Gift from the Chama

We traveled to the Chama, some friends and I.

Her beauty rose to meet us as we dropped into the arms of rock walls of layered time, through dusky green tides of rolling desert, to the river flowing like blood in a beating heart.

The land opens and we behold the rainbow of shifting light, clouds passing over, wind brushing the tops of willow thickets.

We behold all this, and remember that just as the land contains such beauty, so too are there blessed places hiding in our own souls. Wild places, where everything–drought and rain, rock and cottonwood, flowing water, and light, so much light–exists to make us whole.

We come to this place, and grace comes to us.

Reverence fills our thirsty hearts, awe floods our humble lives. And in the grace of this place, we deepen into the grace of ourselves. Those hidden canyons that are timeless, that belong to the sacred.

We come and in coming find joy–communion, laughter, song, feasting. And more than a few rattlesnakes.

We delight in our togetherness, and the many lights shining out of our circle, lights that have found one another, and so grown brighter.

 We celebrate our families and friendships, our blossoming children, our musical menfolk, and another year around the sun (that would be me!)

Most of all, we celebrate the life giving waters of our dry land.

Oh Chama River, what a gift you are indeed.

Home on the Range

We took Miss Shelley, our 1971 VW camper (hands up if you cruised one of these when you were a kid) with a rasta stripe, for a little spin up country, round about the Spanish Peaks in Southern Colorado.  We retraced our footsteps from long ago, places we visited as young herbalists newly in love, then a little older, then pregnant for the first time, now a family. Still in love, it seems.

We’ve known this land in many lights. This time it was overflowing with green plants. Some places burned down last summer and were springing back to life. There were bears in the thicket and turkeys on the run, arnica and red clover blooming to make a gal swoon. One favorite place, an aspen covered mountain, had been eaten alive by bajillions of caterpillars that left not a green leaf in sight. But oh, the birdsong in that place! Mountains we once climbed still pierced the sky, and we were content to tell stories of what it felt like on their summit.

We had hard moments, good moments, and plenty of time to move between the two spectrums. We walked the trails, dug in the dirt, shopped for produce at SuperWalmart (whoa!), made stick houses, tied bonnet strings just so, bickered about whose turn it was to keep the children from wandering into the forest while dinner cooked, and practiced positive thinking when that seemed like the hardest thing to do. We went to bed together with the sun, and felt at home in our little home on wheels. At home with each other, at home with the land.

And that’s the story of how we added another layer to our migration through this life.

On the Open Road

We fired up the old bus, Miss Shelley, for a springtime tour of the land. Up and down mesas, along dirt roads and highways and foot-trails we went, getting a little lost, but even more found.

 A night on the banks of the mighty Pecos river, doves singing in the willows, children playing in the dirt, light falling in unexpected ways, a burst of rain, an old lowrider cruising slowly past the cows.

Back in time to the old red rock villages hiding like forgotten gems in the piñon juniper scrub. Past acequias flowing full, and freshly tilled fields flooded with that snowmelt bounty.

We’ve traveled this stretch of land many times, but each time we crest the horizon it is to find the mountains and mesas opening anew, bigger than before. There are layers upon layers of history to peel back, roots to sink deeper, stories to discover and tell.

When we pause to listen and look, or at least travel very slowly (as Miss Shelley loves to do), it all comes pouring forth.

We’re Universe in a Grain of Sand people, my husband likes to say. Oh, New Mexico, you might be sandy, but you are home.

Walking in Place

Another ski date, this week. Oh, I love when it is perfect, that snow.

Just as good as that was the very ordinary family hike in the foothills this morning. We moseyed along a stream bubbling with snowmelt, the air full with the smell of willow trees before they bloom with spring leaves. Little feet splashing in mud, sliding on ice. Little hands holding our big ones.

And a very special treat was a hike with a friend and her baby (mine were home with papa). So much talking and sharing, so much to say about life and motherhood and marriage. So much sun shining on our faces.

Sometimes it is hard to get out on the land, away from our obligations and the busyness that creeps in even when we are always on guard against it. Sometimes it is a great push (against whining and time constraints, stress and no snack) to claim this space for ourselves and or families. To insist upon it.

It is a holy thing to me, these hours spent wandering our homeland. These mountains have carried us through the seasons–from winter on into spring and beyond, from our free and easy years into the slower footsteps of family life.

When we are planted in place, I’ve noticed, we can’t help but grow.

Postcards from High Summer

Summer, that season of such bounty, unfolds before us. And behind us. Maybe even within us.

It’s been a good run, so far.

We’ve been known to leave home, a handful of times. But always in our home away from home.

Slowly as a snail, we go to the good green places.

We’ve watched our mountains burn down and waited for rain.

We’ve been missing the frequent trips into said mountains (closed till rain comes), but getting occasional doses of green when we can.

Our meals are simple-simple. With the occasional pie.

Pulling the bedraggled weeds from the bedraggled vegetable patches (oh, it’s so dry!), making a feast from twenty two green beans and thirteen kale leaves. The bounty of less? Everything is precious!

Getting uber organized, but mostly on paper. Which is a pleasure in it’s own right.

Maida’s been learning to sit, and then to crawl, to delight us all endlessly.

Cora is her constant champion.

I’m saying no to too much of anything that calls me away from these empty-full days, from the gentle way life unfolds when there isn’t obligations or deadlines or ambition for more than a clean sink.

Thinking that there is one ambition I plan to fully indulge: learning to spin the rolls of fleece we carded these last few weeks.

Saying yes to the simple, nourishing, celebratory things that come along–knitting night with my compañeras is heaven. Live music on the plaza with all the locals is a constant pleasure.

Not to mention swinging in the hammock.

Or turning Thirty.

And especially not to mention swimming in the kiddy pool under the apple tree each afternoon, and gazing up into the green canopy and feeling kind of sad that there won’t be an apple harvest this year, and also strangely elated that I can continue this lazy streak well into autumn’s habitual canning season (okay, I’m mostly sad).

Happy that the Man of the Place is not so lazy. Happy for all the amazing things he’s accomplished on our humble city lot sized paradise.

Spending evenings writing in my journal, reading novels, knitting this and that. Only occasionally remembering to read blogs, and much less frequently to write a post here. I feel as if I’ve been freed at last from the World Wide Web. It is lovely.

In essence, this summer has been like a long retreat at a Vipassana meditation center where the refrain is nowhere to go, nothing to do, no-one to be.

We’re just here, in the backyard.

Thanks for dropping by!

And a book, too.

And now I’d like to introduce my other baby, which was also “born” last month.

This book was conceived just before my first daughter, and came to life the same month as my second daughter.

A fruitful few years.

The Return of the River is an anthology of community voices speaking on behalf of our little river, which was named most endangered river in the USA back in 2007. A little literary activism, if you will.

I’m so proud of it!

You can learn more about our river and the book it inspired by checking out this article from our weekly paper.

The Way Home

I can’t say why I love this land the way I do. Maybe it’s the years of walking the same paths, of watching the seasons cycle in and out, the droughts come and go. Perhaps it is simply that I have so long been held in the strong arms of this arid landscape.

In any case, I welcome the shifting seasons that return us to the arroyos and piñon-juniper hills that surround us. We leave behind the high mountains, with their lush green summers and brilliant fall colors. (Long gone are the days of our radical adventures skiing and winter camping.)

Now we just mosey. Up and down the same paths we’ve taken for years. The occasional coyote, a cawing raven. Sunlight shining through the lacy gramma grass. Onto our faces.

We know these well worn trails by heart.

We’re home.

::

 

River Blessing

The River Blessing is my favorite community ritual.

It’s been happening for a couple hundred years in this same spot–San Isidro, the patron saint of farmers, is brought to the river in a procession. There’s lot’s of singing, and flowers.

Some years, there’s no water in the river. Some years, there is.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s us who are blessed by the river, and not the other way around.

River Love

What a glorious and busy week it’s been in these parts.

I was consumed with getting ready for this reading featuring fifteen contributors from the book I edited (it’s still forthcoming, but soon, soon).  Yes, before I quit plastic I had a life as a literary activist. (I should put that on my tax forms instead of Extreme Eco Housewife.) The reading was dedicated to honoring a vital but much neglected part of our community: our river which was once named most endangered river in America. We had music, poems, and stories from some of the most talented writers and musicians in town, and a wonderful packed house.

Here I am giving my little speech at the beginning. The reading was in a gallery currently showing an exhibit about the Santa Fe River. Fitting, right? Basically what I said in my talk was this: “Our stories, poetry, songs, and art are a crucial part of breathing life back into the river. I believe this kind of praise and honoring feed it in a vital way, and that they are possibly as essential as water. For a river can flow with water and still be invisible and neglected if it doesn’t live inside us…By re-storying the river we bring it back to life in our hearts and minds, smoothing the way for its physical restoration.”

Have you gifted your river, mountain, forest, shoreline, woodland, canyon with a story-song-picture lately?

On the Land

Hiking familiar trails in every season makes me feel most a part of this land.

Sweet smelling, abundant land.

And to see this girl growing and coming to know it, too–oh my.

::

Thanks to the path, thanks to the feet.

Thanks to the many wonders they bring us to meet.