Mountains and Rivers

No. 

Well no. I've never much cared for Gary Snyder for a whole lot of unimportant reasons. Why? Because he's short and old and thinks he's the King of the World? I don't know. How very Zen.

But on a whim and suggestion from Roshi, I'm reading his "Mountains and Rivers Without End" one of his seeming many Epic Poems of being-not-being and wanderlust. And I rather like it. Well, insofar as I can relate. 

And that's the thing. I have had long years of wandering the landscape. Mountains and rivers yes. Many mountains, many rivers, many forests, many deserts. It's my bloodline. 

So I can in part relate to Gary and his own wanderings far afield, abroad and at home. Never settling, though he's been a fixture in Nevada City for generations. He still wanders.

Yet I've become rooted.

Partially anyway.

An ancient adobe home on the high plains of New Mexico -- llano alto -- keeps me rooted to the land that's harsh and cruel and yet... the mountains brood or smile in the distance now and then dusted with snow, mostly standing charcoal gray in the daytime, dark and monstrous at night. You can't see the mountains easily from our house, though they are there, through the thicket of trees, invasive Siberian elms that were planted so long ago no one remembers.

The trees protect us from the mountains. 

There are no rivers close at hand, but last spring Mary discovered what she called The Swamp, a portion of our land where water seems to collect and even flow though not on the surface. She was walking her circles and said to me, "You know the ground is soft there, up there near the fence, and you can see how the plants grow thick and tall. And look, the swampy place extends toward the house. We can see where there's some kind of water flow."

And I looked and it was there, a broad patch of wetlands in the midst of the dust-dry. 

Time to bathe now. My daily Tubzen. 

And then I'll read some more of Gary Snyder's Epic. 

And then for the Daily Dharma Talk. 

Then it's off to Santa Fe for socializing (rare, still) before returning home to feed the cats.