Author: wapatangawilds

Spring arrives, the mountains shrug it off, I do too, there is still snow along the stream, something to save for a dream, aspen bark is soft in color, evergreen fir soft in needle, and then the sky darkens and the snow begins to fall, fine flakes and thick, feels like a shroud, and I realize as long the wind blows, as long as the sky snows, I will want to be up here, free.

Snow is in the wind, I feel anticipation grow, not today, not tomorrow, but in three days to the mountains I will go, and when I get there, in that first moment when I first see flakes swirling in the air, a shiver of relief will move through me, from head to toe, that’s why I go, and to wander alone in the wonder, a child of the wild, following the call, loving it all.

Sitting in a March snow, on pine needles, fine granular wet flakes sifting straight down, feels cold, damp, and I love it, leaning against a pine trunk, nothing moving except the falling flakes, a crow calls out across the mountain valley, hidden in a fog, the silence is important to me, the solitude has value to me, it connects me to who I am, who I have always been, it brings me that awareness that I am alive, breathing, at the end of life I don’t know if it will matter, but it matters to me now.

Past Boulder falls, mountain skyin, flakes flyin, remembering where I took a fall, yet the mountains still call, to Caribou nature Ranch, to a Ponderosa pine branch, to a spruce and maybe a moose, to Aspen and fir, always brings a stir, with time just to sit, for a bit, all alone in a wild

It’s a January morning, season not yet shifting, snow is still sifting, it falls beautifully, past branches of evergreen, as I snowshoe into a forest serene, just a walk in the woods, away from the shoulds, but now the snow fall has stopped, and so have I, feels like my world takes a sigh, where I sit tracks tell me an elk has passed by, a small snow-covered evergreen brings me a sense of calm, knowing it will likely be here long after I am gone, brings a comfort as I rise and walk on.

It was in the dark of December, a time I remember, when the days had turned longer for certain, outside the window curtain, snow was falling in the night, in the morning I walked in the dark of dawn, out of the night into the light, out of the high plains and foothills up onto the mountain, where there was a fox for me to see, both of us sitting in the snow, and before I saw it go,  falling flakes surrounded us, whitening the ground, and in the solitude, quiet was the only sound.

In my years I have been to mountain high and under prairie sky, I have gone into the snow and where the wildflowers grow since I was a child, and still it calls, I want to be in the wild, just let me go, just let me disappear into a snow, into the swirl, into the twirl, up a trail, because nature, it’s beauty, it’s solitude, it’s connection to life, still thrills, it still calls. 

Mountain bluebirds perched on mullein stalks, voices at the moment mute, as I sit in the foothills, in the land of the Arapaho and Ute, aware I am a visitor, I come and go, I live down below, I watch a woodpecker arrive to perch on another mullein stalk, it lives in this wild preserve where I have come to sit and walk, where sunlight glints on the tops of grasses and tall Ponderosas line paths that lead to mountain passes, but I am here just to observe and listen, to be alive, just to be present. 

Out in the late Fall walking, leaves still dropping, feels like nature is talking, I find it calming to be surrounded by its colors, especially those fading, I find it invigorating to be in its cool air, I find I want to stop and just be there and then the time for falling snow comes again, and for a time leaves too are still falling.

As the sun is setting in my life, as the colors go dark, as the night grows cold, as I’m getting old, and there’s nothing I can do about it, something inside me wants to just shout it, I’m glad to have lived, and then as I find myself walking in skeletal Autumn, walking on old dry leaves, it stirs emotion, and I get the notion that I’m a walking skeleton moving through the remains of Summer, in the month of the dying grass moon, aware, like the seasons,  I will be gone all too soon.