Threshold To Living: Composing a Desert Winter
There is a causeway, a threshold place, between the anxiety of earning a living and living. We drive to the quiet chaos of an island leftover from an ancient lakebed. The causeway is a portal to memory. We remember that we, too, are nature with instinctual rhythms and a knowing in the flesh.
Everything is white with snow--until you begin to see the grayed green of the frozen water and the black sky hanging between bands of fog and cloud. A hawk glides slowly above the rusted tumbleweeds waiting for exactly the thing it wants: a small rodent to emerge from the depths of this snowy desert. To satisfy. To live.
We move slowly as well. Circling the edges of the causeway looking for something we want: the composition of lines and edges meeting texture and sky. To find harmony in this stark and exposed palette. Without thinking, these lines from Rilke’s Book of Hours slide into my mind:
I live my life in widening circles
that drift out over the things,
I may not achieve the very last,
but it will be my aim.
I circle around God, around the age-old tower;
I’ve been circling for millennia
and still I don’t know: am I a falcon, a storm,
or a sovereign song?
We are circling now and at any given moment when we descend into the living place of life--we undefine ourselves and let the air carry us as a falcon, a storm, or a sovereign song.
There is nothing to see in the desert other than our own ego--we are as exposed and bare as the day our oceanic sisters crawled out of the sea and on to dry land. Somehow, today I am not looking for food any more, but for the harmony of beauty that will untie me from the abstract bonds of earning a living. I am far distant from a computer, color-coded spreadsheets, and defense of a pantone decision. Currently, on this wintry threshold, I am earning nothing. But I am living--effortlessly with a simple awe for even the bitter cold wind that continues to threaten the stability of my wool felt hat atop my head.
Living. Earning nothing. Here I am overwhelmed with more than enough--by this chaotic beauty that meets a moody and bare landscape. I am here to witness, to meet the rhythms and harmonies that are coming together--to listen and to sing this song again for any who will listen; for any who are weary from earning a living and wish to come to the place of the living.
I earned none of this. But I am receiving it, letting it soak into my bones.
We cross the causeway threshold, and we are embraced in an acoustic world of winter subtleties--the quiet amplifies every sound: the tires roll through the slush of wet snow; the snow plow scrapes a path for us to explore; and the voices of parents corral their bundled children back into car seats. I do not hear the buffalo herd down below, and I do not hear the sagebrush rustling though I see the wind moving it. Perhaps there is no reason for the hawks to call out.
Winter is fragrant here in the desert. The sagebrush. The frigid air keeps its scent close in the air. With each step, I expect the smell to dissipate, but it never does. It is steady and all-encompassing--almost lush. The snowy landscape is alive as is touches my senses.
The hills curve into the water’s edge, lined with tall feather-topped grasses. You can be engulfed in the bamboo-like grasses, held in from the sharp breeze of the frozen waters. I’m drawn to these womb-like places in any landscape. To be held. To be held in dark places, in bare places, and in places as familiar as home. What more do we want?
Sometimes the mountains disappear into sky--the peaks lost to sight with no definition. Earth and sky undefined. Other hills stand apart from the oncoming dark skies. They stand, outlined and defined by the storms that are approaching. The new snow will cover the soil with more insulation for the roots beneath. Come spring, after a fallow season of rest, it will all emerge: fecund, young again, green, and bold--willing to push above ground, to be exposed and new.
The fog moves in quickly. Lake and snow meet. We find an edge, a line, irresistible where water and frozen land touch. We follow the line as we walk along a snowy rocky ridge, never taking our eye from this moment that is weathering us as much as it is the landscape. The snow is falling faster, thicker, and we’ve been in it for hours now. Living. To be exposed, to be held, to hear our own pulse in the rhythm of this desert composition.
