Petroglyphs and pictographs are
pecked or seeped into rocks all over the West. It is the tenacity of the marks
that pulls me in. Chipped lines differentiate themselves from the surface of
rock as do lines of pigment and urine or blood that have bound themselves to
stone. The lines seem inconsequential even temporal, yet they remain. I’ve not
thought much about the meaning of the symbols, but Mary Clearman Blew describes
a broken circle surrounded by another circle with a triangular head that resembles
a uroboros - the tail eating snake, or the Eastern interlocked Yin and Yang, or
the Greek Alpha and Omega, or even the mathematical infinity symbol. I have
never related my dual life to anything so lofty as archetypal symbology, but
maybe it is the simple structures of living that inspire lofty concepts. Perhaps
there is a connection between my summer/winter life and what someone long
before me committed to stone.
local to local
Daily observations at or near Two Dot Spot, written by hand on the backs of postcards that record with ink and coffee a few minutes of the earth's orbit around the sun. The cards are physically mailed from Two Dot, Montana to those who have requested them...local to local. Ruth Marie Tomlinson
6.29.2014...
When Carl, in Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, returns to the farm he laments his life of freedom . “… off in the cities there are
thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike. We have no ties. We know
nobody. We own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury
us. Our landlady and delicatessen man are our mourners. And we leave nothing
behind us but a front coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter or what
ever we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is pay our rent. the exorbitant rent that one has to pay
for a few square feet in the heart of things.” But Carl’s friend Alexandra who
lives on the farm, sees it another way. “We pay a high rent too, though we pay
differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don’t move lightly and easily as
you do. Our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields, if
there were not something besides this, I wouldn’t feel that it was much
worthwhile to work. It is what goes on in the world that reconciles me.” She
understands that it takes something beyond herself, two sides to make a coin:
permanence and ephemera, roots and freedom, responsibility and spontaneity,
cornfields and delicatessens, and for me, Two Dot and Seattle.
6.26.2014...
It has already rained hard this
morning. My idea of washing the sheets for John’s arrival is gone. The point
was for them to line dry, gathering the smells of sun and wind and newly minted
oxygen. I will drive to Bozeman this afternoon and busy myself in town while
his plane crosses three states and two mountain ranges. “Bring him safe me,” will breeze across my tongue with every breath in barely audible
whispers until I see his face.
6.25.2014...
We gathered around my cousin
Richard yesterday on his birthday with the usual banter and stories of the day,
but everyone turned their faces toward him more than usual. He is, after all,
the patriarch of his family. I wouldn’t have thought of it that way until a
visitor referred to him as such. What is a patriarch: The male head of a
family? The person regarded as father and founder? The one who exercises
autocratic authority? It is a word with epic biblical roots that don’t fit my
cousin. But he is a focal point of his family. He is the one they all feel free
to joke with, the one who needs to be there to call it a family gathering. Perhaps
the term can be reworked through a postmodern lens; a patriarch that isn’t
hierarchical, that doesn’t supersede the matriarch. For Richard, I see it as a
term of love and respect.
6.24.2014...
I am here and John is there, so we
celebrated our 42 years together on the phone. Who would have imagined this life
we have, with its here and its there. It is more than a life of rural and
urban, of wet and dry, of wind and calm. It is also a life of longing and
satisfaction, of separation and reunions, of independence and relationship.
6.23.2014...
I drank no coffee this morning and
by 1:30 was heavy lidded and unable to focus. So I made a cup and found a piece
of chocolate. While drinking my belated coffee, two children rode past the
schoolhouse on tiny bikes. I could tell they weren’t from here by their
protective helmets. There seem to be different imperatives in rural settings.
No one I know here would understand the impulse to stop drinking coffee. It is
the first thing offered in the morning and flows freely from never ending pots.
Likewise I don’t see parents pad their children in protective gear. Saturday
night my cousin’s children played in the yard and one got hit in the eye
producing a shiner. It wasn’t rage, just an accident and it wasn’t the end of
the fun. The urban and rural parents I know love their children fiercely. And my
rural and urban friends are all passionate about how they live their lives, but
they might go about it differently. I am keeping in mind our mother’s
admonitions, “in all things moderation,” with my hand curled around a coffee
cup.
6.22.2014...
In Mary Clearman Blew’s essay “The
Art of Memoir,” she considers the telling of her ancestor’s stories. How much
is really her own projection, and what bearing does that have on the
“rightness” of telling? She sticks to what she knows has happened, at least the
told or documented versions, and declares it when she is speculating. And yet,
she acknowledges that all stories are dependent on their shape, and it is she
who crafts that shape. I listen to stories and read stories. I observe stories
and take part in stories in the making. And I keep busy finding the shape of
those stories. It is all part of understanding this place and finding my place
in it.
6.21.2014...
At 4:51 MDT this morning, the sun
reached its annual northern zenith at the Tropic of Cancer. Of course, there is
no reaching on the part of the sun, but it seems so from on the ground within
the territory of gravity. I woke up about 20 minutes after the actual moment of
the solstice, but before the sun rose here. The double orbit of earth, spinning
large and small at once is hard to grasp. I understand it in my head, but when
it comes to realizing it in space and time it is different. What I can easily
understand is being fully awake at 5:40 with a complete circle of sun just
above the horizon, no clouds to speak of, and knowing I have the longest day of
the year ahead of me.
6.20.2014...
Nearly blinded by the rising sun, I
don’t even have to open my eyes to see it. The light penetrates on this day
before the longest day of the year. The mornings have been a little gloomy,
watching and waiting for a decent shadow, but here she is now getting ready for
her day of glory.
6,19,2014...
My friend Charles wrote me a letter
about beauty. He has determined beauty is a learned experience and yet, what he
elaborates having learned from his mother is an ability to see beauty, to “take
time to rekindle the flames of appreciation.” Does everyone see an unencumbered
sun taking over the sky in the morning as heart stoppingly beautiful? Maybe
not. We are each particular in our appreciations, guided by our circumstances.
I don’t think I learned the sun’s beauty from anyone, but absence has increased
my fondness. Seattle winters with the constant interruption of hills and cloud
cover have colored my view of this big Montana sky ablaze. It is recognition of
the appreciation I have learned. Charles has reminded me of a question my
friend Tania was asked in a job interview, “Beauty, yes or no?” Without
hesitation I can say “yes.”
6.18.2014...
There is complete cloud cover and
it has been raining off and on since yesterday. I awoke in the night to the
sound of rain and slipped further under the covers so I could keep the window
open to listen. Bird song kept me from closing the window in the morning. Birds
seem to have rain preferences; lots of robins were out but fewer meadowlarks. I
can be sure the ranchers are crowing too, unless they have cut hay getting wet.
It is all such a gamble, what you need and what the weather provides you. The
rain has prevented me from drawing, so I’ve watched everything that goes on outside
from window squares. Cloistered in the kitchen with a small heater to stay
warm, it’s been a day for observation and separateness.
6.17.2014...
Half of the cottonwood fell. We are planting a new tree to guard
against the day the other half goes. I want to insure a patch of shade for the
future. When digging to prepare the bed I discovered a layer of charcoal about
6 inches down. Is it from the fire that burned the first schoolhouse in 1944? The
yard is framed by its foundation. Have the remnants of that long ago fire
remained just under the surface? Or is the charcoal from more recent history.
The current schoolhouse burned in the 1980’s. The wood floors bare scorch marks
from that fire. Did the yard burn too and leave this evidence? Either way, it
is a reminder of my being just a part of a long history. Long after I am gone
this place will remain, either as the building it is, or as remnants in the
dirt. Perhaps something of me will be etched into the floorboards or buried in
the ground. Another curious individual or bird or animal will peck at some
curiosity I have left behind and wonder to its origin.
6.16.2014...
This first day on my own has a
different texture than when others are here. Arbitrary markers are removed. I
still follow the tides of light and darkness as always. And I seem to eat regular
meals, though there is no one to ask: “Are you hungry?,” “Do you want lunch
now?” I just realize I am hungry and eat. When I am tired I rest. But there is
more to the quality of being alone than schedule. I hear the clock tick off
minutes and am reminded of my grandmother’s house where there wasn’t always
something to say and never any music or voices in the background. I don't
remember this as unpleasant. It was a rarified place, as it is here, where time
moved differently. Very little was expected of me. We might pick raspberries,
or play with her button collection, or make toast in her antique toaster. Her
house contained a profound sense of everything being ok…of my being ok. There
was nothing to negotiate outside or the inside.
6.15.2014...
Great horned owl chicks grow quickly,
though they remain dependent not being particularly adept at flying until they’re
nearly 3 months old. A pair of fledglings at the Vestal Place stood about 14
inches tall, but their feathers were still all fluff. In all the hours we were
there they did not leave the barn rafter. Linda, the current resident artist,
has been bowled over by this pair; more than the curlews with their long arched
beaks, or the giant hare leaping above the grass, or the cottontail that shades
itself everyday in the slim shadow of a power pole. The owls moved her more
than the young white tailed buck in velvet antlers, or mares with their foals
romping at the fence, or the cowboys on horseback herding cows like a
California movie. She has responded to all of these, but it is the owls she
brings up again and again. The pair that for all we know is still on the log
beam waiting for their parents to bring them rodents plucked from the fields
with fierce talons and dropped into baby beaks.
6.14.2014...
At the Vestal Place, eggs have
already hatched. Great horned owls are some of the earliest nesters. Two
fledglings fluffed in down perched on a log beam in the two story barn. They
sat as still as the bronze owl andirons that belonged to my stepmother’s
parents. But as we circumnavigated the barn, trying to see but not disturb the
birds, their heads pivoted with agility as they followed our movement. Each new
view found them staring at us with rich yellow eyes. They seemed entirely
unconcerned by our presence though their parents had abandoned them at first
sight of us.
6.13.2014...
While walking through Anderson’s field
to the old homestead, two red-tailed hawks scolded us. The message seemed clear that it was a
place we did not belong, and yet we continued knowing that from our side we meant
no harm. Near the wetland a Sandhill crane fluttered out with her wings at odd
angles. She put on a show attempting to lure us away from what must be her
nest. When we continued walking, she changed her strategy to follow and patrol.
She paced back and forth across the clearing we’d just passed through. Her
message was also that we shouldn’t be there. This is part of living with the
wild; we all posture and sometimes threaten, we forge ahead or back off, hopefully
finding a way to cohabitate.
6.12.2014...
Ten days, one after the other, with
morning wakings and observations assessing what might shape the day. The luxury
of stillness is a retreat from over stimulation. This quietness serves such a
different purpose for me in this 21st century than I suspect it did
for previous inhabitants. People came to Montana looking or something they
didn't have: food, land, opportunity, a way to survive, and/or freedom from
something. And, as with most searching, the unexpected was often found. Was
quietness and solitude part of the bargain?
6.11.2014...
At the Vestal Place I listened,
trying to put on the ears of its homesteaders. I wasn’t expecting to understand
the experience of constant labor or satisfaction of building something. I was
just trying to ascertain the quality and sounds of solitude. Near the homestead
buildings, the wind wrenched at roof tin, garnering angry cracks and squeals.
These are not the sounds of living here, but of the elements reclaiming.
Further out in the field sitting under a pine tree on a sandstone boulder, I
listened again. The wind is different when nothing but trees resist against it.
I worked language over, trying to find words that could encompass those sounds.
My body understands the hollow reediness of it, the empty force, but no words
exactly describe it. Even its emotional effect is hard to restrain with
language. Wind has been described as lonely and it is, but what is the quality
that makes it so? From my perch, I appreciated its melancholy, but to live
within the wind’s hold year around in isolation, it could be a sound of
distress.
6.09.2014...
Even trees that have fallen sway in
big wind. When I perched in the large relaxed U shaped branch in our downed
cottonwood, the west wind rocked us both. The tree has fallen as far as it can,
but I had to keep my toes curled in a “hold on” grip. There is a natural order to
things, but I am not sure my perch is part of it. And yet, I couldn’t resist
the U exactly holding my curved body. A pillow propped my head but it was
important not to be inspired to sleep, diligence being required to keep from
falling to the ground. I have assessed and trimmed every
limb, and left a patch of lawn uncut to allow the tree’s touch points to rest
in tall waves of grass. I want her to remain like this forever, though she will
not. For now, I conform my body to her curves, imagining what it must have been
like in that cold heavier wind that brought her crashing to my level.
6.08.2014...
It occurs to me that much of what I
observe, I have recorded already. Each year I look for the right words to
describe the colors of a Great Plains’ sunrise, not just the color, but also
the way color takes the sky. And each year I marvel at the the tone and character
of bird songs. The meadowlark melody lines alone could fill pages. Antelope
sightings produce a lexicon of descriptors. What is the point of these efforts,
of these repetitions? I know the meditative quality of observation. The calm
and total engagement it produces in me. But is there something more? Just
before I sat down to write today, five antelope stepped up to the fence across
the road one after another. They’ve looked so majestic in the distance with
their white/tan patterning and proud-pronged horns, but up close I could see
the wildness in their hair. Is my descriptive habit part of developing keener
observation?
6.07.2014...
I slept till nearly seven after a
day in the garden: weeding the lilac bed, beginning to trim the fallen
cottonwood, and cutting branches into firewood lengths. It is good to spend
time with the tree, getting to know her shape and details, starting to make
choices as to what stays in tact and what is removed. A tree is a complex
thing, as much defined by its interstices as its solid branches.
6.06.2014...
At first light, I could only see as
far as the neighbor’s pole barn. The river trees appeared shortly, but then
were concealed again. The east field was obscured almost completely, and then
the trees at its far edge took shape again. Fog pulsed in slow breaths, a
hulking phenomenon not so familiar in this area. We were left wondering what to
do, held in by its presence.
6.05.2014...
I did wake before five today
determined to witness the sun’s rise. The horizon’s edge was already crimson.
Over the next 30 minutes, with me determinedly propped up in bed, I watched the
low clouds morph from gray to passionate brilliance. Big words for something so
often described as “pretty,” but I know behind this simple word lies the
emotions of love and fire.
6.04.2014...
I awoke just before 4. The sky was
beginning to lighten, only a few stars still visible. At the bottom of the
window parallel to the pillow where my head lie, a tinge of light almost visibly
expanded. Sleep reclaimed me, but I opened my eyes again shortly after five to
brilliant pink and a half ball of sun at the horizon. Louise Erdrich suffered
from horizon sickness when she lived in New Hampshire and longed for the North
Dakota skyline she was born to. I did not grow up with such vastness, but have
found my home in it. At the end of every road: vastness, Erdrich mused. Out of
every window: vastness, I would add. The horizon is full of openness and possibility;
it is a place your mind can fly to.
6.03.2014...
Half the cottonwood lies across the
schoolhouse yard. It is not just a limb, its stout girth too much for any
lightweight chainsaw we might use. The tree’s upright half is leafed out in
deep green, the fallen half is trying hard, but only producing small light
leaves. The trunk is still attached and arches beautifully, high enough to walk
underneath. I want to leave it where it is, allowing the reverberation of the
fall to continue.
6.02.2014...
We arrived at the ranch late last
night, weary but happy to begin again what was left off last August. We let our
glasses ring in summer as they came together over the table with our dear
cousins.