I moved out West for a nameless meadow. I fondly refer to this photo of said nameless place as The Goat Meadow Ranch. Technically, this field lies above the Ashland, Oregon valley, slightly south of Grizzly Peak with views of Mount Shasta on a bluebird day in any season. It's a place of expansive beauty: brutal winters, thick young willows in the wetlands of spring, Steinbeck summers of silence except a screen door shutting and golden tipped autumns. And while first seeing this view on a late winter's day, I thought if the light of February in a cold meadow could move me West, then I knew I was heading in the right direction. Poetically, I moved West so I could write this meadow a name. But what I told myself was that I moved because I wanted to be in the wintered mountains to ski. But probably more realistically, I moved West like the many others before me in middle America for something even more elusive and nameless; I moved in search of hope.
I spent hours living on the ranch where this meadow resides just staring at it. I rarely looked for deer or other prolific critters coming through the thick as much as I watched the sun fall as if learning about the moods of light--shifting tones of early morning blues long before dawn and sitting on the porch in pitch blue ink for an entire night while a late summer thunderstorm lit up the backdrop of larch, x-rayed an entire forest in black and white. Light was my species of interest that I wanted to learn to identify. And no matter the season, this meadow would bring every shade and hue. So vulnerable, so open and so exposed.
Somehow regardless of the season and drastic changes, the meadow would be able to return to what it simply is, a nameless field. In the depths of winter, the meadow was covered beyond layers of white, but deep beneath was a shade of green. And maybe that's why I love winter so much. When the view out your window becomes a canvas of a monochromatic hue, you cannot imagine color or life lies beneath. You cannot grasp that your current view which is no longer an expansive meadow, but a city orchard of sorts could ever blossom. Again. When not even five leaves are left on your neighborhood winter Maple tree, the simple thought of a ripe plum is foreign. Sure, you can close your eyes and get close, but what you cannot imagine is how like the meadow, the earth can hold such a variety of light and be so capable of so much change.
This February my mind misses the focus on light that I once had while examining the Goat Ranch. Recently, my mind has been stuck on fixing what cannot be fixed or learning how to accept what is unacceptable. I seem to have lost hope. The one aspect that first brought me West has felt lost. Frankly, hope seems like another season and not a direction or color I seem to be able to locate. I feel at times stuck in some ice cave of white in my mind.
Thankfully, I spend every hour when it is light (and I'm not working) on my skis. But when I return from the mountains and the freedom of frozen water underfoot, I find myself still staring out my window and overwhelmed by the silence. I see only one color. My house, a cave of sorts, has been where I go to hide more than hibernate. So when I find myself in a deep state of reflection removed from the meadow that once soothed me, blinded by the white and my lack of hope, I like do to simple things. Currently, I really like to shovel.
I cannot begin to tell you the odd joy of shoveling. The fact I set my alarm earlier to rise, bundle in layers over my pajamas, to be in the quiet of the morning alone in so much cold. The rhythmic sound of my body breathing, the odd joy in seeing self-created drifts and the pause I take to look up and see the change in light in the sky and slow sounds of other feet on snow in my neighborhood. The different shades of dawn coming to life.
We are currently in the worst snow storm in thirty years in the valley and I have dug out my driveway twice in the last 24 hours. Today, the snow has drifted above my waist, the winds are over 35 miles per hour, our local ski hill was even shut. But the odd thing about today in this storm is I haven't felt stuck. Not once with googles on and winds piercing my cheeks coming strong out of Hellgate Canyon straight down my street. And not even once do I feel annoyed. Somehow in my odd Sisyphian way, I look up to the North Hills and I smile. And then I keep shoveling.
Shoveling your driveway is far less poetic than staring at a meadow. But what I can tell you is the same principles apply. A view is simply a view, but how you choose to see it, what color you cast on the scene is truly your choice in the lightness of being. This is the hard part. The hard part is knowing which shade. We too often choose to see only what we've lost. Which is not light, but only the absence. But what's even harder, no one can do it for you. You have to pick up the shovel in yourself and slowly dig out of the drifts. Trust me, I've snowed myself in on even the sunniest of days. And you do this full knowing more snow will come, the winds might increase or shift direction and above all, you are tired. You are so tired. But you know being stuck and blinded by the walls of white, isn't living. Being shut away in a cave of yourself is an unlife of sorts. So you dig yourself out not because anyone will see you, nor tell you how wonderful you are or even "like" a version on Facebook. You do this simply for yourself. And you do this for the one thing you came West to find, the hope in your own spirit. And you know there are no photos of this. No light can capture what lies within you.
Better yet than my own view, here are the words from one of my favorite hope seekers, Hushpuppy, from the film, Beasts of a Southern Wild, "Sometimes you can break something so bad, that it can't get put back together….Everybody loses the thing that made them. It's even how it's suppose to be in nature. The brave men stay and watch it happen, they don't run." Or maybe, they don't run, they just keep shoveling to find the light.
The Psalms of Ice
The water of Lake Superior freezes to cave
the coast line, sheets of pinnacled waves
touch granite greyed to white in layers
of water turned glass. Walking in
these caves, no fear of bats, darkness
or even lack of air, your breath grows
another layer that lights the walls, frozen fire
burns in a land of wind. You've heard stories
of men who've survived years alone
to fable their hearts in a hole, burrowed
in the earth away from the echo of clocks
and birds, to fill up their own shadow.
The allegory of cold is a body hollowed
by hunger. But this is not your story.
In these frozen caves, you walk on water
to go deeper into the white you carry,
suspended on the shear faith in ice
and light, so you can winter your past.
