The Picture I didn't Take

In the middle of this big wet snowstorm, about 6pm, the dogs had been gone for about two hours. It was getting dark, the power was out, Tom was out of town. I went out looking for them, mostly so I wouldn't be lonely. I found them a few hundred yards from the house. Fergus, the tall and skinny one was fine, but the squat border collie, Tess was covered in huge snow balls, and was stuck in a tree well. I'd like to think Fergus was staying with her so she wouldn't be alone, but he was staring at the chipmunk in the branches above him.

I picked up Tess, slung her around my shoulders like a wet, orphaned calf, and walked back up the hill to home in snow up to the middle of my thighs. It was kind of Western. It felt like husbandry. Snow falling all around, a house with a fire and a half a bottle of wine waiting, a dog wrapped around me and another bounding like a deer as we made our way back.

Collections

Yesterday as I sat in my car in the parking lot of Moe's Bagels looking under the seat for my wallet, the man who was parked next to me returned to his truck. "Hey pups," he said to the two black and whites in my backseat. He asked me if he could give them a biscuit. After fawning over them as they ate, he handed me an orange dumb dumb sucker (he had just been at the bank). Then, he asked me if I was married, assured me he wasn't flirting, just cleaning out his pockets, and handed me a heart-shaped rock.

So my mind went where it always does, and I started imagining a life for a stranger. I thought about a man who goes to the bank and takes home a dog cookie for a dog he doesn't have, a sucker for a child he doesn't have. A man who picks up heart shaped rocks for a love he hopes to find.

Partner in Time (travel)

My best moments this winter were these: for three days in a row, two hours at a time, I gave a private "ski lesson" to an 81 year old woman who had Kyphosis (hump back) so severe she could barely walk. To look up at me, she would  tilt her head sideways and look from the corners of her eyes. She was tiny and frail looking and she came all the way from Chicago on the pretense of visiting her grandkids. I know, though, that she really came to ski.

For Edith, walking was slow, methodical, painful, and annoying. But on skis, she could move. Her joints didn't ache. She got around. 

Every day, for three days in a row, her son- in- law would bring her up, and she'd lean on his arm all the way from the car to the Nordic Center. He didn't ski, so he'd bring a book and two hours later he'd help her make her way back to the car. If he only knew what she was up to while he sat inside and read.

For those two hours, I'm not sure, but I think Edith felt like she was flying. On one of those days, a day so windy and cold that even the thermometer in the sun read only seven degrees, Edith said to me as we headed up the mile-long, steady incline called 17th Ave., "Nothing hurts now." I made a mental note to self to think about those words whenever I'm out there, feeling too cold or too tired or too whatever, whenever I'm feeling too sorry. 

The day after that horrendously cold one, we had one of those January Thaw kind of days. By the time Edith came up for her "lesson" the temperature had gone from almost 40 degrees, back down to around 20. These melt freeze conditions make for very fast snow--snow that's more ice than snow.

It was also Edith's last day in Colorado. She really wanted a good ski. And she wanted to stay in the tracks for as much of her two hours as possible. If you've not cross country skied, "tracks" are set by grooming machines. They are two grooves, exactly the width of your two skis, and about an inch deep. They make the kick and glide of classic cross country skiing much easier and more rhythmic than skiing on flat snow. On downhills, though, staying in the tracks can go from thrilling to slightly terrifying, especially on those icy melt-freeze days.

Edith said she wanted to try to stay in the tracks all the way down the hill that is 17th Ave., back to the Nordic Center. This is a woman who still works part time, and who still plays piano in her town's orchestra. You don't discourage a woman like Edith.

I skied next to her, outside of the tracks, where I could easily wedge my skis to slow myself down. That is, if I could had had an opportunity to slow myself down. Edith was flat-out moving. Knees bent, eyes forward and flying down that hill. I couldn't take my eyes off her face. It looked like she had gone to another time. I still think about how it must have felt to go so fast when walking across a room can seem to take all day. 

I got so lost in the moment that it wasn't until I saw the look of horror on another ski instructor's face as Edith's stocking capped head flew by, that I realized that maybe she was going a little too fast. 

We came up on the sharp turn at the second to last intersection, and I knew she couldn't stay in the tracks around that corner. I also knew that she couldn't step out of them and snowplow either, as she'd just informed me that due to her hip replacement, her legs didn't lift up like that anymore. The only way to emergency stop for Edith would be to fall. So, as sort of a visual cue, I fell first, and I watched a barely-able-to-walk 81 year old woman hit the ground next to me. While we sat there for a second, and I asked if she was alright, she said to me, "That was the best thing I've done in a long time. I can't imagine anything better."

We got back to the Nordic Center, and I helped her out of her skis, and she leaned on my arm as we walked back inside. As I handed her off to her son in law, I felt like I had a secret, having just witnessed the miracle of old lady flight. I had aided and abetted time travel. And I was fairly certain  I knew what at least one person would dream about that night.

choosing my religion

A good man, father, husband and community member lost his life last week. He was killed by someone who's mental problems turned him into a monster. His last words--the words that, as his priest said at his funeral, resulted in his dying a "martyr's death" were, "I'm Catholic." The gunman had asked him, "what's your religion." The priest then asked his congregation, "how many of you could answer such a question?"

I had heard about this question right after I heard the identity of the victim. The disbelief of who and how felt like a stomach punch. And interspersed with all the thoughts of this loss and his family, I wondered what I would have answered. It's easy to say, "well....I'm not really into any organized religion..." when you're having a beer with friends, but what would the answer be if the questioner were pointing a gun to my head?

When I honestly answered that question--placing myself in that tense situation, my one-word answer would most likely have been "nothing." Nothing. Is that the truth?

Liz Caile was a writer who raised her children in a cabin on Sugarloaf. She was wise and funny and I felt lucky to know her. A book of her stories was published after she died, and in one she talked about religion and how she found her's in the wilderness. Her church was the Earth--literally. She loved to walk and hike, "I pray with my feet, " she said. I've always loved that.

Another writer friend, Peter Mayer, wrote a song called "Holy Now". He writes about how now, as a grown man, he's able to see that the miracle is that anything is here at all-- that everything is Holy.

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
--From Holy Now by Peter Mayer

I wasn't raised with religion. I grew up in a small farming town, and Sundays were days to get a lot of work done, since we didn't have school, and my dad wasn't at work. Every once in a while, I'd ask my mom to let me go to church with the neighbors. Their oldest son, Donald, was my age, and he got to ring the bell at the start of the service. If I went with them he'd let me take turns with him, pulling a thick rope that went up into the second story and the belfry. That, and the part after the service where we went downstairs and ate cookies while the grownups talked were the best parts of church.

I still don't go to church. I always hope that by volunteering in my community, but helping when I can, by living low on the food chain, and by taking care, I'm living a good life, which is what religion teaches--in various forms. I am constantly awed by what I find just outside my door, by how much humans can endure, by beautiful words, music, art.

Until I truly believe in something else, and I am searching-- I hope that my answer to that question, "what's your religion?" would have been, "Everything".