More pictures of snow.

I walked home late one night, the streets muffled, the plows not yet out. I stood in the middle of the road and looked toward town, watching the snow fall in the yellow globe of streetlight. It was like a movie; too soft and slow to be real. Turning ahead toward home, toward the darkness where the streetlights end, the tree branches that normally block the starlight were catching snow instead -- elder giants holding armloads of it above my head, protecting me, it felt like, but also threatening to dump a shower of frozen crystals down my back should I displease them. The sidewalk was bulged and distorted from the tree roots, the houses dark. The air was so fresh it hurt. 

It snowed all night, and the next day too, and the world became like a dream.

 

The road home last weekend through Curecanti National Recreation Area, near Gunnison, Colo.

Blue Mesa all dreamy and Arctic-looking

The lacy branches across the street, as seen from my bedroom window

Snow crystals clinging to a fence while I shovel the walk

Snow-encased sentinels at 11,000 feet

Snowboarding at Crested Butte on Sunday

my last day in durango.

 

All day today I'd planned on going to the gym with Margaret, because my "Welcome to Durango" packet had included a free pass and I needed the exercise. But after many hours at home pretending to be a writer while actually wasting vast amounts of time online, Margaret showed up and we decided that happy hour downtown sounded far more appealing than a session at the gym. It was a good choice. One cocktail led to another, and eventually I found myself walking home happily buzzed through the warm, friendly streets of Durango.

I saw Willie sitting in front of the Bookcase, in the same place where I'd met him a couple weeks ago. He's a local homeless musician, and he reminds me of my Dad, though I doubt my Dad would take kindly to the comparison. After meeting Willie for the first time, I felt so bad for him and at the same time liked him so much that I thought about bringing him some cookies or a card on Father's Day, since his own daughters have cut off all ties with him. But one thing led to another, and I never did.

Tonight Willie and I shared a cigar and he told me with a humble openness about his alcoholism, the 30 years he spent drunk without a hangover, and the four heart attacks and three strokes that have since straightened him out. People walked by and smiled and said hello, and I wondered if it looked odd, me sitting on a bench with this gnarly bearded guy who looks like a worn-down cowboy. But there's no denying that regardless of his age or socioeconomic class, he's good company. Talking with him satisfies some unspoken need; it eases the guilt I feel for being thousands of miles away from the barstool where I know my own father is sitting, the man who loves my company so much and would do anything for me except stop his own suffering.

It's not only guilt that makes me stop and sit with Willie, but enjoyment, too, the pleasure of knowing that my company has the power to make an old man so damn happy; the pleasure of knowing that I have all the time in the world this evening to stop and chat; the pleasure that I somehow strangely get from hanging out with fascinating old guys I've met in my travels. Maybe it is weird. Maybe I should be more cautious.

I'm sure that's what many people in my life would tell me: be more careful, Krista. There's no need to befriend these strangers. But there are others, I hope, who see things the way I do, who believe that intuition is a thing to be trusted, that risk is inherent in everything we do, and that spreading compassion and learning about somebody else's life is sometimes worth a little bit of risk.

I walked home a few more blocks, just as dusk was turning to dark, ran into a couple more friends, talked with them for a bit, walked on. Said hello to people sitting on their porches or walking by with their dogs, partners, friends or kids. Looked in the glowing windows of houses, as I do at this time of day, and imagine the lives lived inside. Wearing a skirt and tank top, I was perfectly warm, skin caressed, feeling safe and cared for and content in this little town where I've been living. Thank you, universe, for giving me this place, this life, these people. Tomorrow I move again -- north to Paonia. 

Alaska journal, part 2

Dug this out of my journal from the summer, back when I was in Alaska.
 

4 August

Another month, another program. I forget what it was like, to not be fully absorbed in your job, to not live, eat and breathe it. In a way, it is too consuming: I have little time or inclination to write or be creative. That part of me falls away as easily as a label peeled off a bottle, and I wonder whether I have the self discipline to conjure it back up when I leave. Do I need the structure of a writing job to live the life of a writer, or can it be like flipping a switch: wilderness guide one week, writer the next? How are these two parts of me conjoined, and where do they diverge? Most importantly, how can I connect them?

On the other hand, it is a blessing to be fully present in each moment. I am absorbed by the girls in this program, the guide team, the group, the expeditions, the daily tasks and routines – every piece of it requires my undivided attention until the extraneous thoughts drift away into the cobwebbed corners of my mind. Today I was doing paperwork and looked at the date – 8.4.12 – and had to pause to consider how unreal is seems. Has it really been nine months since my heart was stomped on like a burning cigarette on a cold night? Now, days pass and I hardly think of him except with a twinge of regret that it wasn't what I'd hoped it would be. But I am glad to be here and doing this again, and glad to have the freedom afterward to go anywhere, do anything.

14 August

Time, as usual, flies, and I have little of it to spare for writing. Two guides and five kids is a demanding ratio, and in the evenings I like to sit and talk with Jesse. But there is so much I wish I could write down, because I know that without writing, it will become lost. It is not the words that count, looking back at it years later, but the act of writing itself, as if sitting and making yourself aware of where you are and what it smells and tastes and feels like is more important than the words themselves. I remember being about 9 years old and sitting behind a dresser, writing in my diary while cookies baked in the kitchen. I wrote about school that day, but what I remember most is the moment I put pen to paper: the smells of Christmastime, the grey slush outside the window, the toys on the floor. We cut and paste together our lives in this way, words and old photographs coalescing until we develop stories, memories, explanations, selves. 

Last week, we attempted to hike 3,700-foot Mount Etolin and made it to approximately 1,300 feet, or roughly one mile in four days of hiking. Since there was no chance of summiting, we were able to come down a day early and dry out at the floathouse: we were soggy to the core, filthy and stinky. All the girls got their periods at once and I didn't pack nearly enough tampons, and everyone was drenched to their socks and underwear within the first hour of hiking. How to possibly describe such rank wetness, with no dry place to escape to? We slogged through mud, slept in wet sleeping bags, hung wet clothes from our bodies. It was one big fat bucket of suck, and yet, there were moments: bending over with a 70-lb pack on to lean on my trekking pole and noticing how alive the forest floor is, how much life thrives in the wetness that drives humans away. Hair-like worms waving, centipedes skittering under leaf litter, tiny spiders and beetles and nameless insects crawling and dangling and jumping. Everything fetid, fecund, alive; growing, rotting, struggling to carry on.

And let us not forget the black flies. The hoards of no-see-ums that erupted fro the muskeg pools upon our arrival, enlivened by the first human prey they'd likely seen in their brief, miserable lives. They dropped into our food by the hundreds, flung themselves into our eyes, noses and ears; invaded our tents and brains and sanity. Let us not forget them.

Then today, for the first time in 20 days, we awoke to sunshine. Beautiful beach, fire, dry everything. We are on the move agin, circumnavigating Etolin Island. I move my home every night, carrying what I need from the canoe to the woods, setting up my tarp and sleeping bag again and again under different trees, in different forests – all different and all, somehow, the same.

17 August

I'm sitting on the long flat-rock beach of South Etolin Island, watching the tide creep closer to my feet. We are staying here for three days for reflection time, and it is nice to rest from the rigors of expedition. The embers of the morning cook fire crackle and the occasional salmon throws itself out of the water and lands on its side with a smack. Ravens fan the air with their heavy wingbeat and, as in a Grateful Dead song, the eagles fill the sky – four adults and two juveniles swooping back and forth, dropping feathers along the beach. The woods are like a park here – flat and mossy ground under a canopy of widely spaced cedars and ancient spruces. The sun is shining and the sky is blue for the fourth unbelievable day in a row, and I'm living in shorts and a tank top. Life is grand. I do not doubt for a second that returning here was the right decision, that ending a two-year relationship and quitting the lodge were all right in some roundabout way and that this is the track my life is going to take: wandering, loopy and beautifully unpredictable.

The water is a flat powder blue with ripples of electric teal wavering toward the rim of sky. The sky itself is wide and blue and the horizon is a haze of blue mountaintops and blue islands. It is a whole landscape painted in shades of blue, a blue that is alive, flecked with silver and light, always changing.

Later – Walking back from across the long beach at twilight, Jesse's figure as he stoops by the water to wash the dinner pot is striking – a lone silhouette against an enormous backdrop of sky and ocean. It is sometimes easy to forget, being part of a group all the time, that we are essentially the only people on these distant, scattered beaches; that we alone make these untouched islands our home. I am more comfortable walking barefoot across this beach with a drom of water collected from the creek than I am on any city street. Stumps and trees and rocks become my landmarks. It is not a life I want to live forever, but I will always miss the simplicity of gathering water from a stream, cooking over a fire and sleeping under a tree.

“There are no unsacred places – only sacred places, and desecrated places.” – Wendell Berry 

 

water power

There used to be a boardwalk. Now it is closed off, rotting, ridden with holes and plastered in slippery leaves. It has been raining for three days now, really raining, the kind of rain that can only occur in a place that receives upwards of seven meters of rain a year. Three days ago the sky opened up and water began pouring out of it in the way it might during a tropical afternoon storm or a monsoon – a kind of rain that comes quickly and leaves a short while later. But this rain doesn't leave. It continues unabated for days.

On Monday, having played board games, baked, done yoga, ate and watched moves for far too long, we gear up. Everyone digs out the most protective, waterproof combination they can find. I wear my dry suit, neoprene booties, neoprene gloves, a neoprene balaclava and my diving mask. Then we pile into the back of the van and drive to Bowen Falls.

At 160 meters tall, Lady Bowen Falls is three times higher than Niagra Falls. It's fed by a glacier, but the sheer mountains surrounding it lack soil and thus do not absorb rainwater, so when it rains hard like this, Bowen floods quickly. The mountains funnel rainwater into an ever-swelling river that churns through an alpine valley, then shoots like a firecracker into the sky before dropping over a ledge the height of a 50-story building.

Bowen Falls is not only a magnificent example of hydrology, it also supplies the community of Milford Sound with drinking water and electricity. About 150 people live in Milford Sound, and every time one of us flushes a toilet, drinks a glass of water or takes a shower, we are using pure, untreated glacier melt-off that has been locked up in ice for 30,000 years. Humans arrived in New Zealand 800 years ago, so the water coming off Bowen Falls has never before touched another human being. This astounds me. In London, they say, the water coming from the tap has already been cycled through eight people.

We're lucky here. Not only because we can turn on the tap and drink glacier water (as well as brew beer from it), but because when it rains hard and there is no work and the one road into this place is closed off due to rock slides, we venture into the most raw, wild display of nature I have ever imagined. We can go under Bowen Falls while it is flooding.

I've known this for weeks. I think I'm ready. I've been warned to cover every possible piece of skin. I'm expecting it to be intense.

But nothing can prepare me for the reality of it. We pile out of the van – seven of us, five kayak guides and two friends – and walk along a narrow, crumbling piece of asphalt, the start of the old trail. On one side is the loamy, pulsing ocean; on the other, a cliff dripping with ferns, sphagnum moss and rivulets of water. We reach a solid metal gate and climb over it, like teenagers sneaking onto the football field at night. The boardwalk on the other side curves against the ocean for a while, then disappears into the forest. As we follow it deeper toward the falls, water becomes the only sound. Rain pelts the leaves and splatters into a forest that has become swampland practically overnight.

The wind picks up as we approach. Bowen Falls creates its own winds, gusting over 100 kilometers per hour at its base. Trees become gnarled bonsais, their branches and trunks swept away from the falls and frozen in fantastic shapes as if reaching their arms toward the sea in a plea for help, a desperate attempt to get away from this reckless display of power.

Then there is nothing. Even with a diving mask, I cannot see anything but driving water against a backdrop of gray. I can hardly breathe; I must constantly spit out mouthfuls of water. There is no sound but the roar of the falls. I concentrate only on putting one foot in front of the other, battling against the force of the wind, leaning into it with all my weight, trying not to lose sight of Ricki's orange jacket somewhere ahead. At some point, the boardwalk ends, and we struggle on. Often the wind knocks us over and we sit, clutching tussocks of grass, helping each other crawl forward. We cannot talk or see each other's faces, aware only of the vague blurs of color and groping hands that we know belong to fellow human beings.

The force of the wind and water is overwhelming, breathtaking, astonishingly powerful. It is like intense heat or cold: impossible to describe until you've felt it for yourself. I feel like there should be a TV camera on me, like I am a foolish meteorologist risking life and limb to deliver a report from the middle of a hurricane. But there are no cameras. There isn't even the sensation of wetness anymore. Everything else drops away until there is only the rush of adrenaline coursing through our veins and the understanding that for all our bravo, mother nature is able to knock us and anything we build swiftly and surely on its ass. 

 (Above: Bowen Falls when it's decidedly NOT in flood.)

 (Above: Paddling under 150-meter Stirling Falls as it empties into the ocean.)

Hiking Grace Ridge

The alpine ground is warm where it's free of snow, but two inches above it the wind blows steadily, sweeping the snowfields clean. We aren't very high -- about 1,500 feet -- but on these jagged, nascent peaks rising straight from sea level, it feels like being on top of the world. Wind is the only sound. Patches of light and shadow slide over the snowfields. Delicate alpine flowers seem to brace themselves against the cold, growing despite the wind, teased from the earth by the lingering sun. I sit on a patch of lichen-covered earth surrounded by hills of snow, while on another bare patch, not far away, a marmot suns himself, occasionally casting a glance my way. A pair of ptarmigan startle from behind a rock, explosions of white against the sky.

No matter the elevation -- 1,500 feet or 14,000 -- the alpine zone is hushed, reverential, a place you feel you ought to speak in a whisper; a place where miniature flowers withstand the harshest, most inhospitable winds but the single fall of a hiking boot may wreak irreparable damage.

"Truly, we live in those long-ago times people will talk fondly of." (John A. Murray)

Rainy day

 

I am getting soft.

When it rains, I watch the drops pattern the gray sky from behind a window. I sip tea, warm and dry and comfortable. I cannot bring myself to get up and run outside, to conjure joy from discomfort. What would compel me, when I am so comfortable in here? It is more than comfort. It is complacency. Now that I have the choice, I only go out on the sunny days, when the water is calm, when conditions are fair. But there is a part of me that rebels. What joy is there in being apart from the weather? Force me outside in the cold rain! Make me ride my bike in it, spray flying in my wake. I want to arrive with soaking hair, shoulders steaming, face flushed. I want to drop my head to the pillow at night, muscles tired. Make me paddle in it, my boat slicing through the clouds, rain dripping from my hood, fingertips raw. Make me hike in the mud, in the snow, until water soaks my socks. Give me anything, Lord, I'll take whatever you throw at me, but not complacency. Not this. 

Traveling

April 20, 2012.

“There is a time for departure, even when there's no certain place to go.” – Tennessee Williams

Denver, 4 p.m.

This is how I travel. I am sitting on a bench in downtown Denver surrounded by a mountain of luggage – the old green suitcase that I took to the Marshall Islands years ago; the dirty, fraying backpack I bought for $100 on a streetcorner in Missoula; the giant duffel I carried to Hawaii. My life is in these bags – and yet, it's not. Anyone passing by could easily snatch one, and my life would continue, this great journey that belongs to me and me alone. I do not doubt that there will be someone with whom I will share it for a good long stretch right down the middle, but in the beginning and in the end, it is solely mine. There are stories and moments and memories that reside only in my own body. I try to write some of them down, and many others I share as I travel over this earth, along its highways and through its maze of cities, up canyons and ridges, down rivers and seas. I meet so many people along the way. We pass in and out of each others' lives like planets spinning in orbit, intersecting at precise moments in space. When I travel I call up these old friends, and they pick up me and my luggage and we go places and do things and talk about where we were when we first crossed paths and where it is we hope to go. They shuttle me between each other, these friends of mine who live in the same city and yet do not know each other except through their connection to me. Six degrees of separation. I travel without a schedule, without plans. The roads sweep me up and drop me in places I never expected. I find myself sitting in downtown Denver among tall glass buildings mirroring the sun, scribbling in my notebook and watching the people who walk by, each of us wanting the same things but taking different roads to get there, some of us smiling at each other, some looking straight ahead; some in pairs, others alone, none of us knowing quite where we will be when we wake up tomorrow morning.

In the glass wall of the bus station I see an image of myself, dissected by the square panes of glass: a pile of luggage and a girl sitting next to it with a notebook and pen, a river of cars streaming behind her. 

paddling

The water is colorless. It is neither blue nor gray nor aquamarine, and yet all those colors dance across its surface. It is not color but light, sparkling and alive, tossed up by the wind and lit by the sun playing in the clouds. The bow of my kayak bounces in the waves and the salt water splashes on my face and I dip my paddle into the sea again and lick my lips. They taste like ocean. I strain against the wind and the water, entwined with both. There is nothing but this endless plain of light, no sound but the gulls reeling overhead, and I am so happy to be back on the water.

Elephant Canyon

I have been sleeping again in the cold, open air, body curled warm in my sleeping bag, face open to the sky, crisp air filling my lungs. My deepest sleep came in Elephant Canyon, with the hush of the desert settled over us, the moon rising over hoodoo rocks, all the world silent except for the wind and the sand and the stars. At Windwhistle, our tent nestled against red rock mesa, I woke to the soft brush of snow against the tent, the whoo-ing of an owl in a pinyon pine. Later, back in Fort Collins, I slept outside still, choosing the futon on a friend's back deck over the indoor couch, trading the muted desert soundscape for traffic passing and the distant call of the midnight train as it crossed the plains and began its ascent into the Rocky Mountains.

"Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own"

I love poetry all by itself, but there's nothing like setting a poem to music to give it that elusive quality that sticks to your soul. Here are some of the most beautiful poem-songs I know, but I'm sure there are so many more out there, and I would love if you shared some of yours with me.

• Railroad Earth, by Railroad Earth (Their masterpiece, it always bring tears to my eyes.)
• Angel from Montgomery (I'm actually partial to the Old Crow Medicine Show version, but the original John Prine does it for me too. Definitely not Bonnie Raitt's take.)
• The Wild Hunt, by The Tallest Man on Earth (The singer's voice is grating at first, but it grows on you.)
• Helpless, by Neil Young (I like the Unplugged version – just Neil and a piano.)
• Furr, by Blitzen Trapper (Less musically beautiful than the others, perhaps, but I'm in love with the lyrical image of a boy turning into a wolf.)
• Shine on You Crazy Diamond, by Pink Floyd (Oh, those opening chords. They remind me of sitting on a forgotten beach under a sky full of glittering diamonds.)
• Brokedown Palace or Terrapin Station (Grateful Dead, and I must specify the version from Dead Set for the former. Both examples of Robert Hunter's lyrical genius.)
• I Quit My Job, by Old Man Leudecke (For the longest time, I had this song on my playlists and didn't know who it was. Then a friend with an iPhone showed me how to magically find information related to any song just by having the phone “listen” to a clip of it. Technology amazes me.)

That's all I can think of for now. Those are the songs that make my heart sing. 

winter reading

Recommended reading (and watching) to get you in mood for snow, ice and sub-zero temps:

• Cold: Adventures in the World's Frozen Places, by Bill Streever
• Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival, by Berndt Heinrich
• The Long Winter, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Two in the Far North, by Margaret Murie
• Tracking and the Art of Seeing, by Paul Rezendes
• The Stars, the Snow, the Fire, by John Haines
• Wandering Through Winter, by Edwin Way Teale
• Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing
• BBC's Planet Earth: Ice Worlds
• BBC's Human Planet: the Arctic
• Encounters at the End of the World, a Warner Herzog film

Addendum: I would be remiss not to include Farley Mowat, Robert Service,  Jack London or Barry Lopez. The list goes on and on.

Telescopes atop Mauna Kea, the highest point in Hawaii and one of the best star-watching sites in the world. About 13,800 feet of the mountain rises above the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean, but measured from its base on the ocean floor, Mauna Kea in its entirety stands more than 33,000 feet -- 4,000 feet higher than Mount Everest. Adam and I hitchhiked to the summit, slid down the volcanic slopes on our boogie boards, then spent the night camped on the beach, with the snowcapped peak in the distance. Ancient Hawaiians held contests in which men would race nearly 14,000 feet to the top of the mountain, grab a handful of snow, and try to make it back to sea level before the snow had melted. Altitude sickness? What altitude sickness?

 From my Marshall Islands journal.

This is a time I love, when it's grown too dark to read but not to see, when the palms are feathery black silhouettes and the entire world is painted in watercolor shades of purple and blue. The wind carries away sound, its rushing like the muffled silence of a good snowfall. Behind me, I know, babies are crying and lives are bring lived, but here on the edge of the lagoon there is only clouds and sky and ocean and a lone white star. And the eternal wind. When evening sets like this I can feel it wash over me like the colors washing the sky. 

These are the rare moments when living on a tropical island is how I imagined it would be, clean and gently swaying in a hammock while trash fires burn in the jungle and wisps of smoke drift from cookhouses. I sit with my toes in the sand until it grows dark, until the river of stars in the night sky fuses seamlessly with the water and I find myself sitting in the middle of a giant glittering bowl, held in the center of a transparent globe of stars. The waves are lapping softly against the shore, just a whisper of sound, the air a warm caress against my skin. Then, in the distance, a flash, followed by a second. Dark clouds spread over the stars like inkspots seeping onto cloth. Lighting flashes again and again, pulsing from deep within the gathering masses of darkness, illuminating the cavernous clouds. Soon, the rain will come, pounding against the metal roof, running in rivulets down the walls, soaking the grateful earth. Sometimes I think I will wake up and this will all have been a dream.

mornings

 

Now, I wake up early and straightaway pick up poop off my living room floor, and then I make a mug of steaming tea or coffee (depending on how much sleep I've gotten) and walk out into the frozen morning. I wear my big rubber boots and Goretex shell and I walk up the big grassy field, then through the brushy, thorny field and into the pine woods, snow crunching underfoot. The dogs stay close by, looking up at me for direction, their eyebrows raised. Pilar is docile and timid, with eyes like liquid honey. She looks like a black, silky-coated retriever. Roxy, a sweet little hound mix, is unafraid. They trot by my heels, not wanting to let me out of their sight in this strange, snowy place where they've suddenly found themselves after a long trip from South Carolina. We rove over fields and woods that are ever more ravaged by some unseen saw. Grouse rise up flustered in front of us, chickadees chase each other in the low pines, and the sun, depending on the day, gradually lightens the gray sky or burns off the clouds and bursts through the trees, and the church bell in the distant village tolls eight times.

Here's a link to my VPR interview:

http://www.vpr.net/news_detail/93215/regional-report-bill-would-allow-medical-marijuana/

And yes, I mispronounced stymied. Hope that doesn't stymie my chance for future interviews! nyuknyuk

heartache in the second person

As you grow older, the loneliness becomes different, the silence of the house as noticeable as a baby crying. This is the tradeoff you have made. You thought you could be different, you thought you could have it all, and so you refused to settle for the hometown boy, the easy catch, the certainty and commitment that comes so easily to some people. You wanted more. There would be romance and risk and adventure, the kind of life one could write about, but you believed too that in the end there would be a deep and abiding love. You were driven by some great unspoken need to prove – to whom? – that you were strong and independent and interesting. You didn't realize when you set off down this path that independence sometimes means loneliness; that strength is a double-edged sword; that you can't have one thing without giving up another. You didn't realize that you cannot be an artist or a poet without suffering, and that sometimes, the suffering is self-inflicted and yet cannot be stopped.

For a while, getting on a plane or staring down the barrel of an open highway seemed like the answer. But you cannot run away from this life you've chosen. It's no better a way to stave off loneliness than having a baby at 16. And though you feel bold and confident, now -- most of the time -- you are as vulnerable as any 16-year-old girl when you are in love. So when another heartache carves out a sliver of your resolve and optimism with the precision of a surgeon's blade, you hold your head high and pack your bags, hoping that someday, someone will want to go with you. You look out the window, your eyes alone seeing what's on the other side. 

birds.

     The school is a low cement building with railroad car rooms, one classroom after another, palm-sized spiders on the walls, geckos behind the tattered hand-me-down books. In my memory of this moment, I'm teaching sixth grade. What are we studying? Was it the English words for animals?      

     “Bird,” I say, pointing to a drawing of a bluebird.

      “Bird,” the class repeats. But that's too convenient.

      There's a commotion. The kids jump up and run to the open-air windows, crowd at the door to see. I stand in their way, keeping them inside.

      Outside, on the clay basketball court, a group of students cluster around something. They throw it into the sky, a blur of white, and it falls, spiraling. What is it? I wonder, squinting.

It's a bird, a sea-faring bird with sharply angled wings made for gliding, pure white feathers marred by a red gash. One of the boys, skipping class, had knocked it out of the sky with a single, well-placed rock and ran back to school to show off his fine work.

      Everyone takes advantage of this unexpected distraction. The teachers lean against the wall in the shade making small talk, and I watch in horror as the children take turns grabbing the tropicbird by its one intact wing, swinging it and flinging it high into the air. Where it belongs. But it comes spiraling down to the earth again and again, a white body streaked with red. It lands hard on the concrete, still alive.

      My sixth grade students are indignant that I won't let them join in the fun. They mutter as they file back to their desks.

      Do I get used to the violence, after six months on this island? Do I get used to the sight of a sea turtle tied to a palm tree, bleeding and gasping soundlessly in the sand, flies landing on its eyes, children poking it with sticks? The sight of a dog getting kicked?

    Maybe I do. My skin becomes leathery, calloused. But one afternoon, Junior walks up to me with his own tough brown hands held out, closed like a flower in bud. When he opens them, a tiny brown bird is revealed, cupped in his palms.

      No heavier than a ping-pong ball, it was robbed from its precarious nest in a swaying palm tree, eighty feet up but not high enough to be safe from the curiosity of eight-year-old boys who could climb a greased pole. Stolen, this weightless bird with shiny black eyes and a long curved beak is a thing to be treasured.

      Two hours later I peek in the box I've left it in.

      Empty.

      I walk outside, puzzled, apprehensive. And there is two-year-old Capital, a feathered neck clenched in his sticky fist, while his mother praises him in a cooing tone for wringing the neck of a baby bird.

      I pry his fingers open, cradle the bird. Capital and his mother watch in surprise. The bird's head hangs from its little body like it's attached with a rubber band; a rubber band that snaps and recoils as I bring a machete down swiftly, blood spurting across the table where we'll eat dinner.

      No, I'm not used to this.

Blinking cursor,
you are but a blip on this vast plain of glowing white,
you mean nothing to me!

bloom where you're planted.

Worked hard at the newspaper all day, then came home and wandered down to the river to swim. On the way back, picked berries in the straggly sumac woods, collected eggs and closed the chickens up for the night, and harvested bunches of salad greens, snap peas and radishes. Then ate a big salad for dinner and sat in the hammock swing on the front porch trying to play banjo.

There are times when the grass always seems a few shades greener somewhere else. As much as I loved working in the wilderness and enjoyed the transient, vegabonding life that accompanied it, my journal entries from those times consistently express a longing for constancy, to have the time to read and write, to have a garden and room for creativity; to learn about beekeeping and wood working and putting food by. To sleep in a bed and have a kitchen.

Now I have all those things, and I spend hours in front of my computer or behind the wheel of my car longing again for the wild, open places; the simplicity of carrying everything you own and need in a single load; the camaraderie and adventure and sheer exhilaration of being alive. I plot how I can leave this behind and be there again.

But then, too, there are times like this evening when I'm completely content where I am.

*Bloom where you're planted* KB said to me yesterday as we finished our beers, sitting above a waterfall at a perfect wooded swimming hole. It was dusk, and the air was hazy, the light slanting just right. I'd never heard that phrase before.

Around 2:30 in the morning, the sky pales to a starless dusky purple. This isn't a change I witness. At 2:30 a.m. I'm soundly asleep, though I unconsciously hide from the rising sun, draw my head deeper into my warm sleeping bag, creating a layer of condensation that smells like morning breath. But after a solid week of rain, a bad smell has to be particularly potent to get noticed.

When I thrust my head out of my sleeping bag, there are no tent walls between me and this drenched forest dripping with moisture and birdsong, the drumming of grouse echoing through ravines, the presence of the vast northern ocean just over a hummock. 

Amazingly, it's not raining. Sunlight filters through the trees, through my translucent tarp strung between cedars. I'm nestled between these great towering trees and the trunks of those that have fallen, my face inches from a massive, mossy log smelling of dirt. I've slept cradled against it as it slowly crumbles back into the ground and new saplings send shoots off its loamy remains. I'm surrounded by generations of trees, below and above, some growing and some decaying.

If fecundity has a smell, it is the smell of the morning air here. My face is inches from the ground, inches from a thick carpet of moss littered with twigs and sprigs of cedar. There is something wonderful about sleeping on this springy ground without a tent and waking with my face so close to the earth. Staying in my fetid sleeping bag just a minute longer, I inhale not its scent but that of the moss draped over everything in this oversized forest. Moss that has absorbed centuries of rain and salty marine air. It is saturated, steaming, sending the moisture back up again. I awake, and I am immediately part of this primordial land – like everything else that has fallen into it, it has absorbed me. 

the beginning.

Here's my goal for this blog: write and post a minimum of 600 thoughtfully crafted words at least once a week, and also post photos, projects, ideas, snippets and other enticing bits more frequently. Maybe if I write this goal down and put it out to the world it'll be more likely to happen.