Letting the light in: dawn anthem

The birds they sang

at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.

Ring the bells that still can ring ...

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

Little birds of the night for emergency love

After spending part of the day Saturday wandering along the low, freshly exposed banks of the Columbia river, I found these captured creatures staring out from the second floor of Kuk's Tavern in Northport, a far northern town not far from the Canadian border.
Seems as if they and their ancient building, which could almost be shingled with the same river bank mud I had so recently been exploring, have lain long underwater. Now, rudely, uncomfortably, exposed to the brilliance of late winter afternoon sun they really show their scantily clad age and, in some instances, disintegration. In the early 1900's, the building was, I believe, rolled up the main street on logs to bring it to the safety of higher ground.
In it's heyday, Northport supported a phenomenal number of taverns. These lovely ladies, I guess, are meant to harken back to those rowdy mining town times. Lingerie and liquor: the undoing of many a good man, huh? Yeah, believe it if you must. Some things never change. Frontier emergency.

Watching the river flow

The weekend brought two days of beautiful wrap around blinding blue brilliance. I just had to get outside so, Saturday, took a slow meandering road trip upriver, following the Columbia north.
The country side is becoming patchy as a paint horse with receding snow revealing brown earth, while there are splashes of scarlet new shoots from an as yet unidentified shrub. I found the river at the lowest level I have seen since living here. This is of course, thanks to engineers at the dam wall down south who, anticipating the flood of spring snow melt, have released water.I parked at China Bend where the river becomes more a river than a reservoir, and clambered down to read the stories in the freshly exposed banks a while. The smell was strongly river bottom, the mud, where it wasn't still frozen, sticky - greedy for my boots. Squelch, squelch, squelch. Wind off the snow surrounding razored around my collar burning my ears.Though my shoulders wake me at night with a restlessness to paddle again, and the blue of water was truly tempting, the cold and the considerable snow still lying around holds me back. I am thinking it will still be a while before I go in. And yet, and yet, when I was at the salt water I was paddling already this time of year.

If I had wings and I could fly
I know where I would go
But right now I’ll just sit here so contentedly
And watch the river flow

Gooooood morning America: sunrise at Stinkwater Place

I have been out walking this morning taking in great gulps of the almost Mexican air, loud with birdsong, sparkling with a crystalline magic from last night's full moon drama.

Flocks of little birds swoop and soar through a turquoise, pink and gold sunrise.
Though temperatures right now are definitely still below freezing, the season is changing. I might, just might, have gotten through the long dark.
Stinkwater Place, with her seventies, economy architectural genealogy will never be pretty, not from any angle, (and trust me, I have tried to love her looks) but a rose tinted dawn in a bowl of mountains could go a long way towards making it worth it. After all. Especially with receding snow.

Snow Valentines and one rusted heart (salt water will do that you know)

Iron Horse cowgirl: riding up a blue streak

Last week it rained bicycles into my life. Today the Iron Horse and I had our first ride while the sun made a valiant attempt to shine. Temperatures, at last, rose above freezing for most of the day, making the ugly, lumpy, gritty, dirty mounds of frozen snow along the roads leak and shrink.
The thaw reveals road surfaces potholed, cracked and full of grit. Iron Horse has shock absorbers and fat knobbly tyres. We are fearless in the face of bumps and lumps.

With pedals pumping and wheels spinning, my new mount eats up the streets. My coat flies open. We are flapping like an ungainly bird. Soon I am sweating in spite of all the snow still surrounding. Whoosh! whoosh! whoosh! the toy town sized blocks of this toy town sized town flash by.
I run out of road, slow down, test the brakes, and realise that, either I am very out of practise at sitting on a bicycle seat, or this is a particularly uncomfortable one. I dismount and walk for a bit. Eish! this Iron Horse is more uncomfortable that the Molokai mules.Go West! the sign on a derelict building urges. With this Iron Horse I go from south west to north east and a whole lot of zigs and zags in between too.I don't find the honey barn but I do notice, oh joy! that colour is coming back to my world. There's a brilliant yellow stain come upon the willows along the creek. Looking closer I spot somebody's nest in a tangle of new shoots.

Cirrus clouds brush streaks across the bluest sky blue imaginable.

A flower in my pedal

On the same day that it rained bicycles in my life, this little gem dropped out of an insomniac night. As a friend commented: nice fairies I have.

Flowers in my pedals indeed and dizzy is a religion. Synchronicity is alive, magic is afoot and homing down with me in the mountains it seems.

Raining bicycles?

Is it him, me or those dang crows, coyotes and rabbits who inhabit the peripheral vision of my world?

Let me back up a little. In early December I abandoned Skunk House and moved to Stinkwater Place on the south western edge of town. A much greater distance, in as much as any distance is far in this little town, from my work. Rain, snow, ice, sleet, freezing fog, I have put my hands in my pockets, my Pendleton hat on my head, cleats on my boots and walked out every working day of this hard winter, clean across town, to get to where I earn my clamshells.

One day, I found myself thinking that this little mountain town has pretty flat roads. A bicycle for getting around might be an idea. It was just a thought, voiced to no one because, hey, there is no one here who hears my voice. It seems, however, that there is nothing which goes through my mind, doesn't also breathe its way to the fav tribal elder way over there on the salt water.

I am offered a Trek Lime. I look it up online, admire the clean lines. The (apparent) simplicity of a bicycle which changes gears for itself. The basket on the front, bell and seat storage are little added extras. I already hear the tinkle of the bell as I ride upright and serene through the streets of my town.

Only catch is it is the other side of a significantly snowy mountain range. No worries. Winter is not for bicycle riding. Trek Lime can wait.

But oh! what drama the promise of that Trek Lime created. Seems it had also been offered to granddaughters and daughter various. I let go of this, as yet unseen, but oh! how hugely imagined, gift horse. It had developed way too many teeth, all the better for devouring raggedy pieces of my heart and emotional equilibrium.This week, however, not one, but TWO bicycles, slightly used, slightly dusty from long storage in a garage 20 miles north of me, are delivered to me at work. That fav tribal elder: the fingers and the pies he has at his command constantly amazes me. His reach across geography, time and space is phenomenal.

Yup. It is raining bicycles, thanks to the wondrous federation of fte, crow, coyote and rabbit. With a little Hawaiian aloha tossed into the mix. Of course.

Now, dare I say it lest the expression be a rag to a genie lamp? all I need is a bike mechanic with a tyre pump and healing hands on neglected bicycle anatomy. And for the snow and ice to melt, of course. Bring on spring. I have wheels!

Of course nothing is going to help the fact that I never have mastered the arcane art of changing gears on a bicycle. When you grow up riding horses with their living, breathing, pulsing, independent consciousness gear changing machinery, the transition to metal donkeys is difficult.

But good lesson here for me in taking care of what I wish for. Seems whatever I ask for might just rain down upon my shoulders. And then I have the pesky business of working out what to do with it.

And, well, doggone it! look who is guarding the bicycles in the meantime. That's no Cerberus. Point of fact, I don't even know his name.

Exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

Blue sky barn spotting

It is snowing AGAIN right now, and my world closed into a low visibility, shaken up snowglobe once more, but yesterday morning blindingly bright light and cheerful bird song greeted me when I went out to empty the compost into the frozen lump which passes as compost heap this time of the year. The sun and sense of spring's immanence, coupled with horrible case of missing salt water paddling, enticed me out onto the road.

My original plan was for a little walk in the woods or by a lake. Where didn't really matter. Anywhere on the 1.1 million acres of Colville National Forest which surround me. Then I thought to try to find the Little Pend Oreille National Wildlife Refuge which keeps three of its nine entrances open year round. Well neither happened.

In spite of the sun, when I got out there, the roads were not as clear of snow and ice as I am comfortable venturing on with my, albeit rock weighted, two wheel drive amber liquid sunshine Ford Ranger. The lakes of my summer delight are all flat expanses of ice. The entrance roads to some have even been lost, disguised under mounds of snow. I settled instead for a day of rambling behind the wheel, barn spotting and cloud watching giving in to the comfort of the ribbon of road unspooling in a moving landscape. I even saw a helicopter hauling logs out of a section of the forest. Not a bad way to spend the day even if I didn't quite get the feet on the earth, outdoor solitude I was hankering for.
Many of the barns I saw are suffering from the heavy snows of the winter with roofs caving in or developing very interesting tilts, leans and lists. Dancing barns. One had even donned its best butterfly hat for me.
Of course photography was difficult. One of the features of backroads in winter is no verge: I am not going to venture into the unknown which, if it does look level and isn't a few feet high with mounded snow left by the plough, could be hiding a six foot deep ditch nicely smoothed out by all that snow.

Next weekend I will put my I-need-solitude attitude in my back pocket, and just go to the ski resort ten miles out of town, with my stolen snow shoes and tramp along on their approved routes. Grrrr. I did so want to be alone without a million namebrand clad happy Subaru families with their bright, shiny REI supplied gear coming between me and the forests.

This kind of winter is so not my season. Can you tell the novelty of a snow landscape is wearing off? It might be very pretty to look at but the salt water paddler in me is really taking all this landlocked business hard at this stage.

At play in the fields of the Rabbit

Kung hay fat choy! May prosperity be with you this lunar new year. Peace too.Haoli Makahiki Hou! Happy New Year!

Hello Metal Rabbit!