june dance

There's a place I love on the Birch Creek Rd where, after winding around a few small hills, the road rises and drops again, leaving you with the view of the entire north side of the Beaverhead Valley, the Tobacco Root Mountains, the Highlands.  It's breathtaking every time you see it.  The graceful blue transition of foothills to mountains, the velvet soft roll of hay fields.  This land doesn't often look soft.  But at the beginning of June it changes.  There is this surprising lushness on the desert, the smell of cottonwoods, and the impossible blue of sky.

Today, as you drove past this spot, you stopped.  

You left all the windows down, turned the radio up, 

and whooped to your girls to climb out and dance.  

"And we should consider every day lost 

on which we have not danced at least once."

 -Friedrich Nietzsche

for amelia bird

You walked out
of your kindergarten classroom
for the last time today.

This year has felt
impossibly long
and also
like the blink of an eye.

Being a parent stretches
your capacity for instant nostalgia,
for attempts to wrap
your arms and mind
around something that was here

just a second ago
and is now gone.
It bruises your heart

the way muscles bruise
when you push them
to run faster,
carry more and more
weight.
It is a good bruise
that means we are all becoming

who we are.

first day of school

When I left your classroom
on the first day
I made it as far as I could. 

I hurried past the other teary moms,
pushed through the school's front doors into the warm September morning. 
I bit my lips.  I looked at the sky,
watched my shoes. 

I made it to my car.  Before I cried.

I cried while I tried to imagine what you were doing. 
It felt so foreign to have to guess, to not simply know.
I drove slowly through our town.

Back and forth
on sunny streets.

And I let my heart break
over the wonder and pride
and utter loss
I felt
over your first day of school.

I finally parked
and wandered
into a basement thrift store.
As I walked slowly through the store
a woman I barely knew
smiled and asked me
how are you
just the way people do.

I had never before cried
on a stranger's shoulder.
All I could say was
it's my daughter's first day
of kindergarten before she
wrapped me in her arms
with an awe, honey.

I cried because I couldn't see your face.
I cried because how can this be right,
to send you far from me
each day?
I cried because what if your feelings were hurt,
or you were tired, or you needed me?

I cried because
I love you more
than anything.
I cried because I was afraid
you'd struggle

and maybe you'd fall.

But you flew, Bird.


Of course you did.

sweet gray morning

An hour alone in a coffee shop feels ridiculously indulgent.  Nevermind the mellow gray skies hanging low outside, the door propped open wide.  Nevermind the cool, fresh air, we'll happily leave sweaters and fleeces on, just order another hot americana and marvel and the soft voices, the lazy trickle of customers through the open door.  Greens are lush on the sidewalk of the flower shop across the street, the peonies and geraniums are brilliant in the muted light.

We happily bubble toward this new season, faces tilted up, raised to new rain, soft air, pale sunlight that makes us squint like old friends trying to place one another.  

This morning I ran for miles, climbed a small mountain or maybe a large hill.  Breathed in and out.  Felt like I was floating.  I want to absorb this precise beauty, this pace, to hold its quiet loveliness inside my chest and sip from it when I need it most.  When I'm rushed, or tired - maybe I can find this reservoir.

There are things I need to do this morning.  I need to find cowgirl boots to wear to a wedding this weekend.  I need to buy a new coloring book or two to help ease the drive.  I need to pick my car up from the shop.  Good little things.  Good little morning.

weekend: spring rain

I didn't think they'd climb all the way.  First, crossing our pastures then climbing over the woven wire fence into our neighbor's dryland hills.  They were wearing rain boots, had gone looking for puddles before spotting the silhouette of a herd of antelope at the top of the hill.  I watched them grow smaller as they waded the ocean of grass.  

I caught up with them just before they reached the top.  Thrilled with their solo climb, they pointed to the Pioneer Mountains, Lets do those next!

I spent hours in the hoop house, listening to soft rain on the roof.  The smell, the softness of the air was something I had nearly forgotten.  Rain.

I want to plant everything at once.  Today I settled for transplanting all 35 tomatoes and planting bean and summer squash seeds.  My hands feel like sandpaper and my muscles are tired and happy.

This weekend we built tents,

soaked up the heavy gray skies,

& took naps...among other things.

drought

The sky fills with water.  Violet clouds streak down toward the mountains.  The smell of rain thickens the air, then suddenly moves on.  We watch blue break the clouds apart with something like despair.

Trucks of cattle roll through town, heading south to the stockyard. We talk of snowpack, grazing allotments, headgates. I feel greedy for water, like a real westerner, proud that I finally understand this precarious balance we keep. 


I don't know when I've ever slept like this.  It goes beyond the sleep of sunlicked skin and tired muscles.  This sleep drives me from my body, wipes clean the slate of my mind, leaves me heavy and disoriented in the morning.  I sleep with intensity, dropping through mattress and floorboards into vibrant colors, complex storylines, aware only of vast depths below like someone adrift  on a still sea.

On my run - antelope tracks arch like lips in the dust of the trail.  I can tell we are moving in the same direction.  They veer to a low pocket of ground, a small depression that caught enough snowmelt to green the tough windblown grass that grows along the sagebrush.

When the sun hits a pivot's spray it looks like heaven.  Lush alfalfa tangles in a blur of new green beneath the spray.  All around the dryland fields are bleached nearly white.

I wake in the dark to the sound of water.  At first I think I've left a sprinkler running, but I haven't.  Rain.
The air is full of water.

32 things I love today

1. Dipping toes into the icy Big Hole River in the first week of April.

2. My trusty old red subaru.
3. Avacados
4. Being amazed each year at the utter force and brilliance of sudden spring in the mountains.
5. Sandhill cranes flying high over our house, calling to each other.
6. Today I talked to my mom, my dad, my sister and my brother.  All of them.
7. New friends, old friends, my wonderful community of awesome women.
8. Boots and skirts.

9. The harmonica.
10. Toting a flat of spindly, reaching seedlings into my warm hoophouse in the morning.
11. Coffee.  First Thing.
12. Realizing after the last two years, that I'm happier in my 30s than I was in my 20s.
13. The simultaneous heartache and pride I feel watching my girls climb trees, grow strong, and think for themselves.
14. Watching the sun rise this morning.

15. Washing my face with sugar.
16. Knowing that in a week, my schedule will drastically change, opening wide for summer.
17. Being with my man, who makes me happy.
18. Saturday mornings.
19. This girl.

20. The smell of rain.
21. Roadtrips, long or short.
22. Lilacs.
23. This girl, too.

24. My mother-in-law, who cleaned my entire hosue today, made my birthday dinner, and bought cupcakes.
25. Running the hogback with Ruby.
26. Dramatic spring skies.
27. Still eating tomatoes from last year's garden.
28. Poems.
29. Thrift stores.
30. Taking pictures.
31. Trusting myself- it sounds so simple.

32. This.

**Birthday list idea borrowed from the lovely Nici, over at digthischick.net

right now...

it finally feels like spring, despite the crispy brown grass underfoot.

*mid-leap*
I'm abandoning page 23 of the paper-from-hell for sunshine and IPA.

and my creative, wild scientist-princess is perfecting her balance
on the new swing she built
just now.