The breeze came through and blew the greypine needles into hushed uproarious song.
A ceanothus and bush poppy were wed, we left them limbs intertwined on a sunny knoll.
Willows all along Chalone Creek greening up chartrueuse, housed humming honey bees and a hidden Hermit thrush.
The bright washed pebbly banks were thick with laughing poppies, proud fiddlenecks, and royal lupin.
The wind lifted ceanothus’ skirts and tumbled her spring sweet scent down the meadowed hills.
A proud pair of red shouldered hawks minded their new nest treasures, tourists oblivious below
They couldn’t afford their star condor this weekend, but the quail ushered us along the trail anyway.
The ring necked doves startled at the slightest footfall from their oaktop balconies, feathers sailing down to the salvia below.
Bright western bluebirds momentarily lighted on red water mains as acorn woodpeckers announce the final act.
Shooting stars caught the last of the light and the cool blue dusk settled pretty over everything.
The true owl whoo whoo called the fat moon up over dark cutout of the ridge.
The only sound left; our wooded instruments and song.
The only color left; our warm faces around the fire.

She gets more out of an acoustic guitar than anyone I’ve seen, and also calls it like it is and inspires action. Like RIGHT-NOW. I feel I could take on the world! Wish I could get her to come pep us up for our ecowarrior work at our Ecology Action staff meetings.

A surprising and sweet celebration for me was listening to her song “Marrow”:

where was your conscience?
where was your consciousness?
and where did you put all those letters
that you wrote to yourself
but could not address?

and realizing I am actually doing that right now. Paying attention. Addressing letters I’ve been writing to myself for years. Right nutrition for energy and awakeness. Powerful embodiment through exercise and yoga. Daily meditation practice. Manifesting a beautiful, edible garden. A 30 day backcountry hike planned with friends for this summer. Felt absolutely great for the realization I am taking care of myself and showing up to my dreams in a big actualized way.

What letters have you written to yourself, that have not addressed? Forget the fatigue and insecurity. Grab your guitar, plug in, and let your song carry you.

The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.

But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.

—Yehuda Amichai

(Here’s to not knowing, and just watching it all unfold…..)

” At Ryoan-ji in Kyoto there is a famous rock garden; wherever in it a person stands, one of the fifteen rocks cannot be seen. The garden reminds that always something unknowable is present, just beyond what can be perceived or comprehended - and that something is as much part of the real as any other stone amid the raked gravel.” ~ Jane Hirschfield

Thanks to Crashingly Beautiful for this and so many other not-right posts.

(If you have received this letter, by post or by sea, please comment to contact me.  If you are everyone else…read on!)

In a world looking for their love on the internet, I turn instead to the real world and methods tried and true.  Messages in a bottle for instance, and the old fashioned post.

In case some of you have forgotten how those work, here is how it goes:

- Dream of your love to be for a very long time. Know in your bones what it will feel like when you finally meet them. Meditate about it perhaps, lighting a beautiful red candle every morning.

- Head down to the Felix Kulpa Gallery on a specific Valentines Day weekend and have someone from the talented Santa Cruz Writes Love Letters Project write you up a delicious sonnet, or craft a real type written letter as an ode to your love (or both!).

- Pen a cover letter summoning your love to come through time and space to find you.  Use special stationary (you know, the kind that invokes Ganesha, Hindu God, Remover of Obstacles, for instance) and a fancy pen. Include either a specific or energetic marker so they can find you. I chose this blog.

- One if by land:  Create an address that reflects your idea of good love. Use numbers special to you for a zip code. Spritz your special perfumes on there. Enclose other treasures.  Raid your roomie’s desk for a perfect stamp. Seal it with a kiss!

My Handsome Love, 1313 Forever Street, Joyfultown, NOW, 61369

- Mail!

- Two if by sea:  Clean a pretty bottle well that has a good fitting cork. Roll those letters up tight and squeeze through the neck.  Consider adding other items in but nothing that’s not ultimately biodegradable. Put cork in. Use wax from pretty red meditation candle to seal.

- Ideally, find someone to take you out on a boat to launch your message to the universe precisely as the sun is setting on an auspicious, beautiful, fantastic day (otherwise …. head to the wharf.)  In either case you might check the tide chart and consider whether the tide is going in, or going out, and whether you want your bottle to end up on the beach nearby or not).

- Anoint the waters with rose petals or other lovelies. Offer up a prayer of forgiveness for contributing to the marine debris problem. Toss in your message in a bottle with a kiss.  Enjoy sea lions playing with your rose petals and watch your message bob off on its journey.

- Return to your abode and daily life, now made a bit more magical with all the wonderment at where your messages are traveling in the universe ( and/or….check your blog obsessively to see if your love has indeed been located by your post and responded).

In shaa’Allah, Maktub

(SC Writes just posted their Love Letters project images, my letter writer and letter, and my sonnet writer and sonnet (and me).

Grateful for this town I live in!

At first; the sunrise tangerine over the cool blue, and a sea lion or two giving a chase, the penguin-like murres tiny on the swells.  We rowed long, out past the mile bouy to the west, farther than I’ve ever rowed. The thought of whales steadied me as my body remembered rowing, leaned into the tippy side swells.  No whales.

We turned toward shore, enjoyed the green earthy layers of west cliff, the circus on seal rock, the empty stands of the O’Neill Coldwater Classic. No whales.  Mandy said she felt ‘em out here somewhere, we paused.  We headed back in, satisfied with the morning and the row, the ocean smelling very fishy. Passing the wharf we stopped amongst a group of UCSC rowers, and their instructor lit up telling us tails of huge beasts spy-hopping 10 feet in front of her boat the day before.

I guess the whales needed an audience.

There, amongst the largest group of rowers, kayakers and standup paddleboarders I’ve ever been out with, they arrived for brunch.  Five humpacks with their sweet out breaths, their no-wake footprints and elegant huge bodies, the quiet while we waited for them and again and again and again.  Rowing smoothly with the swells, we moved to be near them, and the flury of the sea lion pack following them, and the churning of the birds diving into the water.

Before I’d gotten on the boat I had an important ten o’clock meeting.  It was nine and us an hour off the dock.  I turned, and kept chasing humpbacks.

[No cameras today, so I'll share this poem to get you there too]

Humpbacks

by Mary Oliver

There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.

Off Stellwagen
off the Cape,
the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at play.

They sing, too.
And not for any reason
you can’t imagine.

Three of them
rise to the surface near the bow of the boat,
then dive
deeply, their huge scarred flukes
tipped to the air.
We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly
they smash through the surface, someone begins
shouting for joy and you realize
it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time
how huge they are, as they breach,
and dive, and breach again
through the shining blue flowers
of the split water and you see them
for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky–
like nothing you’ve ever imagined–
like the myth of the fifth morning galloping
out of darkness, pouring
heavenward, spinning; then

they crash back under those black silks
and we all fall back
together into that wet fire, you
know what I mean.

I know a captain who has seen them
playing with seaweed, swimming
through the green islands, tossing
the slippery branches into the air.
I know a whale that will come to the boat whenever
she can, and nudge it gently along the bow
with her long flipper.
I know several lives worth living.

Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs with song.

From AMERICAN PRIMITIVE by Mary Oliver. Copyright © 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 by Mary Oliver; first appeared in COUNTRY JOURNAL, May 1982. By permission of Little, Brown and Company, Inc. All rights reserved. For information about the book, please call 1-800-759-0190.

Mary Oliver was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for AMERICAN PRIMITIVE.

What is a dive? Its dropping the tether of ‘its too cold’ and ’scared’ on the rocks with your clothes, instead taking in the surface and depth beauty of the high mountain lake water, and wondering what it feels like to fly, and, then, leaping.

What is a dive? Its jackknife and cannonball. Its a big breath in and jump high, shouting “summer!” on the way down.

I just returned from a trip of honoring the last days of this summer, traveling up to Boulder and Lyon Lake in the Trinity Alps.  I have backpacked solo so much these past years, it was a treat and a comfort to have company this trip in my friend Greg, who’s even more passionate about beautiful water than I am.

Our trip bridged the last week of summer through the first day of fall. An early start and half day drive and we were hiking the few miles into Boulder Lake, meadowed and green bowled, quiet enough for us and the dragonfly wings, and the ht-hoot, whoo whoo of the resident owl.   The next day I scrambled early up to the lakes above (Lost and Found) and came back to a leisurely breakfast and swim.

Heading toward Lyon Lake we enjoyed a Trinity-steep pull up, breaking finally out of the darker woods to the open big trees, wildflowered meadows, bear tracks and benched views.

The lake offered Greg some good brookies, so he cooked them over the fire for dinner in earl and salt.

We had perfect weather the entire time and no skeeters so we slept out, able to see stars when we awoke in the quiet, and watch the sun come up chasing the late moon across the sky every morning.

No people until our last night, so we lazed the last day of summer away at the lake; diving, watching, fishing, swimming, painting, balancing on our floating log friend, listening to the jay pretend to be a hawk, then watching the hawk thermal up and disappear in the sky.  Watched the light leave the basin early, watched the bats come, then Greg said “Lets chase the sun!” so we went, scrambling up to the pass for an epic still, warm sunset.

We sat quiet for a long time while the views back to Shasta cooled to periwinkle and rose, and the cadmium sun greened the blue sky as it set over Caribou Mountain and the coast range in the west.

Shasta seemed to grow taller and taller as her smaller cousin ridges grew dark in the shadow of the earth.

The very last blaze of orange told us it was time to go, so we scampered down in the dark granite light, no headlamps, back to our peninsula campsite, dinner, and fire.

First day of fall we again lazed the morning away, then geared up to head off trail to a pass high above Parker Creek with views into the heart of the Alps.

Perched above the sloping meadow we watched mountain bluebird and a white band tailed hawk work the winds, with silver granite and red peaks and forests in the distance.  I saw so many places I’d been before, geeking out on the map flapping in the breeze, identifying some of my favorite Trinity places.

A sweet surprise? We could look directly across at Ward Lake, a place where two great journeys began: my friends Leisyka and Blair got married there and it was on that trip, walking up Swift Creek in the wildflower riot of July, that I fell in love with the Trinities and started my affair with backcountry travel.

We took another route home passing the lovely tarn Blair promised was there, and stopped often taking in the open views out over Cub Wallow and to Shasta, landing back to our lake for another afternoon of still sun, dive, swim, and brook trout.

Ate an early dinner and scrambled up again for the sunset (this time taking the camera) and heading right up the pass, avoiding our first-of-the-trip neighbors who’d set up camp at the outlet.

I slept deep on our last night, laying in late (Greg has my kinda backcountry morning schedule: “slothlike” he called it…works for me!).  We swam and chatted in the morning sun, then headed unhurriedly out, feeling as if we’d been up there forever.

On the way out, fresh bear scat, flowers I had not noticed on the way up and (so perfectly fall-like) berries! (thimble mountain black, straw, wild currant, and goose).

At the last tall view of Shasta and the clouds she was collecting we paused, noting how much quieter our minds were coming out than going in.

Double high fives and hugs arriving safe at the trailhead to a dusty (maybe named Meg) red Honda, we headed down for a wash off in the sweet rushingTrinity, and waited for the best ever burgers and shake from the Yellow Jacket in Trinity Center.  Full up we headed home under cloudy skies and windblown forest fire smoke turning the sky crimson.

We tugged a bit more summer from this early fall, and a bit of our youth into our evening, zooming down the blue highway with windows down, music blasting, zig zagging down the pass to Whiskeytown and through the broad valley watching the dusk draw into itself eastward.

Warm wind night drive and we were home.

Full set of pics here.

inspiring me to repost this one: lets get outside!

Tent tethered among jackpine and blue-
bells. Lacewings rise from rock
incubators. Wild geese flying north.
And I can’t remember who I am supposed to be.

I want to learn how to purr. Abandon
myself, have mistresses in maidenhair
fern, own no tomorrow nor yesterday:
a blank shimmering space forward and
back. I want to think with my belly.
I want to name all the stars animals
flowers birds rocks in order to forget
them, start over again. I want to
wear the seasons, harlequin, become
ancient and etched by weather. I
want to snow pulse, ruminating
ungulating, pebble at the bottom of the
abyss, candle burning darkness rather
than flame. I want to peer at things,
shameless, observe the unfastening,
that stripping of shape by dusk.

I want to sit in the meadow a rotten
stump pungent with slimemold, home
for pupae and grubs, concentric rings
collapsing into the passacaglia of
time. I want to crawl inside someone
and hibernate one entire night with
no clocks to wake me, thighs fragrant
loam. I want to melt. I want to swim
naked with an otter. I want to turn
inside out, exchange nuclei with the
Sun. Toward the mythic kingdom of
summer I want to make blind motion,
using my ribs as a raft, following
the spiders as they set sail on their
tasseled shining silk. Sometimes
even a single feather’s enough
to fly.

~ by Robert MacLean

Again did the

earth shift

Again did the nights grow

short,

And the days long

And the people

of the earth

were glad

and celebrated

each in their

own ways.

- Diane Lee Moomey

Still, we warmed our hearts in Camp Tequila Mockingbird in yet another year of weather perseverance and big love for each other. Oh, and the music.  Baby Stella’s first ‘fest and she was a rock star.

See ‘em all here.

RockyGrass on the docket for July and I hope some warm weather too….