autumn glory: cider party

My man's been busy busy working 90, 100 hour weeks for crush this autumn.  Malbec, syrah, albariño, cabernet sauvignon, bolsa negra.   

So it was extra generous when he set me up in his Ranger (we traded cars for the weekend), carboys and growlers strapped down in the back, and sent me north to his village at the foot of the Cascades, even though he couldn't come.  What a delicious treat to help his family pick apples and join in pressing 50 gallons of cider! 

And to discuss the true story of Johnny Appleseed, the tearing out of cider orchards during prohibition, and the subsequent advent of wheat production and beer in our country, with a certain beloved hobby orchardist and father.  

Bringing back 20 gallons for the Winemaker to convert into hard cider felt small but purposeful, the way it feels to help pick or de-stem grapes.  I always knew I'd be with a farmer.  And I am so lucky.

Goodbye Summer

blueberry picking
rock climbing
driving alongside the Clearwater River
hiking Hyalite Peak
walking to Dora's for burritos
watching the sunset
lightning storms over wheat fields
chickpea harvest dust
Pike's Peak runs
iced coffee from the Patisserie
night hiking, my denim romper
picking up Kia from the airport in Pasco
suntime on the beloved Maasai blanket
driving cross-country with K
the Wind River Canyon
the Bighorns & Tetons & Black Hills
swimming in the St Croix River
cooking up a storm for my man
Friday night dinners (may they continue) and fasting
my new deck!
Eagle Cap backpack weekend
walking everywhere
time in W2 to rest & find rhythm again
being neighbors with C
salsa night at Castillo
going to Life together on Sundays
time with friends in Montana & up north
J visiting
hiking Cutthroat Pass to the PCT
kayaking
raspberry picking
huckleberry picking
trail maintence on Lick Creek Trail
hiking Umatilla Rim
reading so much
the Tiger Tri
celebrating the Solstice with C, D, & T
Farmers Market...

you are exactly where you need to be

bury my heart at wounded knee

i don't want to sound like a broken record 

maybe i need a more creative way to tell this story

but from wind river canyon (shoshone land) and tensleep

rocks from the cambrian, precambrian, triassic periods

from thermopolis, the famous hot springs sold to congress in 1897 by chief washakie,

with the one caveat that 1/4 of the springs be always reserved for public use

(congress had been pressuring the tribes to sell for years, you know)

from the black hills carved with those four leaders (but whose leaders?  who?) 

to that towering deviled rock, rising 1280 feet off the high plains

from the bighorns to buffalo

and keyhole to custer (are we really still naming things for this man?)

i hear faint voices in the breeze, and i join in, bewildered, ashamed

this land is my land, this land is your land

well i don't know much about forced migration, gentrification, 

measles and casinos and drug cartels 

the manifold ways in which debt is atoned for, or forgotten

after all, who owns the colorado river?

but my heart aches for the blood in the soil,

the scarlet that stains my feet seeping up from our given, good earth

road trippin' (gypsy august)

W2 to Minnesota... 

Grand Teton, Wind River Canyon to Thermopolis Hot Springs

Sundance, Buffalo, and Devil's Tower, Crazy Horse

Minneapolis and Hudson, Wisconsin

Waiilatpu

Place of the Rye Grass

Six feet tall in every direction--can you imagine?

So this is how the West was ''settled,'' as it were.  The Whitmans, Marcus and Narcissa, were killed, along with ten others, by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians.  Another 54 were taken captive.  It took a few years, but Congress created Oregon Territory in attempts to catch and hang those responsible for the deaths.

I'm uncomfortable with the word Massacre, as it seems to negate everything leading up to the incident...  the Presbyterian missionary doctor who repeatedly administered medicine for measles to Indian children who still died, while the same medicine worked for the whites.  How must that have looked?  The Cayuse doctrine that a medicine man pays for repeated deaths with his own life.

Or the way Whitman tried to convince the tribes, seasonally nomadic, to settle down on patches of land and farm, for the sake of the mission.  Couldn't have the local population moving on to salmon grounds every fall when you're trying to start a church.

There was the fake newspaper story in East Coast papers talking about tribal men asking for holy teaching, getting white missionaries excited to go West in the first place.

And the words words written by Whitman's wife, Narcissa, the first white woman to make the trek on the Oregon Trail west and a pioneer if there ever was one, in her diary and letters, that betray a certain racism in her missionary efforts.  Oh, the motives that lie within!

Because of the bickering and quarreling among missionaries, the Presbyterian leadership back East voted to close the Mission, but in an astonishing journey, Marcus Whitman left in October 1942 for New York City and Washington, DC, riding through the winter Rockies and down through Taos, New Mexico, to plead his case.  He arrived in March, and the board agreed to let Whitman Mission remain open.

Anyway, a few years after the Massacre, with the tribe on the lam and in the hills, five Cayuse men consented to turn themselves in.  They were tried and hanged in Oregon City.  It's not clear whether these men were guilty; two of them were tribal leaders; perhaps they were just trying to protect their people.

But the entire Cayuse paid.  The Cayuse War that followed the Whitmans' murders left most of the tribe wiped out by settlers, remaining members joined with the Nez Perce.

Now I believe there is never an excuse for murder, though there may be a story found in spilled blood.  I know the hearts of Marcus and Narcissa were probably as troubled and pained and grey as those of Tiloukaikt and Tomahas.  But I stand on these grounds, rye grass hills, wheat grass lining the Oregon Trail, and I wonder if things might have gone differently...

If the Black Hills and Cayuse, Appalacia and so many other parts of this land might not have come to their current government through dislocation.  Through genocide.

Most days I push it down deep, don't want to sound extremist, don't want to offend, am more white myself than Cherokee, but this isn't about racial allegiance:

the truth is, it hurts to live on stolen land.

great running song

I got this from Wyoming Triumph.

Other great hiphop: Biomecca. Out of Jackson.

why it's hard to imagine ever not working with kids

At recess today, Amber, in kindergarten, standing high up in the center of a four-way see-saw of sorts: ''Amber, should you be standing up there?''
''Don't worry,'' she tells me, pointing to lavender Crocs, ''these shoes are really sticky.''

Sirgio, who I've taken to calling Sirge (like Surge, that soda from the 90s), is one of the smallest first graders, but wears clothes that are way too big on him--huge tee-shirts, super long shorts, even those Wolverine brown hikers--he looks like a little gansta. A couple weeks ago, I was saying something to him in Spanish, and he looked at me and said in English, totally deadpan, ''I'm half-Indian.'' It was hard not to laugh. ''Be that as it may, this is still a Spanish period, and you do have a Spanish name.''

On school picture day Tuesday, Xitlalli, who looked very cute with her hair all done, got so nervous she couldn't stop crying and actually threw up.

DeMarco led the meses del año song with an A-B pattern of alternate winking eyes. Awesome.

When we were talked about what things we try our best in today, Avarie, smart but rather high-maintenance, said flatly, ''nothing.'' A couple weeks ago she fell apart, crying (sans tears) and declaring, ''my nose hurts right here,'' as she touched the skin between her upper lip and nose with the end of her finger.

Dylan, with the white-blonde bull cut, skinny wrists, and black-framed glasses, always comes to school wearing different types of head-gear: baseball cap, cowboy hat, and, when it was raining, an umbrella hat. Recently we were walking outside to the bus when Teacher Mario pointed out his pants were unbuttoned and unzipped under his huge brown jacket. ''Dylan,'' I stopped him, ''please zip up your pants.'' He insisted he could not button them, which left me the awkward job of doing it myself in the middle of the bus lines, fingers splayed like spiders so as not to touch any part of him. Ridiculous!

Then there's Diego, 7 in May but in first grade. He doesn't necessarily fit right into the public school protocol (he was in Montesorri for the past two years), but his personality, dryness, questions: I want a son just like him. Summer birthday and a little old for the grade included.

And I almost forgot! Today, some of the third graders were asking about a picture of a man's hand with leprosy. ''What is that?'' they wondered. ''It looks like Voldemort's hand.'' I briefed them on the skin disease, how it's very rare now compared to in the past. ''Oh yeah,'' a couple of them knowingly replied, ''My grandpa has that. His feet look just like that.''

So the days include a lot of me madly scribbling new Spanish words into my red notebook, high-fiving third grade boys, teaching fifth grade math lessons, first grade reading, and recess playground moderation. It's amazing the authority any person over four feet tall has out there, and the stream of reports they receive. ''Teacher, teacher, Dakota kicked Zaden.'' ''Okay Francisco, thank you for informing me. If Zaden or Dakota has a problem, they can come tell me.''

In other news, I just signed up for a Women's Carpentry: Wood Refinishing class. !Qué emocionante!

Maybe due to a friend's constant endorsement of them,

or perhaps simply because I recently finished Peace Like a River,

but I can't stop thinking about these lately.

Also, how badly I want to travel through New Mexico and Alaska. Some more backpacking this year, please!

you keep asking me what this means
what it means, what it means

that i was wearing linen when our sojournings crossed
that you were dusty, from living so long in a desert

and i met you in a dream carrying suitcases
flowing like water (my name, you see)
because it is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else

the trail turned this summer,
and i can see the autumn in the locusts, now,
i can feel it in the smoke

i told you, your skin was honey
but i can't stop coughing,
even bronze can be too much for these old eyes to see!

and i need the Spirit like the wind on my face
i've been searching for so long among these trees,
looking for the Shining one in so much refracting light
sometimes, dreams are life.

summers in washington are like a dream
i've been going out with a beekeeper,
crushing cherries into wine,
painting porches and weeding fields and chopping wood

but i wanted to tell you about the dancing last night
the peasant skirts, chaco sandals
socks with birkenstocks
about nearly falling over under all those stars
and whispering ts eliot
listening to aspens shiver

yes, summer is strange and wonderful
and we will swim and bike and work and eat berries until we fall flat under the stars

summer solstice

I have arrived. Here I am in Lakeside, Montana, along Flathead Lake and within Glacier County, just miles from the National Park of the same name. The drive here was large, if you know what I mean. The sky was wide, the fields stretching, the mountains immense and green.

Everything in Montana seems to have a name like Whitefish, Great Falls, Bear Paw, Big Sky, Yellowstone, Birdseye, Blackfoot.

This is the West, so different from my Northwest (did I ever know?). Ranchers stroll the edges of their land along the highway, and I drive by at 80 miles an hour (Montana just installed speed limits a few years ago, and they are still very high), listening to Jackson Browne and taking it all in.

There are a few backpacking hitchhikers on the way here, and I smile and wave good blessings to them as I drive. Two hawks swoop over carrying large fish in powerful beaks.

And I have lived at the Golden Gate, at the doors of the West in that foggy city we love, and I have lived along Lewis & Clark's trails and pathways, their "almost-there" Western summit. But now here I am in the Shadowlands, in the Western stretch of the journey, at the top of the Rockies.

Last night, we walked down to the lake, sat on the docks, took pictures, laughed. All the snowy mountains around the water were dipped in sunlight, and the evening stretched until the 9:45pm sunset: we celebrated the day for 17.5 hours of its light.

Wendell Berry prays, "At night make me one with the darkness, in the morning make me one with the light."

Oh, the North, the fabled West, its overwhelming summer solstice.

Happy hinge-point, my friends. I hope your spring was well.