Season of Fruitfulness: A Morning Walk

Season of Fruitfulness: A Morning Walk

Earlier today, Rhiannon and I took a little walk up the wash looking for acorns and cherries. It was beautiful canyon morning with mist lingering along the cliffs and mountaintops, as the river sang loudly from between its banks. We’ve been receiving generous amounts of rain each night and the river has been slowly rising in accord with the added precipitation. Rhiannon skipped ahead of me, barefoot and delighted with the weather, the prospect of cherries and life itself. She’s such an infectious little thing, I swear I gave birth to faerie creature! She was skipping so fast though, that I didn’t manage to get any non-blurry picture of her.    ~ The Goldenrod is going strong, and today I harvested a couple armfuls for oil and tincture....

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Home Again

Home Again

Home again, no thanks to the insane traffic and almost getting smushed between a semi-truck and trailer with an exploding tire on the interstate. About the time part of the exploding tire bounced off my windshield and the rest of it slammed into my front bumper, I was really ready to never see a highway or a city ever again. Once I got past Socorro and was heading back into the mountains that form the entry to the Gila though, I was able to relax enough to enjoy the incredibly long sunset that colored Horse Springs a rich shade of lavender and made the Sunflowers glow gold as the setting sun. Lightning spiked the earth to the east, and the clouds rolled over me as I sped southward and home. Here in the Canyon things are vivid green, the ground is moist and the...

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Late Summer Sweetness

Late Summer Sweetness

Mornings are cool, with a breeze that rises from the river and sings through the Pines. The sun comes up lazy and slow to peer through drifting clouds and Oak branches. Yellow flowers abound, the tiny gold stars of Wild Lettuce and the rolling curves of Mullein blooms. I sit in the river and let the current roll around me, listen to the water talk to me. Days like this, I just listen, and let all my words empty out into the sparkling sand. Sometimes, it’s better to be without the words, to allow poetry to be what it is: wild, deep and wordless. A few days ago, five of us wandered up the arroyo to gather Beebalm and Evening Primrose – Darcey and I stopping to taste nearly every little Artemisia plant and Ptelea tree. There’s so much richness right...

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First Monsoon

First Monsoon

It finally happened! The oppressive heft of rain waiting to happen broke though into a gentle, unsteady storm that’s been coming and going all afternoon and evening. The season is still building, and fullblown torrential downpours are somewhere in the near future. And now we’ll even be able to breathe without all the smoke hanging over the house. I am pleased to report that the plants are VERY happy about this shift, despite the onslaught of pea sized hail that bombarded them a little earlier. In a break between showers, Loba and I grilled elk kebabs (in Indonesian marinade yum) over a sweet little fire burned down to glowing coals. And then we all sat in the sand in the stone circle and ate elk, onions, sweet peppers and squash with our fingers. It...

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Fire & Flood: Finding Balance in the Extremes

Every afternoon the clouds roll in, and every evening the smoke fills the air. It’s a thick haze that smells like charred Juniper and melted Pine sap, and turns the sunset a rusty gold. There are fires burning fiercely a hundred miles away in several different directions, and the late afternoon winds bring us a visceral reminder of how close one hundred miles really is. The rains may come any day, and the old people in the village anxiously scan the skies every so often, praying the clouds thicker and darker. Willing rain to wet the dusty ground. Welcome to New Mexico: land of enchantment and wellspring of both fire and flood. There’s no gentle in between here, no “it’s all good” drone of mediocrity or absent minded mercy from place...

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On the Wings of the Solstice: Monsoon Season

There are fat, dark rainclouds crowding the sky and laying out shadows of birds and junipers and Rhiannon on the swing, long legs pumping the air. Monsoons are coming, and in spite of the work it means, I pray for a wide river and sweet, muddy ground. Thunder rumbles and shakes the air, and tells the stories of this place — tells of the rhythm and ways of cliff-face, thorns and forest. Part of my morning has been spent chipping old caulk from the frames of broken windows. They need to be stripped clean so that new glass can be put in before the rains fall. A village friend came in to help us with chainsawing up some deadwood and brought us some delicious local sirloin steaks. And now I’m working away at the surprisingly large pile of emails in the...

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