“ When you get quiet inside, the right words come a little easier.” — Maya Angelou

Reflection

Writing of the Month

One of the essays I wrote while living at Lookout Valley Ranch that I drew from for my memoir A Tree with My Name on It: Finding a Way Home.

Spring Rain. May 27, 1999

At Jennings Market today, the ladies of Westcliffe stood in line at the meat market, ordering round steak tenderized and a pound of bacon. Everyone is out and about now that spring is here. It was hard to find a diagonal parking spot on Main Street in front of the market and they grumbled about that. “Might as well have walked” spit out Mrs. Collins, a lanky weathered looking woman in her 60’s. But everyone was happy to be there.  “If we’d had one more snow,” said one matron, shaking her head, “I would have just despaired.” I like the sound of the word despair. It has an old-fashioned ring to it. The weather here in the Wet Mountains can sure take you there. But the secret to weathering the weather is to not take it too personally. Especially here where it changes every five minutes; I drove through three different rain storms on my way home from town.

            On and off the last few days, mist has draped itself over the hills and settled in the valleys. Sometimes it pours up South Hardscrabble Canyon as though it were being pumped from a dry ice machine at a rock concert. The horses stand on the knoll with their backs to the rising fog, enduring, waiting. Then the sun slices through for a moment before the clouds settle in again, the wind picks up and the skies open splattering rain then hail on the sodden ground. On and on if goes, each turn a different mood.

            Driving up the canyon through the clouds and rain yesterday I switched on NPR and heard a track from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. When I pulled up in front of the house I sat in the car for a while with the windshield wipers going letting the cool melancholic sound wash over me. I remember the first time I heard the album in London on a grey autumn day, the bare branches of the trees in the street gradually fading to black as night fell. It’s one of those albums that has imprinted many moments throughout my life. Years from now, I will remember sitting in my green Ford Explorer staring at the corral, through the rain and the whishing of the wipers.

            One thing I’ve noticed about living here, is that I notice things more, I see more. I can spot different birds, I am familiar with the contours of the land, I marvel at the bends in the creek that meanders through the valley. Just this past week during breaks in the rain when I ride Rain out on the road that runs along the ridge to Eustace’s place, I can see the new leaves on an aspen tree flutter and hear the creek rushing and feel  the breeze and my seat bones rock in the saddle all at the same time. When I ride Peanuts, a four-year-old quarter horse who’s so calm and unconcerned about travelling out alone with me that I can relax completely, this sense of presence is even fuller.

            Being present is very hard for someone like me who didn’t grow up in any one place long enough to grow roots and feel as though I belonged there. Being a foreign service “brat”, I was forced to move often and far. Even when we lived in London, we changed houses four times in four years. I lived in my head. My mind was my home, and it was filled with images from books - of Heidi eating bread and cheese and drinking milk warm from the cow, of the Secret Garden coming back to life, plant by plant. I learned not to connect with my actual surroundings. When I did, the wrenching pain of moving away was too much.

            When I became a grown up, my ambition was to never move, all I wanted was to plant a white picket fence around myself and settle in. For a long time, that is how I lived. Then four years ago we started moving, from Boulder to Denver, from Denver to Wetmore and each change brought up that deep familiar hurt. But somehow here at Lookout Valley Ranch, I’m allowing myself to connect and begin to see this place where I live.

            The Navajos have a practice of greeting the dawn with corn offerings. I once heard of one tradition where the children were taught to look out at the horizon surrounding their home at daybreak and trace the line where the sky and earth meet in a circle around them. “This is your home” they were told, “this is where you belong.” Through this practice, they came to know the line of the horizon as clearly as the shape of their hands. The place where they lived became a part of them, and they became a part of it, forever.

            Having that sense of belonging, of oneness with the place where I live seems  unattainable to me and yet, there are days here at Lookout Valley Ranch where I get a glimpse of what that feels like. Days where I know this is where I am meant to be.

Learn more about A Tree with My Name on It: Finding a Way Home