Living a Mary Oliver sunrise in the desert

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves..."

(Six o'clock a.m. on Tuesday morning... walking into the desert in Dayton, Nevada.)

'Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers."

(Even though I was still in the cold morning darkness, the hills to the west were accepting the suns rays.)


"Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again."

( I saw two geese flying across the landscape, heading north and speaking with their beautiful voices. But the mountain caught fire with sunlight and  my attention turned toward the beauty of the hills and away from the flying geese.)

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,"

Then the sun rose over the eastern mountains and took my breath away. It was so cold and yet, for a moment, I was overwhelmed by the warmth of the sunrise.)

"...call to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting..."

(The sun lit the landscape with its magical, morning light, as if to say, "I did this especially for you... to let you know that you are part of this world and this is your gift for wanting to see my radiant performance.")

"...over and over..."

( I stood on the cold, desert floor and waiting....listening. I waited for the sounds of birds, then the noise of humanity... the click of my camera.  But mostly, in the early minutes, before anything else... the quiet.)

( No snakes or rabbits yet. Just the beautiful light... and me standing there. )

"...announcing your place
in the family of things.”
~Mary Oliver~

I left the house before anyone was awake. Quietly walking out the back door, through the fence and into the field behind the house. It was quiet and cold. No one was outside. As if, like a movie, where you wake up to find the town's people have all disappeared, I felt alone. For me this was a good feeling.
 Walking onto a land so hostile and dry, I wondered at the ability of this place to survive the onslaught of man. It's probably not surviving very well. But, one on one, man will not win. Man will not outlast this land. The plants that survive the heat and cold of this area. , greasewood, chaparral and sagebrush, are the true survivors in this hostile world.
But on this cold, April morning, with the golden light shinning across the field,

This was were I needed to be and the desert was providing nourishment.
 I was really cold. My fingers could hardly hold the camera and heavy lens. I took one more photo...of the wild horses on the distant hills.

and one more, of my shadow trying to be one with the sagebrush.

If the desert has memories, I hope it remembers that I was there.
I returned to a warm house and friends that were awake... fixing coffee and tea.
The warmth felt good.



 

The Smell of Sagebrush after the Rain

Can you guess where I've been?

I left with a friend on Friday morning, picked up our hostess in Pioneer and met up with the other car that would follow us over the Sierra Nevada Mountains to Dayton, Nevada. There were five of us. We were invited to a girl, gourd and wine weekend by a friend who owns a second home in the sagebrush country of northwestern Nevada.
This is the land of jackrabbits and wild horses. Do you see those bunnies with the long ears (below)? They were all over the place.

Dayton, Nevada is east of Carson City and was once called "Ponderer's Rest" when first settled. Gold was discovered in "gold creek" in 1849 and in 1861 the town was renamed Dayton after a local surveyor named John Day.
This is also where they filmed John Huston's movie THE MISFITS in 1961, with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable.
Wild horses still  range on the slopes of this long group of mountains called the Virginia Range, southeast of Dayton.

We drove over Carson Pass (highway 88) and down into Nevada, stopping for lunch in Minden. It was warm and muggy. There was a storm to the east of us and we could see rain falling.
After lunch we drove into Carson City to a wonderful fabric store.

I had no idea where I was going but I had, JILL, my friend's GPS device. JILL had a voice and she had attitude. With her power adapter that fit into my "never been used" cigarette lighter and a portable mount that let her sit comfortably on my dashboard while I was driving, she could find a rattlesnake under a rock. You just gave her the address, or area, and she laid it all out there on the screen.
 JILL (and I swear this is the name that she came with.) would tell you, in a sweet and clear voice, where you needed to turn and got us to our destinations in no time at all. When you choose a different route (which happened a few times) she would say, "Please make a u-turn."  If you didn't do what JILL said, she would say, "Recalculating" and give you a new way of getting there. If she couldn't find another way, there was a noticeable change in her voice. She seemed annoyed. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I was reminded of Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's kind of scary when you annoy a talking computer program... with a brain.
We had some good laughs at JILL'S expense. I almost expected her to tell us that she would never ride with us again because we didn't follow all of her directions. Actually, she did make a few mistakes of her own. She told us to go seven tenths of a mile further one time and we were at our destination already. Even a computerized and gifted program can have a bad day. I guess.
 I'm going to get one of these amazing machines though and then I will never get lost again. It knows where you are and where you want to be. If you're traveling in a strange land... this is HUGE.

So we arrived at our first destination, with JILL'S help.

  This was Fabric Chicks Creative Oasis. It's in Minden, NV. Here is their website. If you are anywhere close to this location and you love fabric, you have to see this place.
Stay focused on what you came in for because, if you don't, you will leave with half the store in a bag.

This store is filled with everything (...and I mean everything) for sewing, quilting, fiber art and all the accessories.
Even the bathroom was charming. Check out the pink bra at the top of the ladder and the roll of toilet paper on the bottom rung. What a great use of an old ladder.

We bought our fabric and headed for The Bead Store in Carson City. One of the reasons for the weekend was to add beading to our gourds. Our hostess was going to help those of us who hadn't done too much beading and this store was an oasis for all the beading supplies we would need. The folks who own this store were really helpful and very nice.
We pulled ourselves away from the wonderful stores and headed to our weekend home on the range. We drove back to Dayton, followed the Carson River east on highway 50 and ran right into the storm that we had seem in Minden.
This is a lovely golfing community that has beautiful homes and ,coming from California, prices that are unbelievable. Homes are very inexpensive and the economy has left housing available and affordable here. I was ready to move to northern Nevada.
The storm was in full swing when we arrived. We waited until the rain passed... which didn't take long. Then we unpacked our cars and settled into our lovely home away from home.
The fragrance of this area was wonderful after the rain. It smelled of sagebrush and high desert... nature's gift in this beautiful wild place. Man is encroaching and populations are growing fast here, but it's still a desert  and any step outside of the towns, in any direction, brings you into the wild.
It is still, in places, the last frontier. Roads end in the sagebrush and you can still see old dirt trails everywhere.

Later we went to dinner, came back and settled in for the night. I slept in here.....

A den off of the living room.
Very nice accommodations for the price of making desserts for the weekend.
The food was ready.
The plans were made.
We looked forward to a wonderful weekend.
 We talked for a while and then each of us went into a different room... and crashed.

 This street looks very normal from the front side, but tomorrow I will show you what is behind them. Stay tuned...

(Click on any photos to enlarge.)