An October Night’s Walk: Artifacts, Roots & Wanderings

An October Night’s Walk: Artifacts, Roots & Wanderings

Walking the river just now means sinking to my calves in cold sweet mud, every step releasing the earthy aroma of clay. It’s blue-grey and slippery, the primal beauty that so many hundreds, thousands of ancient pots and vessels were made of right here in the cnayon. We have some of the remnants, broken jugs and a thousand potsherds, both painted and plain, all still imbued with the spirit of this place. Whenever I step into the slick puddles of wet clay each flood brings up I remember the ancient ones, the women shaping their lives with able hands, strong fingers finding the natural shape of each bit of earth and water. This recent flood was unexpected, the storm moving in quickly and pounding the canyon for 24 hours solid with hail, pouring rain and...

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Harvest Moon: The Letting Go

Harvest Moon: The Letting Go

Harvest Ramblings For the October Blogparty over at Gaia’s Gifts, hosted by Darcey Blue Nights are cold, and the big down comforter is already on the outdoor bed. Although we’ve been having occasional rains, the plants are withering from the cold, shrinking back to their earthen bed with alarming speed. We’re scrambling for the last of the acorns before the bugs and bears get them and all, and relishing the last batch of Sweet Clover pesto before it’s finally gone. The moon still seems to be spinning by far too quickly, the time passing in a whirlwind of leaves and falling flowers. For much of my life, this is the time of year I’ve chosen to move from place to place, wandering along with the change in the wind. Part of this is...

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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. This...

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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...

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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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