November 17, 2024
Nogal House
Indian Divide, New Mexico

A thought thanks to my dear friend, Mary Katherine Rays comment, “We are so lucky to even exist. We need to cherish every day.
For Mary Katherine,

I Can But Try

I am grateful for every single breath
And express that each day
As I speak my morning prayer.
Every breath
This blessed earth beneath my feet
This home that shelters me
The beauty that surrounds me
In each and every direction
My nod to the Native American sentiments
Which say it all so well.

I am humbled to simply be alive
To exist in the here and now
To have been born
And to have lived
Having survived myself
Through those times
I may well have died
But somehow survived in tact
In mind, body, and spirit
Proud and grateful to have done so.

Life in itself so precious
The sun and the sky
The rain and the rainbow
Every single drop of rain
Leading me to ask how anyone
Could allow any measure of misery
To dominate their thoughts
Knowing that the joy flows
In equal measures
The moment we shift our attention
To this blessed gift of life
And exalt in every breath.

I spoke my prayer today
To a cloudy rain soaked sky
Raised my arms to embrace the universe
To say thanks for every breath
For the gift of life
The very grace of being alive.
As quickly as the words left my lips
The rain began to gently fall
The sun broke again through the clouds
Two ravens flew overhead
The whoosh of their wings
Like music to my ears
Bringing a smile to my face
With a greeting
And some words of thanks
For their passage
As a rainbow appeared to the north.
I am blessed. Ixehe. Thank you.

Even as I write
Yet another rainbow appears
Stretched on the horizon.
To what do I owe
Such gifts?
And how can I repay them?
I can but try.

An Ode For Ruidoso

From here on the rain will never be the same

The cumulous clouds will loom a bit closer

The towering thunderheads will represent a threat.

Those welcome rainstorms will still quench the earth

The moist air at daybreak still bring a deep breath

The storms will incite an instinctive thrill and some fear

But still yet, they will never be the same.

From here on we will all watch the weather a lot closer

We will see the storms as they move across the sky

And track their every move across the mountains

Waiting and wondering where the rain will fall

Which canyon and hillside will receive the torrents

Where flood or flow will choose to go

With a hope and a prayer that all will be spared.

I watch from my northern hillside, safe above the threat

But ours is a shared angst and a shared thought

For any and all who live in harms way

And the devastation touched us all, if only from afar

Because this place is all of our homes and all of our mountains

And the same thunder reverberates here to the north

As it does to the south of right where I sit today

Carrying the same message of storm and rain

Though far more ominous there than from here.

My prayers go out today for my neighbors and friends

That the rains be soft and gentle as they come to the ground

That the mulch and the seed be moistened and firmed

That the grass and flowers grow thick in the spring

Greening the scorched hillsides and slowing the floods

Restoring all that was lost and bringing new life as it will.

The rain is a mixed blessing and will be for years

But it brings a blessing all the same.

There is a change in the weather

A coolness to the breeze

On an otherwise warm morning.

Something has shifted

The season poised to change

The feel of things different

From just the day before.

The birds have come to ground

Covering my yard and garden,

Three to find the greenhouse

Trapped for a moment

By walls and windows

That they cannot comprehend

The wind rises even as I write

As does that restless sense

Of urgency

That so often ruled my life,

If now settled

But restless all the same,

As the heightened emotion

Of instincts long held

Threaten every aspect of security.

Flee she says so clearly

Fly as the birds do

Scatter your accomplishments

Vacate your security

Follow the winds and the seasons

As you always used to do.

It is good fortune for me

That I have a greenhouse and a garden

And that my treasured camper

Is in need of some repairs

Because otherwise

My gallery and plantings

Might languish in failure

In the absence of myself.

For Fran:

All Over Town

She says she has seen me on my knees

All over town, which she has.

I told Troy I even had knee pads and he laughed

But installing water meters requires such things

As one is on her knees all day long.

I have made a living on my knees

An unceremonial effort for a woman of my sort

Kneeling so often to do my work

And being paid well for the same.

I have spent years kneeling in straw and sawdust

Massaging and bandaging the legs of race horses

Only to graduate to cleaning houses and scrubbing toilets

And even for a while the barroom floors at Farley’s Pub

A single mom scraping peanut shells out of the corners

So often on my knees.

I moved forward in the world and back to school

A single mom of two growing boys who got certified

Learning a new trade along the way

Reading water meters and taking samples

Moving up again to aquifer mapping

Kneeling in sun and sand, rocks and gravel

Working in the wind and snow

Dropping a steel tape deep into the throats of wells

Yes, deep throat if you will, haha,

There on my knees my dearest, always,

Coupled with a reverence that has grown with the years

All the way to now at sixty four years of age

Installing my second round of water meters in Carrizozo

Some twenty years after the first time

The same meter cans, the same gravely ground

But with knee pads this time around

And an even greater sense of humility

Than the first time.

I wrote a poem back then,

Twenty years ago while reading a water meter,

Kneeling on the same haloed ground,

“The ‘iron knees’ of life are that we don’t pray enough”

There are worse ways to make a living than to be on ones knees,

All over town.

Nourishment

Nourishment, the winter garden

Cold breeze and warm morning sun

The pure simple pleasure of splitting wood

The crack of the axe and the smell of the walnut

Set free from the center of its core.

Exhilaration, upon breathing deep

From the effort and pleasure

Of a simple life well lived

Wanting and needing so little else

But for the harvest of nature’s gifts.

What more can I ask for?

The Lord is my Shepherd.

I want for nothing.

May 17, 2012

Nogal Canyon Road

Bent, New Mexico

Meagan

If innocence still lives it is in the eyes of a child named Meagan. She is a woman child, caught in that fragile instance between a young girl and a woman. She is an adolescent and naïve to what lies before her excepting the depth of wisdom in her mother’s eyes. They are so like her own, set in another face.

 Meagan, she stands as a reminder for her mother and I, of all we have left behind us and all which lies ahead. She returns to us in her every breath all which we have treasured and tried to hold onto. Her searching gaze and her questions are a breath of fresh air, one to be savored and studied as our Zen teachers would tell us, to be felt as it comes and goes. She has strength where her mother is more fragile and she is blessed with the awareness of the necessity of that. She will be wiser for the wear, my own mother was fragile and I too became strong because of it.

She is a teacher even as she is still a student, the exchange of lessons will be of equal value to us both and nothing will be lost. She has already returned to me what life has tried to take away. I will give her other gifts which she can carry with her. Her mother will receive an equal share and the blessings are multiplied by three. Her mother and I were both in need of that feminine compassion which is so hard to find, and all young girls need mentors. We three can mentor each other for innocence reigns up that narrow canyon we all call home and I will bring with me adventure and experience in return.

We stood before an ancient cabin as the afternoon waned. We spoke of the history and the effort which went into the construction of the adobe and rock shelter, and of the life which had been lived there. Kelly spoke of the beauty and the mystery of the place and of how she stood inside before the roof fell in. I recounted my own experience far west of here in the San Augustin Plains and how upon deeper study of the homesteaders lives some of the romance had faded from my mind. It was a tough life, theirs. Kelly’s eyes widened a little; she had never thought of the hardships, such is the innocence she has maintained. Meagan listened to every word, their weight growing heavier in her learning.

If innocence still lives it is in the eyes of a child named Meagan. She has inherited it from her mother. One will never meet another with such a gentle spirit.

                                                Meagan

The young girls laugher

High pitched and joyful

Echoes off of the canyon walls

Like the chatter of coyotes

Exuberant and unrestrained

Free of the constrictions

Of society or domesticity

Still innocent and alive

I am so grateful

For the reminder

Of how life should be lived

Ahh wooh! Hah Hah Hah

October 18, 2022

Nogal House

Indian Divide, New Mexico

Deciding Factors

My first thoughts upon waking this morning were of the wilderness. There was a cool moist breeze wafting through the slightly open window facing the south and the simple breath of the outside was enough to transport me. I have that connection with the wilderness, one such as I have cultivated since my childhood and have found a safe haven there as I have no place else. It is my haven, my escape, my place to retreat to for the pure and simple peace of mind which I require above and beyond everything else. I am alone for much the same reason for even as I retreated to the distant hills for solace, so I discovered the same. I have been, and felt, alone for much of my life, sensed my otherness and rather than let it take something away from me I reveled in it instead. I embraced the freedom that was allowed to me as there was no point, in my youthful mind, to do otherwise. It seemed to me from early on in my life that the effort to conform, to fit in, to model my life after what everyone else said I was supposed to do was an empty pursuit. I found my happiness elsewhere and it filled me in a manner that nothing else ever did, before or since. Certainly I have had, and maintained my ties with society and forged relationships but even now, as I study on the thought, I have found little else that surpassed the joy and peacefulness I have discovered in the wilderness and my own solitary company.

These choices that I have made are the deciding factors in my life and they guide me still. What is it that draws me to the wilderness and caused my mind to seek such solace upon waking and to pull me away from any other thought or consideration? That is such an easy question to answer though the conundrum it creates is nothing nearly as simple. The cool breeze I tasted with my first waking breath wafted to my window from the distant mountains where the clouds had come to ground of the night and which still hung there this morning. The suns warmth had yet to break the spell and even now it is shrouded too heavily to draw the moisture skyward, leaving the feel of the mystical, the memory of the oceans fog and the silent wonder of riding through the haze on the coast of California. Even here on the norther hillside the air is laden with moisture so dense that it muffled the caw of the raven and the soft whoosh of his wings as he flew westward. My heart stood still as he flew past and as he drew me skyward for a moment. I chanced to join him in flight until he slipped away over the horizon. I came to ground gently and remained there, unwilling to break the spell. A small flock of bluebirds took wing from the nearby hillside and they drew my attention elsewhere, thrilling again at the brilliant blue of their flashing wings, laughing quietly at their chatter. What else does one need for their happiness?

We humans are destined to seek elation and comfort for such is our ilk. We are conscious of such things to such a degree that we work towards any means we can find to fill that need, and satisfy that desire. It is simple when we are small for we are fascinated with the newness of  things and each discovery gives us that rush of joyfulness. This is the joy we find in children’s laughter and in innocence that radiates from their happiness. I so often feel a touch of envy towards them for such spontaneity wears thin with the passage of the years. As we grow older, if we are so fortunate, we receive those warm hugs and kisses, those expressions of love from those close to us, exchange laughter with our friends, and discover new adventures and thrills as our world opens up before us. What of the joy of running through a field, jumping off of the creek bank into the water, the gallop on horseback through the trees and across the pastures? Then later, the newfound freedoms as we mature, become more independent, and find our first love. All of these things can and should define our lives and for those of us who require even greater stimulus lead us to other things, the unseen distances, the roads less traveled, the mountaintops and the highways. I sought all of that, had my friends, my family, my horses but also a deeper need for something unseen, undiscovered in that place of my youth. I tried other things, drinking and drugs, and found some thrill of course, but I knew there was something greater, something distant, something west. This was the deciding factor and I wonder still if I would have survived if I hadn’t have followed that urge and traveled far instead.

What is it that draws me to the wilderness at the cost of leaving all else behind me and so often, almost always, going alone? In all the years of my life I have so rarely shared such adventures as those times when I wandered off onto the highway or deep into the hills. In rare company I once lived in a log cabin some five miles off the highway but the drinking and the drugs conquered all in the end. Years later I found a similar haven out on the plains of Oklahoma, the Tall Grass Prairie but that too was lost for the same reasons as the first. It seems that as we age, or even in our youth, too often the route to that treasured elation is a shortcut of the lesser sort. I was so fortunate to have discovered the wilderness, the wildness and the freedom of sweet solitude. I have yet to find its equal and even if I stay rooted in convention in so many ways my heart remains elsewhere. I found God’s grace and creation so early in my life and surrounded myself with the very essence of nature and the earthly blessings that surround me every day. I found that big love off on those dirt roads across the plains and even in the gusty taste of the wind in the spring, and in the clatter of rain through the summer. Just this morning I breathed in the cool essence of the moisture laden dawn and found it to be good. It has been the deciding factor of my life. I am blessed.

Where Ya Been

            Dedicated to Luke Bell, country singer 1990-2022

Where ya been? How many times have I asked myself that question? I still get lost at times, which is as frightening as it has ever been because it sneaks up on me now. I am too often unaware that I have slipped until days later when my clarity returns. Not that I don’t think I am attuned every day but sometimes my list of things to do gets lost and I lose track of my days. I am so afraid that one day I won’t come back but I work really hard to avoid that. I hope that I always have the option.

One of my go to meditations when I get depressed is to remind myself that I am so fortunate not to wake up every day feeling like I can’t go forward. My worst days are few and far between and almost only just that, a worst day, and the following one is almost always better than the last. In my mind I feel that I am a lucky girl because I am almost always, at the very least these days, content with my life. Mental illness is a state of mind when we are not okay and in Luke Bell’s case, as in so many others, wellness is a difficult option. Now, I had never heard of Luke Bell before he went missing as I don’t listen to mainstream anything anymore. I would not have heard of him at all except that his story popped up on my Google feed and I was curious enough to click on the link. Curiosity led me to read further and his story of mental illness and addiction touched home as I have lost many friends along the way. I have fought my own battles with addictions also so I can relate to his struggle in ways that others may not. I know how it feels to feel like I had to get high rather than just wanting to, or had to have something or someone instead of just desiring that. There is a big difference and sometimes you just can’t say no. I’ve been clean for years but sometimes that feeling still comes over me!

Luke Bell, a man younger than my oldest son, who still seems so young to me. I think of Luke’s struggle with mental illness and addiction, which at their worst are one and the same. Where Ya Been? If you read and listen to the words of that song, it was a tragic self-portrait that every drinker and addict could write about themselves. Where ya been, when the person you speak of is your very own self who somehow got lost in the shuffle of life, of alcohol, of some pervasive drug or even in the mindless fog of living where one simply loses sight of all the things that might somehow root them in some sense of normalcy. What a frightening place that is to be and there are so very few of us who haven’t experienced some sense of that feeling at a given moment. We must then consider how many of us experience that feeling on a routine basis and we have to ask what the remedy is. We fail to empathize at times because it is too damned personal, too frightening to consider that ‘there for the grace of God go I”. Well, there for the grace of God go I but I am blessed with the strength and determination to have overcome my weaknesses to some great extent though I will never, it seems, overcome them all. My mind and good sense still slip away from me on occasion but I am fortunate enough to have the strength and the faith to find my way back. I am also not at all afraid to share that because if we all felt free to discuss these things we would be a lot more aware of how prevalent they are and less afraid to talk, share and assist each other in our moments of need. We might even by chance save someone’s life, or possibly our own.

Here’s my point. We all struggle sometimes and we have all asked the same question of each other and ourselves at a given moment. “Where Ya Been? Hey, mister in the mirror, where’s my friend. I went out on the town and I ain’t seen him since. Hey, hey, where ya been?” It really doesn’t matter what killed Luke Bell, it’s all the same in the end BUT Fentanyl is probably the worst crisis we have ever seen. Last year there were 41,000 deaths directly connected to this one drug and it was a part of half of the drug deaths out of 100,000 cases. Fentanyl is currently the Number One cause of death for people ages 18 to 45 in the United States as of 2022. What this country lacks is a process where people can seek help and access it without having the funds to cover their treatment. We have a system that hands out a lot of services to a lot of people, including many addicts and alcoholics, but cannot and will not provide the treatment options that might save their lives. It seems that that would be money well spent for all of the above reasons.

I don’t have all the answers but perhaps I have a few. I know that those of us who are blessed with good health and freedom from addictions can teach by example. I am not afraid to discuss my past and I hope that I will always be an inspiration to those who need one. We can all reach out when and where we think we can help while not being enablers but instead supporters of positive efforts. Sometimes just lending an ear can go a long way. We can also speak out and hope and pray that our voices will be heard. Our ‘Welfare’ system is terribly broken needs to be fixed. Well fare, fare well, no more handouts but instead support. Let the Medicaid incentives include true wellness perhaps? Mental health has as much influence on physical health as anything else, as everything else. Where ya been?