The Cahuilla Village site again, late March, days past equinox
flowers at twilight, dry, dead mesquite wood for the fire
potsherds, walk carefully, and flashlights for the possible rattlesnake,
yes, they are already out, it's been warm for many days
7 weeks ago, after winter wet storm, early February full moon
we were also here, working hard to start a fire
wood was damp, the soil moist, the night quickly grew cold
moon boldly full, coyote parties circling us, full throat
Last night, mustard grass weeds in front of the fire pit
and a stick insect, first one I've ever seen outdoors
we rescue him from the heat, in our hands, handfuls of stars
cupped by the dips of Santa Rosa Mountain Range
the north side of Martinez Canyon, ancient traverse of Indians.
These, some of the most rugged mountains in our state,
full of wild canyons and angry cactus, as if they say,
all you people, go away, this is the land of 120 degree summers.
Fishtraps nearby, and we site on a huge pile of sand, old beach,
ancient Lake Cahuilla, sleeping circles here, dogs howling
from cluster of nearby homes of Torres Martinez Indian Reservation
on the other side of the earthen dam, lights of Indio beyond
a nice way to spend a few hours on a Saturday evening
before tiptoeing back to my friend's ranch, the long drive
down Jackson Avenue through the last of the 100 year old
date palms crowding the narrow road almost to Hwy 111.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sitting by Water at Oasis+ Susan Lang + Horsethief Creek
This past Wednesday, finally feeling well, I took a private, short walk in the Coachella Valley Preserve and found a safe little place at the bottom of a short cliff to nestle in next to a trickle of water. As always, the flow, sound, rhtyhm and healing pulse of water in the middle of a desert oasis, shaded by fan palms and thick water grasses, was a miracle - as was and is the healing smooth of flowing water. Sitting in damp soil, legs crossed, meditating on water, and drawing small pictures in the sand, with pieces of stone and sticks, humming to myself. A good hour or more. So much transformation for which I was, and am, grateful. A fifteen minute drive and five minute walk from my house, which is situated in the middle of the desert on a former range of ancient sand dunes, now known as the Palm Desert Country Club.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went, perhaps a bit unwisely - I'd had a wisdom tooth pulled just 24 hours earlier - to to the area known as Pioneertown, north of and higher elevation than the town of Yucca Valley, in the high desert, about an hour's drive from my house. Destination: a beautiful private home nestled at 4,500 feet in the maw of a range of rocky ridges known as the Sawtooth Mountains for a literary event and reading by the wonderful desert writer Susan Lang. Susan grew up in Pipes Canyon on her mother's homestead, and has written a trilogy of books on her mother's life there - the most recent one, "Moon Lily," is recently published.
I have devoured all three, including the earlier books, "Juniper Blue" and "Small Rocks Rising." Although I had a crushing headache by the time I arrived - 5,000 foot elevation gain with a massive late-late-winter storm barreling in, compounded by my very recent and fairly traumatic oral surgery - I managed to connect instantly with Susan herself. We talked about desert writing, growing up in the remote high Mojave desert - as I did - and being community college English professors - she is at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ, where she also founded and ran the Hassayampa Writers workshop for 10 years. Susan was and is an amazing, charismatic person and I feel so grateful to have met her and talked for those 15-20 minutes, through my wisdom tooth headache, about writing, teaching, and.....the power of the desert and the role it's played in our lives and in our writing.
Before dinner even got started, I left the party, and my friend Caryn (who I'd picked up at the Canyon Coffee Shop in Yucca Valley en route) there, stumbled home with headache-galore, but with a new book in hand, which I consumed the next day while keeping company with one of the very intense windstorms we sometimes get here in the lower desert at this time of year, all palm fronds flying about, sand and dust blowing, and the howling contrast against the usual calm we experience most of the time.
And today, a perfect spring day, the pleasure of hiking to Horsethief Creek, in a canyon tucked into a fold of the Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the newly-designated Santa Rosa- San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. I haven't hiked there since last year at this time. In the ten years I've lived in Palm Desert, it's been a favorite - I've been there may ten times: with Tarah; with my parents; with my friend Kurt and the College of the Desert ecology club; with my friend Darlene; with a few other friends; and several times on solo excursions. This was the hike I had a real emergency on, four years ago, when I did the hike alone on too hot of a day, too fast on the way out, in May, and got heat exhaustion on the way out - and ended up going to the hospital for dehydration treatment. None of that today - blissful temps and a cool breeze, time spent sitting on a giant boulder mid-stream, time to go inward, rinse my Hindu prayer beads in the snowmelt water, and gather huge, open-handed expanses of sweet mountain sage.
The trail from the area known as Pinyon, situated about 1/3 of the way from Palm Desert and the mountain town of Idyllwild, to the creek itself, is a 2.5 mile up and down, 5 miles roundrip altogether, with more uphill on the way out - and it traverses amazing chapparal country at the 4,000-5,000 foot level - a mix of desert cacti, particularly beavertail cactus, agave, and arid, low mountain trees, particulary pinyon, and in the folds of several draws, and of course along Horsethief Creek, cottonwood, which today, were in early spring hallucinogenic green mode.
I went today on a whim. It must be spring cleaning of sorts. I have been through such intensity in the past six months of event and emotion and upheaval and change that I have developed a newfound compassion for myself, for others, and am supremely grateful for the beauties of spring. After weeks of exhaustion, sickness, malaise and the recent upper left wisdom tooth pull I've endured, this was a very welcome excursion. I paced myself, rested at the creek, and meditated as I walked.
The low desert has about maxed out on flowers. Our wildflower season begins as early as late January/early February and often is over by early or mid-March, depending on when we get our first cluster of 90 degree days. We've had a few warm ones this month, so the flowers are exiting already. However, we are so fortunate to have frequent and common elevation and climate change at our fingertips in this part of the world. The adjacent higher elevations are just now springing into full bounty. The drive up Highway 74 was magnificent, a quick rush through 7-level Hill and it's hairclip turns, from sea level to 4,000 feet in about 15 minutes - hillsides flush with yellow flowers, bright pink cactus blossoms, red ocotillo and Indian Paintbrush, purple lupine.
Sitting and relaxing on huge boulders on the creek was relaxng and rejuventating. In one place, I lay back and watched a light-shimmer that seemed almost like smoke emanate from a rock wall that rose hundreds of feet above the creek - and I could see many tough cactus plants growing sideways straight out of rock! There were mini waterfalls and beautiful water slides, and I ran my hands on smooth rock across the face of one such pale-pink-and-red rock fantasy, water rushing down its wide surface in a shallow skim. I also soaked my feet in a pool, and carefully and respectfully gathered sage - my usual place to do so - in fact, some of the big clusters I collected are now scenting my entire house - I've laid them out to dry on the kitchen counter. I only select sage in years of water abundance, and this year the usual plants I visit seemed to be doing well.
I was concerned, however, that with the recently published map of the monument, the area has shown drastic increase of usage even since last year. Today, a weekday, I counted 23 other hikers, one in a group of 16 - I've never seen more than 4 or 5 other people on that hike, ever. And, the area heading upstream from the creek crossing actually has a fairly worn footpath now, something I never saw before. The blessing/bane mix of a new national monument - more protection = more people and, so often, a great, little known place being loved to death. This had been, heretofore, strictly a "locals" place, and now, it's obvious it's getting quite well known to others.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for this healing landscape and geography, for the people in my life - with all of the ups and downs that many of them bring to me as I grow in awareness and continue to emerge from my longtime "privacy" shell, a longtime defense mechanism, and reach out more and more to people in my actions, in my phone calls and emails, in my shared hikes, and in my growing sense of compassion - as never before, I take the risk to build new friendships in ways that are more meaningful to me than the ways I used to take people much more for granted; I reconstruct old friendships and find ways to heal and soothe pains and sorrows I've experienced with people I love, working on transformations and new levels of "being," and more than ever now, I give thanks for each and every person who graces my life.
I'm also so happy I was able today to get out there and do a good hike - taking my time; after all, it's been only a week since I had oral surgery, and I must admit I have a fragment of that last-weekend headache visiting me again - for renewing me and for the many blessings of the day. Deep appreciation, and a growing awareness of what it really means "to walk in beauty," glistens in my little home tonight, the way the thin sliver of very new moon limned the bottom aspect of the just-audible moon, not far above the monlith of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, in a navy blue sky, nearly all the way to complete darkness, but not quite - the evening star, alongside.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went, perhaps a bit unwisely - I'd had a wisdom tooth pulled just 24 hours earlier - to to the area known as Pioneertown, north of and higher elevation than the town of Yucca Valley, in the high desert, about an hour's drive from my house. Destination: a beautiful private home nestled at 4,500 feet in the maw of a range of rocky ridges known as the Sawtooth Mountains for a literary event and reading by the wonderful desert writer Susan Lang. Susan grew up in Pipes Canyon on her mother's homestead, and has written a trilogy of books on her mother's life there - the most recent one, "Moon Lily," is recently published.
I have devoured all three, including the earlier books, "Juniper Blue" and "Small Rocks Rising." Although I had a crushing headache by the time I arrived - 5,000 foot elevation gain with a massive late-late-winter storm barreling in, compounded by my very recent and fairly traumatic oral surgery - I managed to connect instantly with Susan herself. We talked about desert writing, growing up in the remote high Mojave desert - as I did - and being community college English professors - she is at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ, where she also founded and ran the Hassayampa Writers workshop for 10 years. Susan was and is an amazing, charismatic person and I feel so grateful to have met her and talked for those 15-20 minutes, through my wisdom tooth headache, about writing, teaching, and.....the power of the desert and the role it's played in our lives and in our writing.
Before dinner even got started, I left the party, and my friend Caryn (who I'd picked up at the Canyon Coffee Shop in Yucca Valley en route) there, stumbled home with headache-galore, but with a new book in hand, which I consumed the next day while keeping company with one of the very intense windstorms we sometimes get here in the lower desert at this time of year, all palm fronds flying about, sand and dust blowing, and the howling contrast against the usual calm we experience most of the time.
And today, a perfect spring day, the pleasure of hiking to Horsethief Creek, in a canyon tucked into a fold of the Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the newly-designated Santa Rosa- San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. I haven't hiked there since last year at this time. In the ten years I've lived in Palm Desert, it's been a favorite - I've been there may ten times: with Tarah; with my parents; with my friend Kurt and the College of the Desert ecology club; with my friend Darlene; with a few other friends; and several times on solo excursions. This was the hike I had a real emergency on, four years ago, when I did the hike alone on too hot of a day, too fast on the way out, in May, and got heat exhaustion on the way out - and ended up going to the hospital for dehydration treatment. None of that today - blissful temps and a cool breeze, time spent sitting on a giant boulder mid-stream, time to go inward, rinse my Hindu prayer beads in the snowmelt water, and gather huge, open-handed expanses of sweet mountain sage.
The trail from the area known as Pinyon, situated about 1/3 of the way from Palm Desert and the mountain town of Idyllwild, to the creek itself, is a 2.5 mile up and down, 5 miles roundrip altogether, with more uphill on the way out - and it traverses amazing chapparal country at the 4,000-5,000 foot level - a mix of desert cacti, particularly beavertail cactus, agave, and arid, low mountain trees, particulary pinyon, and in the folds of several draws, and of course along Horsethief Creek, cottonwood, which today, were in early spring hallucinogenic green mode.
I went today on a whim. It must be spring cleaning of sorts. I have been through such intensity in the past six months of event and emotion and upheaval and change that I have developed a newfound compassion for myself, for others, and am supremely grateful for the beauties of spring. After weeks of exhaustion, sickness, malaise and the recent upper left wisdom tooth pull I've endured, this was a very welcome excursion. I paced myself, rested at the creek, and meditated as I walked.
The low desert has about maxed out on flowers. Our wildflower season begins as early as late January/early February and often is over by early or mid-March, depending on when we get our first cluster of 90 degree days. We've had a few warm ones this month, so the flowers are exiting already. However, we are so fortunate to have frequent and common elevation and climate change at our fingertips in this part of the world. The adjacent higher elevations are just now springing into full bounty. The drive up Highway 74 was magnificent, a quick rush through 7-level Hill and it's hairclip turns, from sea level to 4,000 feet in about 15 minutes - hillsides flush with yellow flowers, bright pink cactus blossoms, red ocotillo and Indian Paintbrush, purple lupine.
Sitting and relaxing on huge boulders on the creek was relaxng and rejuventating. In one place, I lay back and watched a light-shimmer that seemed almost like smoke emanate from a rock wall that rose hundreds of feet above the creek - and I could see many tough cactus plants growing sideways straight out of rock! There were mini waterfalls and beautiful water slides, and I ran my hands on smooth rock across the face of one such pale-pink-and-red rock fantasy, water rushing down its wide surface in a shallow skim. I also soaked my feet in a pool, and carefully and respectfully gathered sage - my usual place to do so - in fact, some of the big clusters I collected are now scenting my entire house - I've laid them out to dry on the kitchen counter. I only select sage in years of water abundance, and this year the usual plants I visit seemed to be doing well.
I was concerned, however, that with the recently published map of the monument, the area has shown drastic increase of usage even since last year. Today, a weekday, I counted 23 other hikers, one in a group of 16 - I've never seen more than 4 or 5 other people on that hike, ever. And, the area heading upstream from the creek crossing actually has a fairly worn footpath now, something I never saw before. The blessing/bane mix of a new national monument - more protection = more people and, so often, a great, little known place being loved to death. This had been, heretofore, strictly a "locals" place, and now, it's obvious it's getting quite well known to others.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for this healing landscape and geography, for the people in my life - with all of the ups and downs that many of them bring to me as I grow in awareness and continue to emerge from my longtime "privacy" shell, a longtime defense mechanism, and reach out more and more to people in my actions, in my phone calls and emails, in my shared hikes, and in my growing sense of compassion - as never before, I take the risk to build new friendships in ways that are more meaningful to me than the ways I used to take people much more for granted; I reconstruct old friendships and find ways to heal and soothe pains and sorrows I've experienced with people I love, working on transformations and new levels of "being," and more than ever now, I give thanks for each and every person who graces my life.
I'm also so happy I was able today to get out there and do a good hike - taking my time; after all, it's been only a week since I had oral surgery, and I must admit I have a fragment of that last-weekend headache visiting me again - for renewing me and for the many blessings of the day. Deep appreciation, and a growing awareness of what it really means "to walk in beauty," glistens in my little home tonight, the way the thin sliver of very new moon limned the bottom aspect of the just-audible moon, not far above the monlith of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, in a navy blue sky, nearly all the way to complete darkness, but not quite - the evening star, alongside.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Film Screening: Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps Thurs March 26 Riverside Library
Please join poet/writer/professor Ruth Nolan, College of the Desert, and Reginald Cortez Woolery, Artist, Director of Digital Studio & Education Outreach at UCR-California Museum of Photography, for a screening of the collaborative and experimental film "Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps" at the downtown Riverside public library. Thursday, March 26. Riverside downtown library located on Mission Inn Road, adjacent to the Mission Inn and the 91 Freeway, Mission Inn Road exit -
FREE. 7 p.m.
Read more about the film at the UCR Arts Block site at (copy and paste into your web browser)
http://artsblock.ucr.edu/action.lasso?-database=scoop&-table=online&-op=cn&institution_key=1&-op=cn&event_object_ID=2008.0011.0192&-response=events_dis.lasso
See you there!
Ruth
Poetry Blurb of the Day
this, from the amazing poet Wendy Rose
from the Endangered Roots of a Person
Becoming strong on this earth is a lesson
in not floating, in becoming less transparent,
in becoming an animal shape against the sky.
A nice, reflective excerpt on a beautiful spring desert day. I'm sitting on the back patio and enjoying, this time of year, when it's wonderfully possible to sit outdoors and enjoy weather and perfect spring temps and look at flowers in the yard - a spate of orange and yellow poppies and nasturtiums.
Walk in beauty....namaste....
from the Endangered Roots of a Person
Becoming strong on this earth is a lesson
in not floating, in becoming less transparent,
in becoming an animal shape against the sky.
A nice, reflective excerpt on a beautiful spring desert day. I'm sitting on the back patio and enjoying, this time of year, when it's wonderfully possible to sit outdoors and enjoy weather and perfect spring temps and look at flowers in the yard - a spate of orange and yellow poppies and nasturtiums.
Walk in beauty....namaste....
Monday, March 23, 2009
Volunteers and Me
This spring, I've planted nothing, not deliberately,
but volunteers arouse themselves, anyway
winter chasers of last year's garden optimisms.
Orange and yellow, round, on blossomy nasturtiums,
tiny, on second generation mininature marigolds
bold, and cupping their faces to the sun
on lanky California poppies. Everything
I planted last year was organic, I think I even see
sprigs of baby romaine lettuce, and a few
junior high school sized sunflower stalks,
my daughter's pictures on her 6th grade volleyball team
rimming the kitchen window when I peer out to stare.
Nearly ten years have gone by since she was that small,
and just last year the garden was a thing
worth tending to, a thing that earmarked this house
for a home, neatly sprouted, watered daily.
The wind, we're in the shadow desert and the mountains
take all the rain. We've choked since yesterday
on fine-grained sand. I am suddenly compassionate
for these brave pioneers pushing their way through
the dirt from last year's crop, unwatered since
the rains of early February and now we're past March equinox.
And so I take the hose, and spray them down, randomly
pull the weeds that dominate the garden this year,
thinning out the spaces so the poppies can sing,
so the nasturtiums can wink at my daughter when she
sometimes comes home, so the tiny marigolds make me realize
that no flower is too small. My efforts are schizophrenic,
I'm taking a number of diverse prescription drugs right now
for a strange garden of issues and ills, I should be resting
so that the hole in my jaw from a just-pulled wisdom tooth
can heal, I grab fat dandelion plants with forefinger and thumb
closest to the root and ripping these behemoths out, randomly
grabbing handfuls of tall, unwanted plants, I'm sure I'll quit
before I get them all, I have no plan and am tiring already,
it's important for my flowers to see. Any day, temperatures
in the desert will peak at 90, then 100, degrees, these flowers
may not survive. I will close the blinds and withdraw into the
tile floor cool of my house, and probably won't feel like
doing any more watering, Ill be planning my own exodus
from the heat, my daughter and I once made this our home,
but the uprooting from childhood to young adulthood
has rendered my once well-tended garden a strange thing.
meantime the volunteers smile at me, and I at them
thanking them silently for their brief-lived generosity.
Ruth Nolan
March 23, 2009
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
but volunteers arouse themselves, anyway
winter chasers of last year's garden optimisms.
Orange and yellow, round, on blossomy nasturtiums,
tiny, on second generation mininature marigolds
bold, and cupping their faces to the sun
on lanky California poppies. Everything
I planted last year was organic, I think I even see
sprigs of baby romaine lettuce, and a few
junior high school sized sunflower stalks,
my daughter's pictures on her 6th grade volleyball team
rimming the kitchen window when I peer out to stare.
Nearly ten years have gone by since she was that small,
and just last year the garden was a thing
worth tending to, a thing that earmarked this house
for a home, neatly sprouted, watered daily.
The wind, we're in the shadow desert and the mountains
take all the rain. We've choked since yesterday
on fine-grained sand. I am suddenly compassionate
for these brave pioneers pushing their way through
the dirt from last year's crop, unwatered since
the rains of early February and now we're past March equinox.
And so I take the hose, and spray them down, randomly
pull the weeds that dominate the garden this year,
thinning out the spaces so the poppies can sing,
so the nasturtiums can wink at my daughter when she
sometimes comes home, so the tiny marigolds make me realize
that no flower is too small. My efforts are schizophrenic,
I'm taking a number of diverse prescription drugs right now
for a strange garden of issues and ills, I should be resting
so that the hole in my jaw from a just-pulled wisdom tooth
can heal, I grab fat dandelion plants with forefinger and thumb
closest to the root and ripping these behemoths out, randomly
grabbing handfuls of tall, unwanted plants, I'm sure I'll quit
before I get them all, I have no plan and am tiring already,
it's important for my flowers to see. Any day, temperatures
in the desert will peak at 90, then 100, degrees, these flowers
may not survive. I will close the blinds and withdraw into the
tile floor cool of my house, and probably won't feel like
doing any more watering, Ill be planning my own exodus
from the heat, my daughter and I once made this our home,
but the uprooting from childhood to young adulthood
has rendered my once well-tended garden a strange thing.
meantime the volunteers smile at me, and I at them
thanking them silently for their brief-lived generosity.
Ruth Nolan
March 23, 2009
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
No Place for a Puritan Preface comment....
from Cyrus Emerson, of Riverside Inlandia 5.0 writers workshop:
As a strong supporter of the move toward alter(native) green power I fully agree with you. Getting power through solar and wind mills is meant to protect the environment. By building on open lands, these companies are once again hurting the environment. I would like to see a greater concentration of green power in the cities. In order to do this, large cities like Los Angeles, will need to be rebuilt from scratch into 21st Century cities with new technologies to improve energy efficiency.
Cyrus Emerson
Sales Account Executive
Corn Digital
13945 Central Ave.
Chino, CA 91710
Tel. (909) 680-3671 ext. 41
Fax (909) 680-3675
cyrus@corndigital.com
www.corndigital.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
As a strong supporter of the move toward alter(native) green power I fully agree with you. Getting power through solar and wind mills is meant to protect the environment. By building on open lands, these companies are once again hurting the environment. I would like to see a greater concentration of green power in the cities. In order to do this, large cities like Los Angeles, will need to be rebuilt from scratch into 21st Century cities with new technologies to improve energy efficiency.
Cyrus Emerson
Sales Account Executive
Corn Digital
13945 Central Ave.
Chino, CA 91710
Tel. (909) 680-3671 ext. 41
Fax (909) 680-3675
cyrus@corndigital.com
www.corndigital.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
Friday, March 13, 2009
Throwing Down Some Gold (Chains)
So today I decided to drive west on the I-10 past the windmills, and into the wildlife corridor of Whitewater Canyon, leading to the end of the road at 4.5 miles and the newly-created Whitewater Preserve, a part of the wonderful Wildlands Conservancy Project of California. Water was flowing, I parked at the renovated fish hatchery, and the dogs were ready to roll!
We hiked upstream a mile or so - after a river crossing; Brindle loves to swim in cold wild waters, while Shasta more quickly picks her way to the other side - both, so happy to explore an area that is new to them. I've only been here a few times.
Last October was my last visit here. I met my friend -- there, and he was not happy. I was not happy. I had recently made him move out of my house in a fallout that was not unlike a flareup on a fireline, or a whole frickin' wildfire in itself. We'd been there before, the previous October,2007, and I remember we met in separate cars, as this past time, me coming from the desert and him from Riverside. Then, it was dark by the time we left, and he drove ahead of me and pulled out and lay on his car hood, watching the stars.
This past October, 2008, we decided to meet, for reasons unknown to either of us except to go out for a hike. We walked the short walk to the flowing water, and I was going more slowly, behind, recording footsteps for a film collaboration I was doing with the UCR-CA Museum of photography, eventually turned into a feature flick called "escape to reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps." My friend walked ahead, and I finally caught up to him, sitting on a rock at water's edge. We didn't stay long before making our way to our separate cars, and I remember feeling pretty jolted and bummed out on the twisty road down to the freeway from the preserve. He raced ahead of me. Out of sight. It was the start of realizing that I wasn't as rich as I thought, that this friend was not as at-the-ready-for-me as he had always been, that the gold mine was running out of gold.
Today, on a spring day following a gripping, cold, moisture-rich winter, I take long, slow breaths, and forgive myself for mistakes I made then. It's Friday, March 13, and I walk alone, with the dogs, penetrating farther and deeper up the wide flood plain of Whitewater Wash, spotting a few budding wildflowers, and focusing on calming my recently so-frantic and fevered mind.
I understand this year, so far grown and moved ahead from last year, that I was a workaholic then, and didn't make enough time for someone I cared about. I didn't appreciate, didn't have the awareness I have now of what many of my actions and choices mean. I have learned and grown so much since even then, five months ago: it takes hiking alone, again, after months of steady companionship with this friend, for me to really understand the ironic but real: that a life of people, connections, and community, is what I crave and need - not just to overaccomplish, overachieve, excel and overdo.
I actually felt, in a dream state one early morning a few months ago, when I'd had a personal and highly private early morning meltdown of myriad confusing emotions: anger...stress....life.....frustration....loneliness....fear.....by, and I'm embarrassed to admit, dumping an entire shelf of books and swiping the top shelf, filled with jewelry, pictures, rocks and other oddities from many hikes, a general sort of decorative altar, across the room, before punching a few holes in the thin sheet of my bathroom wall. Crying for a long time, as I thought of the loneliness at the empty bedroom, the pain our friendship agitated into without recourse or relief, that horrible night with police in and out of my house.
Gone. Fucking gone. Leaving just enough things behind to find, while cleaning out the garage or a closet, and start the madness all over again. This time, though, Whitewater promises to purify and cleanse - though my eyes tear up a bit, as my mind strolls through that part of the fast-action-movie-blur my mind and life have become in months past....sharing a fair amount of space alongside the "other" stuff blasting like overamplified speakers at far-too-close range. I tell myself, my mantra on this walk: slow down, breathe, heal on the earth, walk in beauty, one...step....at...a...time.
Talking to my realtor friend today, who laid out the options: home mortgage restructuring (lower payments;) short sale; foreclosure; and, wise of him, encouraging me not to do anything too hasty or rash. Stressing out over the workload of my college job that feels so crunched up and impossible to face, particularly my online classes, with a new system, blackboard, that seems to be all screwed up - a better system than the old one, for sure, but having just made the switch this semester, halfway through the school year, on top of the other mind-boggling changes we've endured at the school, it's just too much - not to mention I'm teaching two classes online that I haven't taught for a few years, at a time when my life is already in nutty crazy flux.
The exhaustion, inevitable, from finishing a HUGE project of the past several years - not quite done, a few final tweaks, but 99% there, let's hope. The exhaustion and gaping, mouth-open disbelief of synapse-frying changes in just one short year, of the national mood we're all in, crashing in valleys we've collectively been hurled into by unimaginable avalanches of evil and greed that's been unbridled for "x" number of years, and the few, small fragments of sanity and balance I fixate on the way my dogs spot water from the top of the bluffs and mainline it down as fast as they can. Today, an afternoon of walking, breathing, praying, chanting, thanking, weeping, and focusing on the rash of orange poppies spread across one high hillside, a bright font of spring hope on otherwise barren slopes.
Fear of success. My therapist says to enjoy the journey I am on, as my life continues to move forward in the direction of my life as a writer, and a teacher of writing - creative writing. But it's terrifying to leave the shadow self behind, the self that was for years hiding behind the veil of "teacher" and "mom" and made a structure of that, one that enabled me for a long time to live a more unexamined life. Now, it's "me" and that is a lot to be grateful for, but it also terrifies. New territory, still chained by one ankle to the old, somewhat free, somewhat tied, and trying to calm down enough to pick the lock and figure out a strategy for letting myself go.
I thought I was alone - but encountered an elderly man on the way down, with an old Irish Setter - we chatted awhile, and I remembered the gallant male Irish Setter who was my family's beloved pet when I was a kid. Toby and I were very close, and he was my companion when I first began hiking - that was when we moved to Apple Valley when I was 13 years old, the wide, spacious desert, and I'd take off across the open spaces from our backyard and make my way to the top of a nearby rock mountain called Catholic Hill. And one day, my mother cried out in the morning as she looked out the front window - Toby, lying still on the side of our rural road, dead, hit during the night by a car. We all cried, my mom and brothers and I - dad? - for a few days on end, on and off. It was one of the worst losses of my young life, and I still want to cry now, thinking about him, what a wonderful dog, friend, companion, at a time in my life when I was such a geek, thought boys would never like me, that I'd forever be a nerdy girl wearing ugly glasses that my dad would glue with shoe-goo if they broke because we were too poor then to buy replacement glasses.
And likewise, today, I mourn other losses - love lost? Not lost from my heart, as I open my arms wide to the sky on that hike, and tell everyone I love them, even if they aren't here - lovers and friends who have come and gone - my love remains forever yours. Losses of people in more recent years, people who have died, family members of friends who have recently died - my heart is with you all.
And I also turn again to the hillside of poppies, and then to the water, and study the far-off hills. And I think of abundance and rebirth and the bounty that fills my life, to the extent that I am so overwhelmed I can barely cope most of the time these days - it's not from loss that I stagger about, it's from abundance - it's from so many good things that have come my way, that I can barely remember to catch my breath. Welcome this, embrace it, and calm the racing mind. I am here today with two wonderful dogs, Brindle, especially, a sort of replacement doofus Toby, thirty years down the trail of life - a terrific, beautiful, grown young adult daughter, many friends, although so many are so far away - caring parents and siblings and other family members - and a lot of colorful life memories - with more yet to be carved away out of the sides of my life's canyon hills.
Water down the center, towards the desert - but here, for now, in the slightly higher, near-mountains, I find cool relief and a moment's pause to hug all of it with my own arms to my heart. And when I stop into the visitor center, I make a new friend, one of the preserve rangers, and he's friendly and excited by my easy ability to connect the dots and remind him that I'd told the other ranger recently I'd love to do, as I did last spring, another poetry writing workshop there - have a poetry reading - and he says, "I've been wanting to learn to write more," and I feel my day is complete. I'm here too, today, to write a new story in my life's book, and there are empty pages waiting to unfold, and fill. Slowly, slowly, I am healing and getting a grip on all of this new overwhelm, in its terrors and its joys.
We hiked upstream a mile or so - after a river crossing; Brindle loves to swim in cold wild waters, while Shasta more quickly picks her way to the other side - both, so happy to explore an area that is new to them. I've only been here a few times.
Last October was my last visit here. I met my friend -- there, and he was not happy. I was not happy. I had recently made him move out of my house in a fallout that was not unlike a flareup on a fireline, or a whole frickin' wildfire in itself. We'd been there before, the previous October,2007, and I remember we met in separate cars, as this past time, me coming from the desert and him from Riverside. Then, it was dark by the time we left, and he drove ahead of me and pulled out and lay on his car hood, watching the stars.
This past October, 2008, we decided to meet, for reasons unknown to either of us except to go out for a hike. We walked the short walk to the flowing water, and I was going more slowly, behind, recording footsteps for a film collaboration I was doing with the UCR-CA Museum of photography, eventually turned into a feature flick called "escape to reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps." My friend walked ahead, and I finally caught up to him, sitting on a rock at water's edge. We didn't stay long before making our way to our separate cars, and I remember feeling pretty jolted and bummed out on the twisty road down to the freeway from the preserve. He raced ahead of me. Out of sight. It was the start of realizing that I wasn't as rich as I thought, that this friend was not as at-the-ready-for-me as he had always been, that the gold mine was running out of gold.
Today, on a spring day following a gripping, cold, moisture-rich winter, I take long, slow breaths, and forgive myself for mistakes I made then. It's Friday, March 13, and I walk alone, with the dogs, penetrating farther and deeper up the wide flood plain of Whitewater Wash, spotting a few budding wildflowers, and focusing on calming my recently so-frantic and fevered mind.
I understand this year, so far grown and moved ahead from last year, that I was a workaholic then, and didn't make enough time for someone I cared about. I didn't appreciate, didn't have the awareness I have now of what many of my actions and choices mean. I have learned and grown so much since even then, five months ago: it takes hiking alone, again, after months of steady companionship with this friend, for me to really understand the ironic but real: that a life of people, connections, and community, is what I crave and need - not just to overaccomplish, overachieve, excel and overdo.
I actually felt, in a dream state one early morning a few months ago, when I'd had a personal and highly private early morning meltdown of myriad confusing emotions: anger...stress....life.....frustration....loneliness....fear.....by, and I'm embarrassed to admit, dumping an entire shelf of books and swiping the top shelf, filled with jewelry, pictures, rocks and other oddities from many hikes, a general sort of decorative altar, across the room, before punching a few holes in the thin sheet of my bathroom wall. Crying for a long time, as I thought of the loneliness at the empty bedroom, the pain our friendship agitated into without recourse or relief, that horrible night with police in and out of my house.
Gone. Fucking gone. Leaving just enough things behind to find, while cleaning out the garage or a closet, and start the madness all over again. This time, though, Whitewater promises to purify and cleanse - though my eyes tear up a bit, as my mind strolls through that part of the fast-action-movie-blur my mind and life have become in months past....sharing a fair amount of space alongside the "other" stuff blasting like overamplified speakers at far-too-close range. I tell myself, my mantra on this walk: slow down, breathe, heal on the earth, walk in beauty, one...step....at...a...time.
Talking to my realtor friend today, who laid out the options: home mortgage restructuring (lower payments;) short sale; foreclosure; and, wise of him, encouraging me not to do anything too hasty or rash. Stressing out over the workload of my college job that feels so crunched up and impossible to face, particularly my online classes, with a new system, blackboard, that seems to be all screwed up - a better system than the old one, for sure, but having just made the switch this semester, halfway through the school year, on top of the other mind-boggling changes we've endured at the school, it's just too much - not to mention I'm teaching two classes online that I haven't taught for a few years, at a time when my life is already in nutty crazy flux.
The exhaustion, inevitable, from finishing a HUGE project of the past several years - not quite done, a few final tweaks, but 99% there, let's hope. The exhaustion and gaping, mouth-open disbelief of synapse-frying changes in just one short year, of the national mood we're all in, crashing in valleys we've collectively been hurled into by unimaginable avalanches of evil and greed that's been unbridled for "x" number of years, and the few, small fragments of sanity and balance I fixate on the way my dogs spot water from the top of the bluffs and mainline it down as fast as they can. Today, an afternoon of walking, breathing, praying, chanting, thanking, weeping, and focusing on the rash of orange poppies spread across one high hillside, a bright font of spring hope on otherwise barren slopes.
Fear of success. My therapist says to enjoy the journey I am on, as my life continues to move forward in the direction of my life as a writer, and a teacher of writing - creative writing. But it's terrifying to leave the shadow self behind, the self that was for years hiding behind the veil of "teacher" and "mom" and made a structure of that, one that enabled me for a long time to live a more unexamined life. Now, it's "me" and that is a lot to be grateful for, but it also terrifies. New territory, still chained by one ankle to the old, somewhat free, somewhat tied, and trying to calm down enough to pick the lock and figure out a strategy for letting myself go.
I thought I was alone - but encountered an elderly man on the way down, with an old Irish Setter - we chatted awhile, and I remembered the gallant male Irish Setter who was my family's beloved pet when I was a kid. Toby and I were very close, and he was my companion when I first began hiking - that was when we moved to Apple Valley when I was 13 years old, the wide, spacious desert, and I'd take off across the open spaces from our backyard and make my way to the top of a nearby rock mountain called Catholic Hill. And one day, my mother cried out in the morning as she looked out the front window - Toby, lying still on the side of our rural road, dead, hit during the night by a car. We all cried, my mom and brothers and I - dad? - for a few days on end, on and off. It was one of the worst losses of my young life, and I still want to cry now, thinking about him, what a wonderful dog, friend, companion, at a time in my life when I was such a geek, thought boys would never like me, that I'd forever be a nerdy girl wearing ugly glasses that my dad would glue with shoe-goo if they broke because we were too poor then to buy replacement glasses.
And likewise, today, I mourn other losses - love lost? Not lost from my heart, as I open my arms wide to the sky on that hike, and tell everyone I love them, even if they aren't here - lovers and friends who have come and gone - my love remains forever yours. Losses of people in more recent years, people who have died, family members of friends who have recently died - my heart is with you all.
And I also turn again to the hillside of poppies, and then to the water, and study the far-off hills. And I think of abundance and rebirth and the bounty that fills my life, to the extent that I am so overwhelmed I can barely cope most of the time these days - it's not from loss that I stagger about, it's from abundance - it's from so many good things that have come my way, that I can barely remember to catch my breath. Welcome this, embrace it, and calm the racing mind. I am here today with two wonderful dogs, Brindle, especially, a sort of replacement doofus Toby, thirty years down the trail of life - a terrific, beautiful, grown young adult daughter, many friends, although so many are so far away - caring parents and siblings and other family members - and a lot of colorful life memories - with more yet to be carved away out of the sides of my life's canyon hills.
Water down the center, towards the desert - but here, for now, in the slightly higher, near-mountains, I find cool relief and a moment's pause to hug all of it with my own arms to my heart. And when I stop into the visitor center, I make a new friend, one of the preserve rangers, and he's friendly and excited by my easy ability to connect the dots and remind him that I'd told the other ranger recently I'd love to do, as I did last spring, another poetry writing workshop there - have a poetry reading - and he says, "I've been wanting to learn to write more," and I feel my day is complete. I'm here too, today, to write a new story in my life's book, and there are empty pages waiting to unfold, and fill. Slowly, slowly, I am healing and getting a grip on all of this new overwhelm, in its terrors and its joys.
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