Prompt # 2

Prompt #2

“Our attachment to the land was our attachment to each other.”

                                                                                                    Refuge, by Terry Tempest Williams

Home is the place of my many mornings.  Each day, across the valley, from behind the pine and fir-cloaked hills: sunrise, moonrise.  I look out at the same expanse of land and sky that we first saw twenty-seven years ago.  But it is never the same.  How the light differs with the seasons.  We are marked on a map at 48.48 N, 120.19*W latitude/longitude.  In summers we look forward to long days of sun and late swims in the Chewuch River that flows out of the Pasayten Wilderness.  Winter afternoons are brief. The darkness is stealthy and sneaks into our home well before dinnertime.

We have lived on this piece of property full-time for nearly 24 years.  Marc and I skied onto it with a realtor those many years ago, on a bluebird blue sky day, and looked south down the valley that reaches into the Columbia River.  We took notice of the ponderosa pine, aspen, wild rose and serviceberry gathered on the west side of the 30 acres.  We breathed deeply the dry, chilled, invisible air.  We stood a long time, and felt the land, solid beneath our skis.  I felt welcomed.  We felt something within us change.  We felt hopeful.  We jumped, together.  That “leap of faith.”

We built our house ourselves.  We planted grass seed, apple trees, pear trees, apricots, cherries and peaches.  We planted aspen and maples, red-twig dogwood and mountain ash; these trees mark the passing of the seasons with their leaves, those flags of Fall.  In spring, these same trees      display vivid green leaves, and the aspen provide catkins to the fattening grouse.  We watch sapsuckers, flickers, robins, mountain bluebirds, black-capped chickadees, hawks, falcons, the occasional bald and golden eagle.  In late fall, the Mountain Ash is thick with clusters of red berries and crowded with gangs of Cedar Waxwings. 

This land is where the structure that we crafted with our own hands became Home. Where we learned to live in the wide quiet.   This place has provided me some of my greatest joys.  It continues to nurture me through the many days of heartbreak that began March 9, 2007, when Evan died in the mountains of British Colombia.

I don’t consider this land my family, or friend, but instead I feel a member of its community.  These acres have become the foundation that I have settled into with body, heart, and soul.  This place is the point of earth that I  rise from, with words, with love.