot cup of lemon and honey. I didn’t know what to make for dinner so I settled for snacking on vegetables, hummus and a thick slice of homemade bread. Eventually, I poured a glass of hearty red wine, walked into the living room, laid down on the thick sheepskin that covers the red sofa, spread a quilt my grandmother made over the length of my legs, and read until I was sleepy. The rose in my cheeks lasted until the next morning.

And so, another day was spent.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: idaho, winter

January 1, 2013 by The Noisy Plume

A quick lesson from Honky Tonk Tater Tot on how to greet the new year:

Leap up, as high as your legs can lift you, into thin air. Grasp the flittering hope and potential that is suspended there in pure, orbicular, shining white.
Take it in your hands, take it in your teeth, scatter it in one million crystalline refractions that tell of the promise each day holds — the perfect promise of beginning, again, and again, with every new day you meet and live: unfurling, jubilance, the light of hope, the grace of God. When you hit the ground, hit the ground running. When it gets to living, live fully. Every moment. A new year is for the taking. Each day is for the taking. There’s no time to lose.

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Love, peace, and joy to you all in 2013!

May your faces shine with hope and happiness! I can’t wait to unfold this year with you.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2013/01/01/5566/

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: honky tonk tater tot, idaho, winter

To Hug A Doug And Other Things

December 22, 2012 by The Noisy Plume

I was out on the land this afternoon, decompressing, wading through the spring creeks, shuffling through the snows, relaxing in the aspen groves, sidling up side hills, snaggling my wool tights on sagebrush, hugging on my very favorite Douglas fir tree. It was just what I needed. When I rolled back down the mountain into town, I felt restored, less tired, re-young. Are you ready for Christmas now? I’m never ready for Christmas. Perhaps this is one of the secret themes of Christmas — unreadiness. Unreadiness but willingness. Unreadiness and willingness and perhaps miracles too — if you still believe in miracles and the impossible, that is. I’m like a child that way. I always believe in the impossible. Miracles, too. Sometimes everything comes true.

I bet you are huddled up under a quilt on your couch in the living room, sniffing the swirling scent of your Christmas tree (douglas fir? balsam fir? pine?), sipping egg nog or an herbal tea or a fine glass of merlot, knitting, thinking about the winding down of another year of life, thinking about the crazy things going on in our world, thinking about the beautiful things going on in our world, thinking about the steady battle between darkness and light that takes place constantly around us on so many different levels. Thinking about grace, mercy, love, hope and joy! Wondering if you’re going to have to shovel the sidewalk in the morning. Wondering if your flight is going to be canceled. Wondering if you’re going to have to spend the night in a cheap hotel in Reno, Nevada (…oops…that’s what I’m wondering…darn that Donner Pass over the Sierra Nevada…). Daydreaming about what is to come, what has now passed, where you are headed, where you are coming from. Maybe you’re reading a beautiful book. Maybe you’re rubbing the belly of a cat. What a beautiful night it is, right? These Christmas nights. They’re all a twinkle. I think I have a tiny, tapered candle lit in my very soul…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: christmas, idaho, winter