beck and call

"like the bear that went over the mountain, i went out to see what i could see." annie dillard (tinker creek.) this is process by which we live. we go out to see what we can see. and for no other reason. there's usually a lot.


we heed it dutifully, the gentle march of emerging life.

rock-star turned thirty. we followed the gold to the river.

did you know that:

----nature's first green is gold-----

      {and it's}

(her hardest hue to hold.)

her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour.

then leaf subsides to leaf.

so eden sank to grief.

so dawn goes down to day,

nothing gold can stay.

(r. frost.)

if any of you know me you also know this is one of the few poems i can recite.

little mosses

 spenceville nature preserve.

magic. (red bud blossoms and mistletoe.)

the leafing buckeyes lit up the canyon like sprayed neon mists.

kurt and ty in the top right, photo taken from fairy falls.

the mother.

brodiaea grows in her mists.

the boys find wild cucumber.

omen: great blue heron flies across the sky.

my favorite compost digger.

roseville: blossoms and trains.

teddy's valentine haul deepened my love for children's handmade trinkets.

dreamy skies.

dreamers in the prairie.

old town lincoln. (a town that my child was not named after, but is conveniently nearby.)

LINKY, almost 2. hides, likes to surprise us. nurses all of his babies on me, himself, and ty. loves all of his "babies." explores beyond known boundaries, a water baby. speaks unrecognizable words, and is adorable. has a noticeable appreciation for music and instruments, dances without prompting, gives kisses. jumps. runs. digs. left handed. :)

nettles for my stuffy ute(rus,) picked at hailey's wild farm.

hailey herself.

stopped by at teddy's school during garden time.

TEDDY, 6. my auto-correcter. makes paper airplanes to barter, pilfers quarters and crackers, builds forts, has seen every documentary netflix has on sharks, volcanoes, and the titanic. jumps and flaps when excited. :)

fort day at his school.

my kids equally love trains. a model of roseville's train yard.

february fairy land.

we had a picnic of hand pies, brie, miner's lettuce, and chickweed. if you want to live any semblance of a normal life do NOT read the mists of avalon. if you do, be prepared to embrace your magical self, see fairies, and the constant eye-roll of the uninitiated partner.

these magical hills are in rocklin, near my home.

baby blue oak leaves.

witches' butter. yum.

yellow bulbitious. not so yum?

warm.

confluence at the american river. it's not that warm, teddy!

my boys can throw rocks in all day.

our swamp.   we go out to watch the shrinking pools, the life that swirls there, to see who's hanging around and experience it in all seasons.

red eared slider, and right above him a muskrat glistens.

willows.

teddy catches pollywogs.

vernal pools. 

i excitedly find fairy/vernal pool shrimp. so cool. endangered, their eggs can lie dormant in dry soil and hatch after a rain, to reproduce. homegirl needs a microscope, amoeba and protozoa and whatnot.

a little of what i am doing at school. (passe selfies?)

and, gratefully dedicated to renee (scroll down to the end of linked post to see her.)

how could i ever forget you?

listen to the gut.
build your own roads.
this is a universe of abundance and adventure.

xoxo

imbolc blessings/ night time walk/ the Lamescape

indoors
my partner listens to cursive and pays the bills

and my two companions,
my two sons -romulus and remus-

their jubilant laughter runs
over the sidewalks
and echos off of stucco dwellings

in the dark
cool
night
we run
(the wildest creatures these pedestrians walkways have boasted)
like coyotes
under orion and his clan
of
diamonds,
defying streetlamps with their brightness.
we run free.

whatever scrap of green we can see, we sit there, and watch the other living things congregate.

neighborhood cats are always a highlight of our strolls. honest.

two years ago i started a post called: we live across the street from an industrial park, where i, in my crude and unrefined styled, tried to illustrate life within a seemingly wasted place but learning the magic to see the wonder. it didn't make it to print.

hugged by the walmart and it's seas of parking we find green and blue after the small rain. sticks, i tell ya. sticks.

 well, the most recent edition of Orion magazine had an yet another essay that made me cry because the experience was so familiar. this is borrowed from nico alvarado's no strangers here:

this used to be fruit and vegetable scraps. i haul worm-wriggling compost around the yard to nourish the soil for future plants; a proud proud soil worker.

 "in truth it was a giant parking lot, Acres of asphalt, an ocean of it...my wife called it the Lamescape, and for one year we lived across the street. because our house was in a cul-de-sac that defied egress on foot, it was the only place we could go for a walk, and because we're the sort of people who eat bulgar and read Orion and buttonhole strangers at parties to talk about compost, we think it's really, really important to go for walks...

our cul-de-sac. i wonder about how our location affects the childhood of my sons. i grew up deep in the hills, wandering bare footed. even teddy spent the first 3 years of his life gathering eggs and vegetables with me in the mornings. to me this place is ugly, and some days i am overcome by the beauty, leave it to us to find the magic. home is home.

...
this is the heart of lamescapeness: it's where we put - note that i don't say hide - what we don't want to see...it isn't a slum. it isn't toxic waste. it is simply stuff that we americans don't value the sight of...
minus the lawns and the american dream, it embodies the same priciple of the cul-de-sac - except that the cul-de-sac keeps us safe from strangers, and the Lamescape exists to make us strangers to itself...

we wander into our very own lamescape.

and yet. for all that is was ugly and stupid, for all the existential dread it inspired, for all that every Lamescape represents the failure of the commons, every day at five it was ours..."

crawling even into the cracks.

but yet, the edges could never be lame. pure earth. blooming ceanothus.

visiting the first leaves of the buckeye.

linky eats ants and dirt.   :s

teddy wears a watch and tells me what time it is. he runs an experiment in his sink called "does it float?"

the first blooms of our nearest redbud. true love.

this place where we live, when at first contact feels wholly irredeemable, the earth reminds us that that is so far from reality.
i feel happy when i realize how much i've learned to see.
the beauty in the ugly.
the magic in the only places left for us and our children to wander.
our connection to place.

xoxo

someone turns 30 and flirty this week!!!!!!!!!!!