Category Archives: Animals

God’s Magpie

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 Between
Your eye and this page
I am standing …

Bump
Into me
More.

~ Hafiz

I’ve heard it said that our eternal life intersects our mortal experience every moment. We’re seldom aware of it but every now and then we’re offered a glimpse of this expanded dimension. It’s possible to come around a bend and … surprise! Your eternal nature greets you — your forever friend. Something like this happened to me when I met Hafiz for the first time.

Hafiz lived in the garden city of Shiraz in ancient Persia. He left his earthly body in 1389 AD but his physical departure hasn’t stopped him from scattering his crazy, funny, spiritually sane ideas over the earth like a continuous meteorite shower for the past six hundred years. Why hadn’t I encountered this luminous outpouring before? I must have been ripening toward an appreciation of Hafiz’s shoot-the-lights-out approach to celebrating the Divine.

Why
Just show you God’s menu?
Hell, we are all
Starving —
Let’s
Eat!

~ Hafiz

Hafiz and I met unexpectedly — of course. He wouldn’t have it any other way. On a summer road trip from Northern Nevada to Colorado Springs, I stopped at a Trappist monastery outside of Old Snowmass in the Colorado Rockies. Saint Benedict’s is both a working ranch and a retreat center. The monastery cultivates hay, contemplative prayer, and silence. They also have a small bookstore which is where my rational mind said it was going. (I’ve always been a fan of Thomas Merton — a Trappist monk — so I figured I’d buy one of his books.) My heart, however, suspected this rationale was  a bunch of hooey. My real reason for visiting was a fascination with the monk’s commitment to keep conversation to a minimum. Writers tend to cherish places where silence has the upper hand.

I followed the gravel road to a cluster of buildings sheltered in a grove of fluttering aspens and gregarious magpies. No one else was around. Walking up the path, I followed signs to the bookstore and opened a heavy door. Peering in, I saw light from a wall of tall windows washing over shelves and tables loaded with books — my heaven.

Thomas Merton made a good showing among the metaphysical titles, but so did Mother Theresa, the Dali Lama, and Rumi. The Catholic monks of St. Benedict’s had eclectic taste. It was a contemplative’s candy store. So many points of view! So many prospective guides! I told my mind to shut up — and my heart to speak up. I was honing in on something …

Next to Rumi lay a mustard yellow paperback with frilly Victorian-style graphics. This? It looked a little stuffy and academic. I was skeptical. 

I almost judged the book by its cover but something compelled me to look inside. After reading a smattering of poems, I fell under Hafiz’s spell. He made me laugh. He made me think. He showed me the hidden world in plain view. Here was my beloved in a future life; a brother from before we were born; a companion I’d always sensed but never known.

I put the money for the book in a small wooden box the monks had left for that purpose and hurried outside. I needed a place to land. A few wooden camp chairs waited beneath the aspens. A magpie alighted on the back of one and then took off. I nestled into that chair. It looked across the high mountain valley toward Mount Sopris. Taking a deep breath, I opened the book and dove in …

 I am
A hole in a flute
That the Christ’s breath moves through —
Listen to this
Music.

 *
Why complain about life
If you are looking for good fish
And have followed some idiot
Into the middle of the copper market?

*

The
Great religions are the
Ships,

 Poets the life
Boats.

 Every sane person I know has jumped
Overboard.

 That is good for business
Isn’t it
Hafiz?

See what I mean? No piety here, but an infectious honesty whose cackling irreverence reveals the sincere reverence of a true pilgrim. That summer afternoon, I wandered in these heady poems for hours as thunderheads billowed above me unnoticed — until it started pouring.

The rain reminded me that I needed to continue my journey but I left that remote valley far richer than when I arrived. I’d spent the better part of a day touring eternity with my new friend Hafiz, the Sufi magpie. What an eye-opener.

Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real,

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door

 My address is somewhere else.

 ~ Hafiz

(Some critics claim Daniel Ladinsky’s English translations are more Daniel than Hafiz. For me, it doesn’t matter. I admire the teamwork between the 14th century mystic and the 20th century craftsman. Together, they rock.)

Night Horse

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One of the entertainers we’ve invited to Shooting the West this year is Brenn Hill, a singer/songwriter out of Hooper, Utah. My favorite song he sings is “Night Horse”, written by fellow cowboy Chuck Pyle. The song describes what can happen when cattle stampede in the dark. The cowboys mount up in a hurry and run with the herd until the cattle tire. Then, if they’re lucky, they can turn the herd back toward home.

But finding home can be a tricky proposition when you’re too far away to see the campfire and all around you it’s black as cats. So the chorus of the song tells the cowboys …

Turn it over to your night horse

Let him bring you back on home to the fire.

Now your night horse probably isn’t the flashiest horse in the remuda, but it’s the one with a sixth sense about where he is, and where he’s supposed to be. As Chuck Pyle says about one such horse …

He must use somethin’ other than his eyes

Whatever birds fly south on

I guess that’s what he counts on

Little Joe could carry me through to sunrise.

I once had a horse I could trust like that. He was black, with a white star on his forehead. Every time I hear the Night Horse song, I think of that old gelding. When I imagine riding through a dark night, miles from home, it’s not my horse’s abilities I question. It’s my own. Could I give the horse his head and lean back in the saddle? There’s always the temptation, as soon as I’m not certain of the direction things are heading, to snatch up those reins again. You know what I mean?

I’ve been working on that. It says on the quarter in my pocket, “In God We Trust.” That takes more practice than I care to admit, but I do realize the value in trusting someone other than oneself — beyond oneself. God makes a good night horse. Chuck Pyle’s song reminds me I’m not alone on the journey. When I trust, the reins lay slack.

(The illustration comes from a rubber stamp I picked up a few years ago. Thanks to “MD,” whoever you are.)

Stock Dog Saves Cell Phone

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We have a Border Collie named Switch who came from a sheep ranch outside Yerington, Nevada. He’s a big, rough-coated dog who is fearless when it comes to herding animals ten times his size. But let a horsefly get within twenty feet of him and he runs for his dugout under the porch. Poor guy. Somehow those horseflies find the tender skin under his hind legs and inflict horrible, nasty bites. Switch hates anything that buzzes.

I don’t know if you folks keep your cell phones this long, but my husband has an old relic that just won’t quit. First, its screen went blank. Then the ringer gave out. If he set it on vibrate, and kept it in his pocket, he might catch an incoming call. He limped along like this until one day the phone turned up missing. I helped him look for it. I called his phone and put my ear next to the laundry basket. I listened for it in every room, inside the truck cab, out in the garage. No luck.

Several days went by. We were about to give up and buy a new phone, but we tried calling it one last time. I happened to be looking out the window when Switch dashed from the patio and disappeared. Hmmmmm … I went out the back door and looked around. There sat the phone, on top of the barbecue, buzzing like a fiend.

Bustin’ Loose

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This metal sculpture stands on a bluff overlooking Highway 20 a little west of Burns, Oregon. The BLM’s Wild Horse and Burro corrals are just out of sight behind the hill. I always watch for this spot every time we visit family for the holidays. Last week, I snapped this picture through the truck window. (No way I was rolling down that window — it was about 14 degrees out there!)

I like how the mustang looks to be bustin’ out of captivity. I hope you do the same in the New Year.

 

Turkeys in the Holy Land

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Our family had an unconventional Thanksgiving this year. We hauled our travel trailer to southern Utah in search of longer days and warmer weather. The day before Thanksgiving we went to Zion National Park. We ate a picnic lunch along the Virgin River, then climbed to Angel’s Landing. The sun set before we got back to the valley floor and dusk found us resting at The Grotto.

In the twilight, a flock of turkeys scurried around us. They dashed between the picnic tables, around the parking lot, along the paths, between parked cars. They were everywhere — and in a hurry.

I tried to photograph them but all my pictures came out blurry. Low light, fast birds. At first I was disappointed, but then I thought about Alfred Stieglitz’s idea behind his series of cloud photographs, Equivalents. Stieglitz’s goal in these images was “to record something so completely, that all who see [the picture of it] will relive an equivalent of what has been expressed.” In his case, he introduced the world to the idea of abstract photography. Heady stuff. In my case, I introduced the world to what it’s like being around edgy turkeys at this particular moment. My equivalents, such as they are.

After a half hour of dashing around, the agitated birds began to launch themselves in long low trajectories across the road into the towering cottonwood trees along the river. Bulky forms flapped wildly in the air in front of startled motorhome drivers. Traffic backed up as Japanese tourists tried to capture the turkeys’ awkward ascensions on their camcorders.

One after another, the birds made their way into the lowest branches of the trees and clambered, hopped, climbed, and flapped toward the tops. As darkness settled, the flock roosted above the valley floor — safe in Zion.

The Pelican’s Guests

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At the end of September, my family rendezvoused on Upper Klamath Lake in southern Oregon. We paddled the canoe trail from Rocky Point to Malone Spring. In this picture, my husband and niece are waiting for us to bring the rest of the gear. What you can’t see are the clouds of little fish swimming beneath the dock and the constant chatter and splashes of the Kingfishers diving from trees along the shore. Although the morning has this calm, dreamlike quality, we are about to embark into an explosion of fish and birds.

Once on the water, we enter the wildlife refuge and become guests in their home. It’s humbling to feel so out-numbered and out-maneuvered by critters. Around every meander, flocks of birds take off or watch us steadily as we slip by. Ibis, egrets, herons, ducks, geese, pelicans, and eagles feast on marsh plants and fish. Fish leap skyward after insects. Columns of insects spiral above us, glowing in the sunlight against the deep shadows of the forest. Dragonflies mate, fight, and crash into the water. Everywhere we look, the sky animals plunder the aquatic world and the water animals snatch their meals from the air.

We float tenuously amid their give and take, a temporary obstacle to work around — or make use of. Fish fry hide in the shadows of our boats while dragonflies ride along until their wings dry and they rise to fight again.

I look up as a pelican cruises ten feet above our heads, its wingspan as long as the kayak. I wish I could hitch a ride on the pelican’s back and gain an aerial view of the marsh’s twisting channels, but I’m a creature whose access to this world comes from inventiveness, not natural adaptation. I’m tethered to my little boat and can only imagine the perspectives of the creatures above and below. But on a quiet autumn day, paddling for miles, there’s space and time enough to dream our way into a wilder life.