Ink Tarsia: word mosaic

At the cabin, it’s finally summer.  Aspens have leafed out, filling the glen with quaking clusters of caterpillar green, a bright shade seen only in montane spring.  My mother follows me as we cross the stream, heading towards the bench set in the rustling aspen grove.  She bends nearly in half as she walks, stopping to examine mysterious new sprigs of bushes and wildflowers.  “A wild rose…” she says.  “And potentilla.  Is that…”  I smile vaguely, because I can’t identify much without a field guide. 

We settle on the bench, which invites us to look up, at pines and aspens that reach tall for the sun on the south-facing slope, along the narrow, flat clearing that adjoins the stream.  Or technically, the crick.  The stream runs seasonally, and seems dry now, though there must be water seeping under the litter of decayed leaves and pine needles, fed by small springs upstream.  Evidence of water surrounds us – green grasses stretching tall, tiny clumps of moss clinging to aspen starts, midges and mysterious insects that nibble at uncovered skin.  This is precious habitat in a semi-arid land of decomposing pink granite.  

 “Are there chiggers?”  my mother asks.  If there are, they’ll find me.  I’m particularly tasty to chiggers. 

 At bedtime in the mountains I’m reading Beyond the Aspen Grove by Colorado naturalist Ann Zwinger.  She tells me about the insects and fauna I’m missing while I sit on the deck and watch clouds, or stare at treetops, rather than look into a microscope and draw what I see.  Zwinger’s book describes years spent exploring her family’s land 40 acres north of Woodland Park, called “Constant Friendship”, after an ancestral home from the 1700s.  The cabin sits at nearly the same altitude as Constant Friendship, perhaps 30 miles away.   

Years ago I attended a Poetry West meeting led by Zwinger, where she handed out blank postcards printed with her plant illustrations.  She led a workshop on “postcard poems,” pieces short enough to be penned on a card.  I scribbled iffy stanzas in my notebook, and quietly stashed the blank cards in my copy of Beyond the Aspen Grove, purchased used from the Aspen Bookshop run by a friend.  I would read sections of the book, and long for the day when I might observe a mountain land as closely as Zwinger had.  With that book, I could carry a dream in my hands. 

At the end of the metting, Zwinger signed my copy:  “A sense of place is what ties us to home…Beyond the Aspen Grove is where I’ve found such a place.” 

My family eats lunch on the large deck.  One end of the deck is marked with caution tape while the deck’s precarious steps are moved and rebuilt.  The east deck drops abruptly into space, like a third-storey door opening to nowhere in an Albert Campion novel. 

My mother says, “Is that an eagle?”  A dark raptor with a white cap makes a lazy circuit over the hilltop across from us. Perhaps he is eyeing the burgers and peach cobbler on our plates. I’ve seen eagles here only when my mother visits.  As the eagle heads downstream, I see the lift of his wing structure, shaped like a longhorn steer, as he sails just over the tops pine trees. 

Not long after, I point out a spectacular red-tailed hawk follows a similar circuit, cutting a circle over the aspens and then continuing west.  The hawk’s wingspan seems particularly broad from this close vantage–7 feet? Perhaps it’s a female hawk, which can be a third larger than a male.  The sun straight overhead shines through her feathers, making wings and tail glow a translucent, rusty red as she banks into the light.  She is the color of red granite lit and soaring. Her wings are flat and fringed with black as she flies west. 

On Saturday, I bought a new bicycle, a Breezer.  The decision took several years.  She’s a beauty, with old-fashioned black fenders and a candy-apple red frame.  Shimano gears and a nifty hub dynamo in the front wheel that generates power for the lights.  Handy panniers to hold grocery bags.

I’d been researching electric-assist bikes, something to ensure that asthmatic, out-of-shape me could ride to the library or market or pet store, and return up steep hills while burdened with books, groceries, Scooby snacks.  A bike’s gotta be fun & easy, or I won’t use it.  

Found just what I wanted online—a larkspur blue Urban Mover step-through bike with a lithium-ion battery—only one dealer in the country carried it.   The holdback was fit.   I’m too tall for most women’s bicycles.  I’ve always hated men’s bike frames and the unladylike movement required for mounting them.  I worried the expensive bike would be too small, and make my wrists and legs burn, like the ill-fitting lilac Huffy in the garage.  It was too much money to risk on something that might not work. 

I wandered into Old Town Bike Shop on Saturday, expecting the kind, fit salesfolk to dismiss me with vague answers so they could focus on “real” customers.  I’m clearly not the cycling type, and they don’t carry electric bikes.  But they worked hard to find just what I wanted in the shop, answered questions on fit & function, and rolled the bike outside for me to try in the parking lot (a daunting thought for someone who hasn’t ridden a bike much in 20 years and worries about balance issues).  While I waited for the bike to be checked over before taking it home, a guy wearing a black bolt in his ear told me how thrilled he was when someone bought a town bike like mine, because it meant that many less cars on the road to run errands.  Felt I’d earned a little green star from Generation Y. 

Riding with my boys in the neighborhood (short trips first – I don’t have calluses in the right places yet), I remembered what a joy it was to ride a bike.  To coast down a hill and feel the rush of wind blow past, after earning that hill with breathless pumping to reach the yellow house.  Perhaps this week I’ll get to the school without triggering a full wheeze. 

As a teenager, I earned my 10-speed bike by babysitting the neighbors’ quarreling children at 50 cents an hour.  For a year I studied the Sears and Wards catalogs, deciding I wanted a bright yellow frame.  After finally saving enough, I bought a bike for $86.  The bike was cherry red—which I did not like—but summer had come, and I didn’t want to wait for a prettier color. 

I rode the cherry-bomb bike to Jenny’s house, mindful of catchy brakes. I loved the smooth shift of gears, the impossibly thin tires, the lightness of the frame.  I loved the delicate ticking of wheels that increased with speed, like the childhood sound of a playing card clipped to my bike spokes with a wooden clothespin for a July 4 bike parade.  It had been worth a year of boring babysitting to earn that purring sound, rather than to pedal the heavy tuck-tuck-tuck of the clunky used 3-speed Schwinn in the garage.  Sometimes I rode past Jenny’s house to the end of the block, where a popular boy lived, hoping he saw me zip past.  The road was level there, and with the momentum, I could sit up straight in the seat, no hands, and pretend I was cool.  

 “I seem to be doomed to red bicycles,” I told the Old Town guy.  The model I preferred didn’t come in periwinkle blue.  But riding the Breezer at home, I knew I’d picked the right bike.  I could feel the smooth operation of engineering at work, simple and elegant, and I could pedal uphill to the yellow house with relative ease.  This is halfway to the post office and gelato shop.  My wrists didn’t hurt, and I could imagine a day when I can return down the hill with a straight back, no hands, like when I was 15.  I miss being lithe and strong–dread getting back into shape–but choosing a top-of-the-line machine almost makes up for it.  Almost.

I like to collect photos of funny signs—this one’s from Susan, who full-times in her RV.  She sees plenty of signs in her rambles.  

I regret being caught without a camera when I saw this sign:  VISITORS MUST USE PASS. The letter “P” was missing.

Wish I could locate the print photo of my favorite sign, taken on our first wedding anniversary. The marquee of the Ramada Inn in Glenwood Springs said:    WELCOME SEX CRIMES INVESTIGATORS.   

Luckily, we’d reserved elsewhere. Seen any good signs lately?  

“All I’ve got

is a red guitar,

three chords,

and the truth.” 

  – U2, “All Along the Watchtower”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ixs57zxTiQ&feature=related

When I was a kid, my brother and I competed in the sport of cut-down:  May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.  May the bird of happiness crap on your shoulder. 

In January, we returned to the mountain cabin to discover a bird had moved in.  Evidence suggested a small bird, what a neighbor calls an “LBJ,” a little brown jobber. The bird enjoyed several perches throughout the house, on nearly every piece of furniture except the kitchen table, and particularly the sham on my husband’s pillow.   

That afternoon, we heard a happy chirp coming from the master bedroom upstairs.  We crept quietly up the steps and peeked in the door, to see an LBJ sitting on the old pink armchair, singing in a patch of warm sun coming through the window.   

The bird was not afraid of us.  When the children sneaked too close, the bird simply disappeared by a convenient escape, to chirp merrily in another room–from a bedpost in the boys’ bedroom (nicknamed the Bunkhouse), from a kitchen chair downstairs, from rafters in the downstairs den.   

The finish carpentry for this log cabin is eccentric—the original owner ran out of energy or funds or expertise—and there are holes in corners, gaps between wall and ceiling, mismatched boards, strange configurations of space and storage.  Plenty of fix-up budget will be spent on finish trim. The cabin may have been built from a barn kit; it seems better adapted to horse stalls than bedrooms. 

My youngest boy loves the closets in our bedroom. Abracadabra, he can enter my closet, squeeze behind shelves set in the eaves, and exit through the other closet.  But the bird could slip from an east room upstairs to a west room downstairs  There are more gaps than we realized.  After allowing a single photograph, the wren would reappear to another room and continue singing.  Eventually the LBJ was shooed out a window missing a screen. 

We successfully evicted the Bird of Happiness. 

Not an hour later, we heard chirping upstairs.  This time my oldest boy was prepared.  He consulted his bird book from Grandma, and announced we had a house wren.  Wrens tend to nest in boxes.  This wren selected a heated, 2000 square foot box, and could move freely from outside to in.   

I enjoyed hearing the birdsong in the house, which I did not confess to my husband, who held a contrary view.  The sound of a cheerful song animated the cabin, gave it a heart, like the tick of a deep-toned clock.  Spring sound echoed through the home in a bitterly cold season—surely this was a good omen. Despite LBJ’s significant contribution to janitorial duties, I secretly wished the bird could stay.  We covered couches, tables, chairs with newsprint when we left, hoping he wouldn’t invite a mate, or a house party, before we could return to seal the points of entry. 

In February, my husband slithered through the narrow attic space to tack screening over vents and penetrations.  We didn’t see the wren that day, but learned he now preferred sturdy posts on the upstairs balcony under the skylights, and spent afternoons on the open door to the Bunkhouse.  In March, we found the wren had gone after a brief stay on the Shrader wood stove.  My boys muttered about the Bird of Crappiness as we cleaned the mess.   

Last weekend, there was no evidence of the wren.  I walked outside with the dog after 7:00 a.m., hearing many species of birds fill the glen with song as April sun paints the tips of rocks and pine trees.  I’d like to think the wren found a new home without much trouble, that he had not been trapped in the cabin.   

I’d like to think only one of my brother’s predictions will come true, and that this will not be followed by a plague of fleas.

The first writing exercise for the online class in memoir says:  Write about something awful you’ve done in your life.  Dare to be honest. 

I consider this.  Some categories of awful can be ruled out quickly—murder, drug trafficking, fraud, solicitation, bunko.  Tax evasion.  There may be a “Wanted” poster with my picture in the PTO work room at school. 

Various not-proud-of-that moments come to mind.  Are they awful? Worthy of 500 words?  This is what comes from skipping Lent.  I haven’t spent near enough time digging in the shadows, watching at minus tide to see what’s deposited on the ocean floor.    

What I choose for the assignment seems fairly benign on the scale of awful:  a catty remark.  Friends read the exercise and shake their heads, is that really the worst you can come up with?  

Perhaps they know my vices lean towards scarves, gym avoidance, good chocolate, and Dorothy Sayers.  Or travel porn—tour catalogs, articles, memoir-–anything that fuels my lust for Europe.  I’ve been on a Jane bender since January, when Masterpiece Theater began broadcasting Pride & Prejudice. 

Because my nasty remark has bothered me for years, I suspect there is much more to it.  (Emma Woodhouse knows exactly what I mean.)   In the murk of “awful” is more to be found than vice or felony—there’s abuse of class, consumption, resource, power, knowledge, trust.  Dare to be honest.