Last day 28
That's only at the end tho
already midaugust and I am losing track of what is next; we thought tonight cloud cover but there may be stars instead. the clouds over the gravelley mountains are piled like pavlova ready to bake, piled like the whipped cream before it melts under the lights or the sun, piled like a ship, somehow, though not at all like a ship, but with the momentum of one, with the sheer height of one, seen from sea level, seen from the perspective of a seal raising its eyes above the water, seen from the perspective of the ground as it moves, slow water vapor through the blue sky.
last week I turned my ankle in a hole on a hike, on the way down, right at the top, walking between grasses moving like snakes or loose snow in the wind; I turned it again when I was almost at the bottom; I walked on it all the way whether or not it was strong enough to hold me but the pain was the kind of ache that could be swallowed.
when I unraveled the wrapping the protrusion was the size of a baseball or a peach; I keep walking on it, ill-advised. at odd intervals, I step just wrong, but the sharp pain passes quicker than the chronic ache all through my body and it is hard to heed.
yesterday we watched a moose eating willows, stripping leaves from the branches, looking up at us occasionally, wary but ultimately unconcerned. how big they are seems absurd, long legs and steep shoulder.
weeks have passed now, of course, since I saw those clouds mid-august, just a few days until my birthday and for the first time this season today is properly chilly, properly fall, everyone this morning unrecognizable because broken from the same rotating wardrobe we have worn all summer—jackets, now, shivers in the shade of the office. trees start turning and the birds are different, but the sun is still warm and it is possible to pretend, still, this time is ceaseless, that all there is in all the world is this small patch of Montana valley. that I will never go back. that things will never catch up with me, though they are getting close, close, close
song of the day: Didn’t (feat. Cavetown) by Illuminati Hotties
pants of the day: rainbow camo gramicci x parks project
shoes of the day: still birks
bird of the day: bald eagle
rejection of the day: Bat Conservation International
color of the day: Pantone 14-0852 TCX (Freesia)
tonight is another potluck, the brownies are in the oven and like every night here I have no idea what I will eat for dinner, but I also did not have to cook all the parts of a meal that will nurture and sustain me. my clothes are in the washing machine and a wolf spider didn’t crawl out of the armload as I brought them from my bedroom and that is more than I can say for my pillow two nights past. I’m more afraid of them than bats, whose squished little faces and high pitched yells amuse more than frighten me.
tasks I’ve done this week: power-washed the benches, given a safety orientation, moved the trail cam, watched over a fire, led too many people up into the small enclosure of the fire tower for sunrise, posted a red-tailed hawk to instagram
I’ll admit that I’m feeling scared, more even than of the wolf spiders that keep invading my private space, of moving forward from here. for three years this has been my best place, for increasing stretches of time, and as the horizon of my life, my long-term and weighty life, comes closer, I am less and less certain of my capacity for any of it, the hours of work, the cooking and cleaning, the making friends and making dates and keeping up with the things that bring me joy and the things that keep me alive. I am more afraid than I like of 40 solid hours a week and no more freedom for this kind of thing, escape to somewhere else.
what it comes down to is that the life I want to live has not yet opened a door to me, only windows, here and there. that life, the one I want, is like the backyard in Brooklyn belonging to the building next to mine, with its patch of grass and fire pit and the two people out there on weekend mornings, reading the paper. once the smell of sausage drifted up through my window like a cartoon or a dream. the life I want is as airborne as that, as out of reach—I can see it just through the window, sitting on the sill, or from the fire escape looking through the layers of black paint at the ground. but I have not, yet, been invited in, and I don’t have the key.
in the meantime, I’ve been writing like mad, taking photos when I can, drawing the various birds for my centennial valley tarot deck, applying for jobs, ceaselessly checking apartment listings. I go for walks when I remember and there’s time. I’m burnt out or entering an episode and I spend too long laying on my bed, looking at nothing, until a spider scares me out of it.
when I go back I won’t know where to go, it will be starting over, stranger—
it isn’t true, of course, only from here the untenable nature of unemployment and no address. everything is strange and my favorite people are far away.
still, though, things moving, finding their names, memorizing and becoming acquainted. this morning a bald eagle with a body almost too stocky to believe just overhead. and then to discover online a south american bird called a marsh tyrant, which if there was ever a bird name I identify with…I must remember Caro’s paintings, the colors she found here, swimming in the creek while she painted the willows, drying cyanotypes on the bank before we walked back home.
I call it home and it is, much as anywhere, whether I’ve earned it or not. I claim no ownership but I do, now, belong to this place, as each migratory species passing through. how many passerines will I recognize by the time I leave here, what shorebirds and raptors and bright-capped woodpeckers? every friend who’s passed through in one way or another leaves a neat set of stitches on the tapestry of this place, the sewn expanse of grasses, tectonic plates, places to write or gossip, meals shared, sunrises. every bird, too. yesterday, a family of swans (parents and three lanky cygnets) on Lower Lake, and above them the swirling flight of a great blue heron. ducks of various stripes. a red-tail on the fenceline.
so there’s optimism enough, in the daylight, anyway.
and now the day before my birthday, the eve of 29. I spent most of the day moving furniture out of a building that will be demolished, starting this week, a building I've slept in and shared with friends, a building that is sinking and unsound and will be replaced. the furniture, the fridges and ovens and odd pieces, were heavy and it was satisfying, among the four of us lifting, disassembling, tilting, hauling down stairs, to complain, and afterwards to eat sweet sorbet on the porch, to paint a kestrel, to eat the first of the two birthday cakes that are offered to me this weekend.
after, I went out alone to swim and met a group of women who referred to me as “the mermaid” and made me a burger, shared their dinner with me. on the drive back a variety of hawks, and three sandhills, and a cautious fox. sun, so much sun. sun as it set through the haze. the dark now of trees against darkening sky. for now all there is in all the world is this small patch of Montana valley, I will never go back, things will never catch up with me, though they are getting close, close, close
color is of the day: Pantone 17-4026 TCX (Moonlight Blue)
before the calendar page turns, goodnight xo