Nomad gene edition 11/2011

So the nomad gene kicked in and I moved house again this month.

Officially the date for the Groot Trek was 1st December. The combination of a generous new landlord who gave me November free and impending snow season had me call up the camels a few weeks early. Last year I moved in snow: snow falling from the sky, snow underfoot, snow on the roads, snow down my neck, snow in my stuff, snow tracking into and out of the habitations. It wasn't pretty or fun.
As I began the trek a few weeks ago, the mountain occupied herself with a teasing veil dance of mists, revealing then hiding her fresh light dusting of the first of this season's snow.

What a mess! This has possibly been the most disorganized move of my 8-10 a decade average over the past thirty-five years. Though some might also say it was the loosest. Sometimes a bit of relaxation of the control and organization is good, right?

For the statistics books: this is the 9th house move since arriving on United States soil a decade and a month and some ten days ago .

Lesson of this chapter: it is easier and neater to move between continents than 4 blocks rather the same way as packing for a three month journey one takes as much "stuff' as a three week journey.

When just moving 4 small blocks one doesn't pack terribly well. The secret of the nomad thing is in the packing. What happens before departure day is crucial.

I am experiencing a particularly unraveled time in my life when the ground is somewhat unsteady beneath my feet and there's no long distance paddle to blame for the wobbliness. For the days ahead of the move I lived amongst a willful tangle of possessions as I stepped into the river, off the brief stone of Stinkwater Place, reaching across into the void of the new.

Ah! the beautiful emptiness of new beginnings.

Restoring the inner compass

Feeling the need to be outside the weekend at the real tail end of October I took a drive a little way north to the Little Pond Orelle National Wildlife Refuge.
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon well spent meandering around the roads, honing my map reading skills. Uuuh....which way is north again? It is challenging when one is fresh returned, as I was then, from another continent on the other side of the equator, in another season. Losing east = disorientation. Going to ground, spending time getting close to earth seems to work best to restore my inner compass. Though some would say I am irremediably directionally challenged.

I found parking at a bridge over the river where camping is permitted, and took a walk along an interpretive trail through a wetland to the brooding dark water of McDowell lake, one of the several lakes on the refuge.Tamaracks (Western larch - the only deciduous conifer) were brighter than the 28 carat Indian gold.

The sun came through briefly in shafts of light between the trunks while underfoot the colours were muted, autumnal earth of seed, pod and straw.
Chipmunks whirred and chirped in the branches overhead, a woodpecker knock knock knocked in a dead trunk and a flock of turkeys browsed a grassy area, providing me with enough signs of wildlife taking refuge and thriving.

Mostly I was surprised, and pleased, to find the refuge pretty much deserted of human presence. The smattering of other vehicles I met had loaded rifle racks and a sense of prowling, seeking. Hunting is permitted in certain sectors. Note to self: invest in a dayglo orange band for wandering these woods. I have read too many stories in press recently of people ending up dead or maimed after being mistaken for bears, elk, pigeon by trigger happy hunters here in the grand ole western frontier territories...... And then not so long ago wasn't there was that duck hunting politician of high office who shot his buddy in the back......

(Yes I am posting late again. Still trying to catch up with my life. Been the story of this second half of this year for me)

Gratitude for wild freedom: elemental nature wisely kept

A few weeks ago, on a meander through the Little Pond Orielle National Wildlife Refuge, I met a flock of wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo). This is nothing unusual around here where they still roam wild and hunters go out to get one for the pot on a regular basis.

I sat a long while on a log watching these biggest of the galliformes foraging in the autumn grasses, admiring their big bold form, their featherless heads, listening to the great range of vocalizations as they conversed amongst themselves.
My current geography and situation gives me access to a lot of wild freedom and, to quote a former refuge manager "elemental nature wisely kept, unfettered, undaunted....." For this I am truly grateful.

Here's wishing everyone well over the Great Turkey Massacre: may love and gratitude be as wild and free as the turkeys where I presently sojourn

Show me the place

Show Me The Place by leonardcohen

Water event

Forget kayaking to work (as in last spring). Today I could sail (paper) boats in the lakes inside my library. Swamp Thing would have been quite at home in the carpets.

That's what happens when you get buckets of rain after mountains of snow.... and your library building happens to have a few issues - like maybe a flat roof....

Come to think of it: who ever builds a flat roofed building in a snowy place in the first place?

I knew something was amiss the minute I opened the front door and breathed unmucked out stable. Horse pee and old hay.

Yes. Quite a day it has been.

Chicken Licken: white mischief

Snowpocalypse! Snowpocalypse! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! There. Got your attention, didn't I?

Actually it isn't that serious. The first winter storm of the season has brought mounds of snow lightly, steadily falling to fill up the hollows and even out the bumps of my little mountain town. In white winters I am only a two year old.

By the time it was light enough to see outside my new bedroom window this morning, the bird bath had already begun cultivating its Russian hat.
I am ready with my knee high sheepskin boots, chained up on the bottom. In all the chaos of moving to my winter pastures ahead of these storms I did keep the boots and cleats aside.

No one except me and the new landlord across the road seem to bother much with shovelling sidewalks so my walk to work is interesting. I find myself making a lot of decisions as to whether to flounder along on what used to be the sidewalk or to chance my luck with all the rest of the traffic on the road, dodging the slush and spray. My morning commute involves a lot of clambering over snow drifts and berms, some already thigh high. How did they mount up so quickly?

Then too, I have to relearn the stamp stamp stamp winter gait. It slows me down. I slip once moving too fast on the car slicked packed snow of the roadway this morning. A graceful coming down on one knee. A gentle warning of the quick treachery in this silent white mischief closing in my world.. Time to go inside.

Numinosity at China Bend

The first weekend back from Africa, around mid-October, I loaded my kayak and went out looking for Deep Lake up north of Northport. It is a long story why I didn't find Deep Lake that day, but I did stop off at China Bend on the Columbia (well technically it is Lake Roosevelt since that dumb damming in the forties flooded this valley and changed the nature of a great river).

The early dawn light was just coming up opalescence amongst the indigo. Vapor rose from the water, soft smoke smudging the surface where a single duck floated.
Tendrils of mist played between the trees.

It was a landscape of exquisite gloom: a beautiful symphony of melancholy at the darker end of blue. Perfect for my mood.

Lemonade

How can a girl not appreciate a man who gives her a good snow shovel?

Especially when moving to a house on a corner: two whole sides of sidewalk to clear of snow.

Way back in the dim and distant past, twenty months ago, when I left the salt water, one of my parting gifts from the old salt was a mighty fine snow shovel.

Loss disguised as gain.

I am certainly going to make good use of the blue and silver Rolls Royce of a shovel in the next few months.

Unraveling

Woke to 17 degrees Fahrenheit and the lightest dusting of snow this dawn. A crystalline world.

I cannot seem to get things right, to move to completion on anything, right now. Keep starting knitting projects only to find that I am unraveling them. Something is always wrong. The beautiful soy/wool mysterious forest bark coloured yarn is too scratchy for one scarf idea. There is too little of the softest silk Kauai opalescent sea shell colours yarn for another begun. Used the wrong size needles for the Port Townsend blues and green hand dyed yarn for that two years in the waiting cable hat urgently needed to keep my ears warm.

Oh, and did I forget to mention that the nomad gene has kicked in again? Am calling up the camels this month. Bye bye Stinkwater Place. The two kayaks have conspired to find a lockup garage four blocks north at the Cardinal House. They have invited the three bicycles and the truck to join them under cover this winter. I might as well go along to keep the furnace stoked. Or programmed may be the more accurate term. It's a reciprocal caretaker kind of thing. I take care of them in winter, they take care of my joy in summer.

So yes, dismantling the household altars. Again. At least that is something I do with practiced eye and hand.