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Poetry Challenge 40

February 21, 2010

The Thaw

Here in the Interior, temperatures are sneaking above freezing at mid-day.  The snow is melting away on south-facing hills, birds are darting wildly through the air as if they think they missed the beginning of mating season, and the roads are slick and treacherous from the melting ice over still-frozen pavement.   People are shedding coats, eyeing the greenhouse, ordering seeds, walking out in the sun and thinking of summer plans.  All the while, we know our folly, for we are not yet out of February and not yet into March.  At the back of our minds, we hear the old song, “When It’s Springtime in Alaska, It’s Forty Below.”  Really.  We’re restless, joyful, yet preparing for this respite from winter to be snatched away from us by deep cold and more snow.

So, here’s the challenge–write about a thaw of some kind: an old grudge melts away, an intractable animal becomes gentle, a place that seemed ugly suddenly looks beautiful, or an actual thaw complete with mud, green things, dripping water.   Post it in the comments section and I’ll add it here.  All of us in the Interior are waiting.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

February 13, 2010

Warmer days here—up around zero. For those of you reading this in the Lower 48, that may not seem warm, but with the increasing sunlight, dry air, and low snow cover, it feels like spring is on its way. On campus, walking between buildings at lunch or between classes, people seem animated, smiling, holding doors open for each other in order to have a chance to say, ”Isn’t the weather great today? Isn’t the light amazing?”

In the corral, Mattie and Sam position themselves in the sun, dozing. This morning, Mattie stood with her head half lowered, while Sam curled up on the packed snow of his favorite rolling spot. Some birds, perhaps juncos, swooped long arcs in the air above us. The light spread across the snow, up the hill to the trunks of the spruce trees, and tangled in the red-gray twigs at the end of the birch branches, delicate looking, but waiting for the right mix of light and warmth to start sucking sap out to the buds like sugar water through a soda straw. Astonishingly fragile pale green leaves will unfurl from those dry-looking sticks one day in May, and we’ll be into the mad rush of summer.

But I get ahead of myself. Today, I’m heading out with brushes, mane and tail detangler, and a “waterless” shampoo to get their coats ready for shedding season. They look like long-legged bears, their coats are so long and thick. And I’ve been so caught up with work that I come home too tired and the late afternoon is still too dark to spend much time with them daily, except for the usual scratch on the neck and good visual once-over.

Today, too, I’ll go back to the seed catalog on line to look at the gorgeous photos of carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and the difficult things: eggplant, peppers, melons, and try to finalize my seed order so that I can start indoor planting soon. I remember that, last year as I started this blog, I was in the midst of my sabbatical and that my personal goal (as opposed to the professional) was to get a sense of how else I could spend my life other than the way I do at work. Here’s what I’m concluding: fewer meetings, fewer obligations other than ones I can concentrate my energies on to do well, more horse time, more time with my hands in dirt, more writing. The question is how to do this in a self-sustaining way, without fully “retiring.” I watch friends of mine who’ve retired in disgust at the intensity of their work life, but haven’t substituted anything else for it. This works out badly for them.

For now, I’ll juggle both, knowing that the academic calendar gives me freedom when I need it most for my “real” life—the months of May-August. And as the light grows stronger and lingers longer in the evening, I’ll have more time and energy (light equals energy after all) to prepare my semi-feral critters for all that I have planned for them this summer.

If you are on the East Coast—enjoy the snow before it melts. Send us some for our dog races and to shelter the roots of our plants as the frost line works its way down through our soil in the spring. When spring actually comes for you—crocuses and daffodils—we’ll still be basking in the dazzle of light reflecting back off snow. Send photos and poems!

Update:  I spent an hour with Sam, detangling his mane and tail.  The sun gleamed off the long hairs of his coat and he stood dozing while I worked.  After that, we did a little clicker work, training him to touch his red ball to the word “touch”.  We had done this with other objects before, so he picked it up quickly.  I wish I knew how to cue all the tricks he already knows, but I’m guessing the cues are rather confused for him at this point.  Sometimes I’m sure what looks at first like bad behavior is a trick he’s been cued to–but I may never know his history.

One more thing.  When I got out to the corral, I checked the water tank to see if it was low enough to clean out the scuzz that accumulates at the bottom: shavings, hay, a feather or two.  When I looked in the tank, there was a whole bird, a chickadee, perched nervously on the red plastic that joins the heating element to the cord on the outside of the tank.  He was just above the water line and he eyed me suspiciously as I peered over the edge. I could see that his tail feathers were wet and scraggly; he must have tried to drink and gotten wet and was now too heavy to fly up out of the high-sided tank.  I put the grooming tools down on the fence rail and reached in gently with my gloved hand to give him a boost.  He flew up high enough to get over the tank rim then perched on the stall divider on Mattie’s side.  She walked over with her nose down, sniffing him cautiously.  He flew up again, over  tank to Sam’s side, where he perched on the salt block and ruffled his feathers.  As I worked with Sam, I checked back on him from time to time, sitting there on the rust-colored salt in the sun.  The run-in shed faces south, so he was in sun with no breeze–the perfect place to dry out.  From time to time he would call out “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee” a hoarse call, perhaps warning other birds away from the treacherous water tank.  Finally, when I went to check again, he was gone, feathers dried, dignity restored.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

January 18, 2010

I’m sitting in Ed’s chair by the woodstove, listening to it ticking as the fire dies down; the Christmas tree is lit again.  The little spruce with the twist in the trunk that we cut from behind the run-in shed on Christmas Eve is still green and drawing water in its five gallon bucket filled with rocks.  I’m glad, for I cut my holiday season short for the trip to New Jersey.   Now, with just five days to go before the first class of spring semester, I’m grateful for the tree, the ornaments, the lights, for they’re letting me feel celebratory for a few days more.  Besides, in my family, growing up, we had a tradition that the tree stayed up till my mother’s birthday, January 18.

The time in New Jersey gave me lots to think about.  At first, the situation seemed desperate—my brave and stoic brother needed someone there throughout the day while he was/is on bedrest.  If he dropped the phone, he wouldn’t be able to call out in an emergency; if he dropped the remote—as he did when I visited in the summer—he could fall asleep watching soccer and wake up watching a telenovella.  And, worse, if no one were set up to come in during the day after I left,  how would he eat, stay hydrated, deal with the personal but essential tasks that take up a good part of his caregiving.  But, day by day, there was good news until I was able to leave knowing that he has care and will soon be in rehab to get back in shape to be in his chair—back to normal for him.

My brother has been a quadriplegic for more than twenty years.  If his accident happened now, he might have more use of his arms than he does.  With stem cell research and other newer procedures, young people facing a C-5/C-6 injury can retain more function than he was able to at the time.  But he’s done well, stayed independent, gotten a law degree, played Quad Rugby (Murderball)—in short, I didn’t worry about him until this pressure sore developed.   But this has been a wake-up call for all of us.

He could be anyone—we are all vulnerable, as scenes of devastation in Haiti and other places in the world remind us.  His vulnerability is part of his life’s normalcy—in his chair he can cook, drive, bathe, go to restaurants and malls—do most of the things anyone else can do, except get himself into and out of bed.  Being around him has reminded me not only of how much I love him, my baby brother who I cared for as a child, but of how valuable each of our lives is and what we can mean to each other.

Remarkable things happened.  I met caregivers and social workers who made extra efforts to help his situation get resolved.  I met a woman online who advocates for those in the quad community, and who called my brother just to chat—and I heard him laugh and knew that his spirits were lifting and that he would heal.  I met a remarkable group of Quakers at Cropwell Friends Meeting, who felt led to form a group to come visit my brother and just chat and check in.  There was the woman in the coffee shop who remembered me when I came in for a break from the apartment, the lady at Smoothie King who kept my debit card for three days when I absent-mindedly left it on the counter, the cousin of a friend who called and gave advice even though she didn’t live near enough to come by.  It seems like community can happen anywhere, I now see.

But here’s the thing—while my brother’s is an extreme case, it’s an example of how much the system that seems to be in place—health care and beyond—is  broken and stretched to the point of dysfunction, underfunded and understaffed.  When my brother knew the woman living with him would be moving out and that I could come for a couple of weeks to help out, it was Thanksgiving. He began calling and filling out paperwork and getting visits from social workers.  But by two days after Christmas, he was still being told he would have a 4-6 week wait.  Those who told him that were polite, but clearly overworked and could offer no suggestions to help.  They would see me there and assume that I would fill in.

All this while the “debate” on health care rolls on in DC.  But what is there to debate?  To me, now, the question is simple—how do we care for those among us who are least able to care for themselves?   And how do we care for each other and provide for the well-being of all in our community or nation, knowing that any of us could suddenly have the level of need my brother has or more?

I’m slowly recovering from jet lag and the emotional stress of the trip.   Morning and night, I’m out in the corral while Mattie and Sam are chewing hay, leaning against their shaggy shoulders, breathing in their earthy smell.   I’m glad to breathe the sharp cold air and see the orange light in the southern sky spread into day.

I tend to be an optimist.  I believe that it’s worth the effort it took to bring some things together for my brother in order to restore him to a normal, engaged life.  I’ll continue to work with him on this.  I also believe that in a good society, we would all want this for all of us.

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Poetry Challenge 37

January 3, 2010

I’m still in New Jersey, avoiding the thirty-below weather in the Interior, but enjoying the blustery weather here.   In the Interior, winter air is generally still and a deep silence sets in at the coldest temperatures.  Here, the wind brings its own active cold.  At night I hear it rushing through the branches of the trees outside the window.   Walking in it yesterday, I pulled my hat down over my ears and remembered just how cold wind chill can be.

So write about what the wind brings–memories, observations, or background music.   Let it blow something unexpected into the poem.

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Poetry Challenge 36

December 28, 2009

This time of year, we gather with family, seeking the continuity that contact brings.  For some, this is a time to return to the nourishing environment we grew up with.  For others, a time to test how far we’ve come from the struggles of adolescence.  And every family has its stories–the comic, the tragic, the darkly mysterious.

So here’s  a variation on a challenge I often give my basic writing class as a journal prompt:

Write about a story that’s told in your family.  Who tells it?  When?  What else is going on in the room–or below the surface?  Start with a single detail of the moment of telling, then run with it from there.   Include food.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

December 22, 2009

The solstice has turned—now, incrementally, we’re heading to brighter days. It has been a tough fall in the Interior. Each of us has experienced it in different ways that have accumulated gradually, but definitely, so that any two of us meeting at Fred Meyers near the mesh bags of tiny oranges, would find ourselves saying, “It’s been a rough fall,” and nodding, saying nothing for a beat, then moving the conversation along to the turning year.

I’m not sure where the run of bad luck started for me. Was it returning from two weeks in New Jersey to find an old friend and ally struck down in his dining room—the true meaning of stroke—and getting there in time to attend his cremation ceremony? Was it the day I knew the whole stack of hay had molded? Was it learning that my dancer son had been sucker punched while doing a good deed? Was it the other deaths and illnesses that seemed to accumulate as we head into the dark time of year?

Living in the Interior makes us survivors. We think nothing of going out and living our lives at twenty, thirty, forty below. We layer up and plug in our cars. We leave no skin exposed. Walking out to feed the horses in the dark of morning at twenty below, I begin to judge temperature by what freezes. Nose hairs: twenty below, eyelashes: thirty below, scarf to face, including nose and eyelashes: forty below. We know how far we can go without danger of hypothermia. We know how long our fingers can manipulate the metal hooks on the horse blanket before we have to run for the warmth of the house to warm hands and gloves, so we can go out and blanket another horse.

It makes a difference to my attitude to spend time outside. Though I rarely see Mattie and Sam in daylight as the fall semester winds down, there are those moments in the morning when I trudge out sleepy-eyed, yawning in the cold air, and watch the light spread on the southern horizon over the fold of the Alaska Range. It’s just past night at 9:30 or 10, on the days I can sleep that late, and the horizon is a deep smoky orange, the sky nearly black.

Today, the last day of grading final papers, I woke even later, still tired from finals week and the near constant reading of student writing. As I walked out, there was a blue-gray light in the sky, just enough to see without turning on the floodlights. Jeter, the still-adolescent poodle, went bounding on ahead as I got Mattie and Sam’s morning armfuls of hay. The air had warmed to nearly zero, and I could feel the returning moisture in the air. Mattie’s back was covered with frost and shavings as she waited for me to toss her hay.

After I threw the hay to each of them, I ducked under the fence, dog in the lead, and walked over to scratch Sam on the neck under his mane. His coat is out to my second knuckle now, dense and warm. I took a flake of hay and divided it into two parts to tuck in two old tires in the corral. They like to eat from the tires, then flip them in the air, looking for scraps of hay. As I walked back into Mattie’s side of the corral, I heard a sharp “Caw” and sensed motion above me. I looked up to see a half dozen ravens circling in the air.

The sky was lightening, the ravens dark against the gray sky. They circled on an eddy of air, catching up to and tumbling around each other. It seemed like one raven led the circling—a choreographer of air—as they glided and flapped and glided again, all in a slow gyre above my head.

Later, I read a poem by Yeats that used that word, “gyre,” his word for the order or was it disorder inherent in the world. These ravens didn’t seem to be playing, though they didn’t seem dreary or even to be hunting. They almost seemed to be circling me and the horses and the dog, as if we were an audience for their art, and all they wanted was to be seen by us. It was as if they were caught in the eddy at the heart of the turning year and were dramatizing it—the essence of solstice—right above my corral.

Or maybe they were waiting for us to leave so they could snack on manure. In any case, a happy solstice to you: the return of light, the slow draining out of darkness from the coming new year.

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Poetry Challenge 33

December 5, 2009

Though we complain about it, there’s a sweetness to the dark time.  It’s as if our adult outer shell, tired of battling with slick roads, doing chores in the dark, numb fingers, and the sluggishness of moving about with layers of down, fleece, wool and whatever else we can use to keep the cold away from our skin, retreats for while in quiet moments and the child within returns.  For me, it’s an excess of Nutcrackers–I see the ballet two or three times a season for the way it brings me into the family the dancers create–or chocolates, or pies.  Sometimes, it’s the moment I take each morning to run my hand under the manes of the horses, lean in to their thick coats and breathe in their rich smell.

So, what  small thing or things do you do to keep the inner self energized during the cold season?  What do you look forward to that’s not part of the revved-up Christmas industry, but comes from the things all around you?

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

November 18, 2009

Twenty-plus below

Deep cold sets in once again.  I am back in Ed’s chair, blanket and laptop on my lap, listening to the hiss of the teakettle on the woodstove.  Outside, it’s twenty-five below under a flat black sky, glittering with stars.  To the south, Orion hangs drunkenly from his belt, leaning precariously over the river and the flats beyond.

When I started this blog, it was January, the heart of winter.  Ever so slightly the days were getting longer, and I had the luxury of a semester’s sabbatical to watch its progress and write it here.  Now, it’s fall, and we are sliding deeper into winter.   Earlier in fall, when we had an unusually long run of warm sunny weather, I kept meaning to dig out my winter boots and mittens.  Somehow, each  time the temperature dropped a bit more, I would run across just the item I needed—my warm fleece mittens from Apocalypse Design, my fleece-lined boots, the down liner for my coat, the flat, circular fleece hat made for me years ago by my friend Kelly, who traced the pattern from a pie plate.   I’m ready.  I plug the car in at night and when I get to the university, and it runs faithfully.   I haul water to the horses to keep the water level in their tank above the heating element in the bottom, so it doesn’t freeze.  I soak their beet pellets and some extra brome pellets in warm water for a warming mash at night.

Last night, around eleven, I decided that the temperature was really going to drop, as predicted, and I went out to blanket the horses.  Mattie and Sam grow thick warm coats in winter.  Sam’s gets nearly four inches long by late spring and grows in dense like a caribou’s.  Mattie’s coat develops longer guard hairs like a dog’s, with a fluff of undercoat.   She glistens in the sun, looks velvety in flat light.   Sam, despite his trickster nature, invites hugs with his teddy-bear coat.

Still, I know their coats will continue to thicken and grow in with the cold and dark, but this is the first deep cold.  I have brought the thick winter blankets inside to stay warm and, last night, spread them out on the kitchen floor and folded them so that the withers end was down and could I could drape them and unfold them from their shoulders back.

But going out in these temperatures is not as graceful as going out to the corral in summer.  I wear my Muck boots—Arctic Sports, lined with the same neoprene that divers use in cold water—my lined Carhartts, a down vest, wool sweater, lined jacket, fleece hat and smoke ring, insulated gloves.  When it gets colder—thirty or forty below—I’ll layer up even more, but this is enough to make walking slow and to increase my dimensions just enough to make me bump into things as I move around in the house with the heavy blanket in my arms.

I had the floodlight on, shining into the corral.  Out above the corral fence, the stars glittered.  Mattie came out of the dark—a darker shadow, nickering for hay.  I let her smell the blanket, then haltered her and draped it over her shoulders.  It had come a bit unfolded in my messing around carrying it out of the house, and parts of it were folded under on her back at first.   I unfolded the blanket, smoothed it back over her rump, then reached under her belly for the straps to fasten it to her.  She moved away a little, suspicious, as if I had lost my mind to be out putting anything on her back at that time of night, but, as usual, she seemed to relax into the warmth of the blanket and let me reach under her belly and run the leg straps around her hind legs to keep the blanket from slipping.  For a moment, I leaned into her flank as I reached under her stifle for the strap.  Her coat is soft, and she was calm.  We had a quiet moment in the cold and dark.

Sam was a different matter.  He snorted when I came into his side of the corral, and walked away from me, even though he had sniffed the blanket.  He walked around the corral and I walked with him, swinging the lead rope in lazy circles as if I were driving him along.  From time to time I flicked him in the rump, just so he shared my illusion.  Finally he got tired of that game—I had beet pellets in my pocket, after all—and he turned to face me.  I draped the rope around his neck and tied on the rope halter.  Sam has been bored since school started—particularly now that I am coming home in the dark—and he teased me, bumping me with his nose or draping his head over me while I was trying to buckle the front of his blanket and keep my hands warm at the same time.  Once it warms up enough, we’ll be back to clicker training on weekends.  Last night, I just wanted to get his blanket on.

Now they look like medieval horses, draped in their royal blue and Black Watch plaid blankets.   They are hungry with cold, and I’m giving them a little extra hay, but not too much.  This is our first cold, but not our last, and they have to toughen for forty below at some point, maybe colder.   We all do, and like blanketing horses, we all will do what we can to help each other through to spring.

 

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

October 25, 2009

Lingering fall.  Yesterday, driving home on a long westward stretch of road, I saw a half moon, burnt orange, resting on the mountains at the horizon, as if too reluctant or too tired to slip down below the rim to what lay beyond.  As I drove the road’s few turns, the moon seemed to duck out of sight then reappear through the spruces, as if it were playing with me as I drove through the deep darkness of a snowless fall night.  This reluctant moon, the lingering fall, all set an odd tone for the end of October here.

It’s global warming, perhaps.  We’ve seen other effects here in the Interior: the million-acre wildfires and the smoke that settles across the valley and flats in summer; the spruce-bark beetle and leaf miners that feed on our native trees; the early planting and late harvest; and on the Arctic Coast, the melting ice pack, stranding seals, walrus, polar bears.  Much of this is in the range of normal.  For every, “This is strange weather,” there’s a sourdough, “I remember when…” to top it all.  Those of us who have lived in Interior Alaska for many years, hesitate to generalize about the weather here, except to say that there’s no predicting one year by the other.

And we’re not complaining, really—even the dog mushers and skiers.  The skies are clear and sunny by day, warming to the high 30s and 40s, which is warm enough to take off gloves and hats to work with horses.  And though we have less light every day, it’s still light enough at 6:30 or 7 to do a few outdoor things, like groom a horse or roll up the hose for the second time this fall.

Today, I went out to work with Mattie, to reinforce the progress we made with longeing this summer.  She went out on the line fine, then stopped and turned towards me, ears back.  She no longer intimidates me with this–perhaps because I’ve learned to read when to back off with her.  We tried a few more starts in that direction, and I turned her to trot to the other direction.  She went a little, but I let us end with walk and whoa and stand and back, things she does automatically.  I haven’t worked with her much in the past two weeks—teaching and all that goes into it fills my days, and the weekends pass so quickly.  But it was good to run a brush and my bare hands over the deepening plush of her coat and to walk alongside her as she walked and trotted, however reluctantly.  Like the moon.

We are reluctant to give up what’s left of good weather, but we know we’re on borrowed time.  There are still green blades of grass, and a few hardy plants on the hillside perk up again at mid day.  The first real snow will be a sharp wake up to winter for us, but perhaps not so bad, because we’ve had so much time to prepare.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

October 12, 2009

Thinking of the Beatles’ song with the words, “marmalade skies”. As I head out mornings to feed the horses, I step out of the house to face the sunrise over the hills beyond the corral. The other day, the clouds were orange, smudged with a smoky purple, and the light in the sky shaded from a deep yellow below the clouds to a watery aqua where the sky met the hills of the Alaska Range. I searched for a word for what I was seeing and thought of marmalade—my favorite on toast—then remembered and understood the words to the song.

We are having an unusually warm October. The last bit of tomato vine abandoned in the greenhouse when we had the hard frost weeks ago is still alive, though a bit pale in its five-gallon planter. The pansies have started blooming again, and even the small white petunias, the bells, are putting out new white flowers. I want to re-plant the garden, but it’s an illusion. Night comes on earlier each day, and with the clear weather we’re having, there’s a splash of Milky Way across the black sky, with occasional meteorites streaking down. The moon’s a thumbnail now, a shaving of its former self. It rises later and spends more time at the horizon, flame colored through the dense air.

We spent the weekend pulling out moldy bales from our hay pile. I did some research on line and found that we had the perfect conjunction of events to make our pile mold—a later cutting with more sugars in the leaf; cut and cured on ground that had had lots of rain previously, taking more time to dry; baled as the weather was getting cooler, which meant not enough hot sun to dry thoroughly; then our hay crew stacking the bales too tightly in our barn; then the unexpectedly long warm spell so that the mold kept on spreading. The mold is already on the grass leaf. One source I found said that the mold counteracts bacteria on the living plant, but grows and spreads on the cut and wilting leaf, which is why the best hay weather is hot and dry so the hay dries before the mold can start growing. We found a cow farmer who could feed the hay to his cows—cows don’t get respiratory diseases from mold, it seems, and they have all those stomachs and tongues long enough to lick their own noses.

It could have been an unpleasant task, and the discovery of the mold and figuring out what to do were no fun. But my son and I and Peter from our horse club (and his mother Marina) and the two sons of our Nepali friend put on dust masks and went at it. The weather was clear and warm, the company pleasant and playful, and we had three trucks to carry the load. Mattie grabbed a few mouthfuls as we maneuvered the trucks past the corral fence, and it was gone. Now there’s a big empty space to fill—another puzzle, as the haying season is over here—and I’m getting plenty of suggestions from horse friends about where to find replacement hay. As for me, I’m mostly relieved not to be risking giving Mattie and Sam hay that’s a noseful of spores. We didn’t lose as many bales as I at first feared.

The weather won’t last, but no one’s complaining except the skiers. Even the dog mushers are enjoying exercising their teams harnessed to four-wheelers, running down the trails. The leaves are nearly all gone, though. It won’t be long.

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