The Life and Times of the Plume

I hiked up to Copper Glance, hoping to do a little fishing.  The lake had a sheet of ice on it so I hiked up the snowless ridge line to the North of the lake and eventually stopped to eat an apple and enjoy the views.  Not a waste of a day at all.  Simply divine.

The swallowtail butterflies are resplendent, a flittering wisp of my childhood.  I chase after them, willing them, begging them to land on my open hand, to stick to me with the lonesome velcro of their thorny feet.  The tangerine orange of the Airstream door romances them deeply.  They try to lick at it for nectar, bonking into it repeatedly as their wings whir, fooled over and over again by the shout of the hue.

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It seems impossible that this is the skirt of June and eternal daylight and the rising, rising, rising until we reach the peak, the crown of day, the solstice.  I wonder where I will be on that short night?  I wonder which dress I’ll wear, how many braids I will weave into my hair?  Doesn’t  it seem sad that the bulk of sumemer, the heat and green reaching of it, comes so late after that long, that longest June day?  I fear I already begin to miss these lengthy days, before June is even here.  I look too far ahead instead of living here and now.  It makes me melancholy, to be far seeing.  My mind dwells on fading and eventual loss when I see life as life coming instead of life actual and arrived which is the very truth about now and here.  Why do I do that?  Live outside of now?  Do we all do it?  Let ourselves fade into the distances of past or future, instead of residing in the strength and full color of now?

I cut off all of Robert’s hair.  He asked me to.  It wasn’t a Sampson and Delilah situation.  Not at all.  Now he looks like a beautiful barn owl with his heart shaped face.  Perhaps that’s why he is so good at flying, because secretly, he has very broad wings.

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I miss Robert when he is at work during the day.  Moving to the Methow Valley for six months of the year makes for more than just a geographical transition.  I also have to adjust to living much more seperately from my best friend and husband.  It’s hard, at times, to make that shift.  There are sudden, wide gaps in the structure of my life that can make things feel rickety and unstable.

“I was just passing by

when the wind flared

and the blossoms rustled

and the glitterling pandemonium

leaned on me.”

[Mary Oliver :: Goldenrod]

Everything here is a direct, boisterous reminder of my childhood.  I feel I must be slipping and sinking into the gentle innocence of a simple, beautiful life; a life uncomplicated by grown-up things.  The forest takes me back.  We fall asleep to the sound of night birds, a fleet of frogs on the marsh below the cabin, a pair of owls in halting dialogue at  dusk.  If it is breezy, the wind in the douglas firs and ponderosa pines sounds like the rush of water.  Air is a current of its own sort.  During the day, there is the sound of ruffed grouse calling out for love, the very drum beat of my childhood.  There are awkward, wild turkeys on the road as I drive down to town; the black eyes and white tails of the deer.  The wildflowers!  Oh!  The wildflowers.  The land is rupturing with a bevy of color and a cacophony of scent.  I walk around with a thousand soft sighs on my lips because this is love.  I am in love.  I love it here.

I am guilty, at times, of working myself into complete exile.  It’s just how it is.  I put my head down.  I forget to eat.  I am grumpy and rumpled outside of the studio.  I reside in this strange land of metal and gems and everything else falls by the wayside.  Forgive me.

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Today: Two osprey, two mule deer bucks with their blunt antlers bundled in precious velvet and a tremendously close encounter with a white tailed deer (a doe).  Also, a red tailed hawk above the twin leaning ponderosa pines on Lookout Road, and a snarky raven using the cabin roof as a landing pad.  Bear scat West of the cabin on the road where it grows thick with alder.  Pizza for dinner.

I saw a blue racer snake, belly up, dead on the road while I was out running.  The ants and wasps were already doing their tiny butchering.  In the morning, the next day, it was gone.  Nature is so quick to put everything to good use, even the dead.

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Here in the shade with the ferns, the stones are sinking.  Everything in this clearing seems heavy with the promise of gravity.  Even the wildflowers lean in the afternoon light, fat with dust and seed.   But I, I feel myself rising.

I ran past a patch of wild rose blooming.  That is the scent of pure pink.