Simple Things

Morning.

Fall brings with it such a hustling and bustling that the simple things in life can slip right through our fingers. Why should we stop to smell the newly rain-scrubbed air or savor the warming of our hands wrapped around a cup of tea when there are football games, little leagues, school projects and the impending doom of holiday shopping, decorating and entertaining to attend to? 

This week, I reject both hustle and bustle, regardless of deadlines and obligations. Instead, I choose to whittle out space to savor the season, the changing of the leaves, the sound of rain against the roof, and early night fall. Most of this time is carved from the earliest parts of mornings. Some simple morning gratitudes:

Piano practice.

Soggy mushroom hunts.

Pumpkins roasting in the oven.

Leaf prints, stained into the sidewalk.

The filling of the root cellar.

Coffee by the fire.

Garden beds, neatly turned for winter.

Someone's Got to Dig it.

Hole.

Last year the deer ate every flower and hopeful bud in the garden. This year, I scoured books and garden centers for every deer resistant flower I could find and planted them, as bulbs, in hopeful anticipation of the spring bloom. Yesterday, I came home to find that the squirrels, eager for a lightening of their fall work load, had emptied every hole, cast aside my precious bulbs, and replaced them with hazelnuts. I suppose someone has to dig the hole.

Of Standing In One's Pot

Unfurl.

There is no amount of pushing, cajoling, denial, or even hard work that can release us from life's inevitable periods of waiting. Regardless of our drives, passions, ambitions or even needs, the world seems bent upon a period of patience. Gratification, recognition, success, healing, justice, always require a pregnant pause in their unfurling. The stuff of life seems to me not so different from my tomatoes. It would be easy for me to discount them, point out how little sun they get, how small they still seem even this early in the season, how one leans dangerously to one side in spite of its staking. I could declare, already, their foreseeable failure.

But I would be wrong. In spite of my insistence on their stationary stature, they are undeniably on the move. There is no ignoring their new stems or the sudden appearance of flowers, a sure sign of fruit to come. It is my impatience that sees their flaws. I want to make it happen sooner. I want to conjure tomato. But it is no longer in my hands. In the beginning, I had influence. I placed them carefully in their pots, fed them, and staked them up as they began to droop under heavy spring rains. Now though, I have, for a period, done all I can do. It is up to me now to stand in my pot, and wait.

  

Fresh Starts

Seeds.

The garden starts are in. Even though the fog still wraps around the house and and the sun is still too low in the sky to quite reach through the trees, what little sun there is, the starts are in the ground. They stand at weary attention in their too-large pots, waiting for the sun, for rain, for the long light of summer days. I too, stand rooted in my pot, waiting to break through.

Do not be fooled by our apparent stillness. From the inside there is great movement occurring, a minute and constant dance. Roots reach, stalks thicken, leaves inexorably unfurl. With time, there will be a bloom and a harvest. Just wait.

And this, from Girl Gone Wild, the proposal for which is going out this week. So please, if you read, share, repost, or retweet. Be a root.

Weight.

It is 6 am and I am sitting on the front stoop of my apartment with my hiking boots on waiting for a a guy I met at a bicycle event in a local brewery two days earlier. I am newly single, in my late twenties, and living in Portland, This means that I am accustomed to brew pubs, bicycle boys, and first dates that involve hiking. The six am is new. But this man seems nice, and has a long history of mountaineering and rock climbing, and wants to get an early start. In my mind I have chalked this up to being “hard core”. I also want to be “hard core” and also prove to my ex that I can still have outdoor adventures without him. Especially with men more hard core than himself. I figured that mountain climber beat kayaker and hiker any day. Besides, its going to be a beautiful sunny Saturday in late summer, the trails will be packed if we don’t get an early start, I quietly reason with myself, he’s just being practical.

We have chosen a hike called Angels Rest, aptly named for the spectacular view of the Columbia River Gorge from the rocky crag at the top of the trail. It is a moderate day hike, five miles with a steep climb over the loose rock of a crumbling basalt flow. When we arrive at the trail head we grab our mostly empty backpacks, containing little more than water and a light lunch and head out of the parking area. At the trail head he stops saying, “Hold on, I need to grab some weight.” And he reaches down and starts loading softball sized chunks of basalt into his pack. “I really want to stay in shape for my next ascent.” He says, barely looking up as he continues to shove rocks into his pack. Great, I think. This guy is nuts.

New Begininnings

Starts.

This week marks the convergence of the end of my winter projects and the beginning of my spring work. There are culminations, long rehearsed shows to perform and the end of classes. And there are new, hopeful steps forward like fresh paint on the walls and the annual turning of the garden beds. This year I find myself putting in more flowers, more early starts. Perhaps I am hopeful or in need of early signs of sun. These small steps though, these bright spots of color, they seem to fortify me. They give me grace on tired days and keep me looking forward, into new territory. I am glad for the putting in of roots and the pushing up of thin green shoots, reminders of my own possibilities.

Plant something and wait.

Picture:
www.rubygonewild.com

Flight and Freedom

Today I sit beside the window and watch the birds, visitors here, just passing through to warmer winters south, and am jealous of their easy freedom. I too, wish to so predictably turn to sunny days and fat times. I worry over my pepper plant, so absurdly out of place but still producing bright green fruit in some silent tribute to life's challenges and absurdities. I think that I should cover the rye beds to over-winter. Finally, I go outside and pull the last tomato plant, leaving the its proffer on the sill to ripen. 

An excerpt from a poem for the turning of the season, Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

       love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Like what you are reading?  Then support the Kickstarter for my book Girl Gone Wild- On Being a Woman in the Wilderness.  Thanks!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1731666363/girl-gone-wild-a-guide-to-being-a-woman-outside?ref=city