Living Like A Nymph

I’ve alluded to big summer plans and it’s time to share details!
I’m spending the summer on the mountain, camping at 7500 feet.
And the entire Farmily is coming with me!

Last week, I shared photos of the spring pasture Mike and I lease for the cows.  We lease another 1000 acres of private mountain land for the cows’ summer pasture.  This land happens to rest smack in the middle of 10,000 private acres, grazing land for a handful of ranchers.  Being there is like living in a dream, living like a nymph.  I’m moving up this week, and will be there through September.

I actually thought I’d be up there by now ~ usually the snow has melted by the end of May and we trail the cows up the third week of June.  But since it was still snowing in June, it wasn’t until last week that we could even drive in!  There are still scattered snowdrifts, but that didn’t keep me from diving into a mountain pond after spending the day working in the sun :)

I’ve rigged up a hillbilly solar setup to keep my laptop and camera batteries charged and, while I will be offline 99% of the time for the next three months, I will continue to post here multiple times a week, and the daily photos for the Daily Coyote and the email subscription list will continue uninterrupted.

There will be SO much to share!  My camp, hillbilly solar, refrigeration without electricity, ten thousand wildflowers, and so much that I have yet to know.  I’ve added a new category to the sidebar: Off The Grid. Just click that link to find
all posts related to my time on the mountain.  Yee Haw!!

Steamed Milkbath

It’s no secret I love my milk baths ~ a gallon or two of surplus Daisy milk dumped into steaming water in my outdoor cast iron tub with a few drops of lavender oil and aahhhhhhhhh under the stars.

But the other evening was windy (not to be confused with breezy, which is quite lovely during an outdoor soak), too windy for a comfortable bath outside, so I grabbed a gallon o’ milk and trekked to Mike’s house.

I was having a nice mellow soak, but then thought, why not put the jets on for a moment? An innocent whim that turned into a PARTAY, party in the bathtub.

The milk began to froth and grow and soon I was swirling in several inches of FOAM!

When I turned the jets off, the noise was deafening: the sound of a million tiny milk bubbles popping.  Within minutes, the water was back to its glassy state.
And with another press of the jets, it frothed back up into foam!
Like bathing in a giant cappuccino.  I’m easily amused.

Voicemail I Just Left My Best Friend

I was around people for NINE HOURS TODAY.  You know that thing you always say as a joke, about how the reason I’m so happy is because I live as a hermit with animals?  Well, now I know it is true.  And it was only like six or eight people!
I feel like I need an exorcism.  Or a bath.  CallmeIloveyoubye.

An Anniversary

What are your thoughts on death?

I’d love to know.

Here is a passage from my book:

“We romanticize that wild animals enjoy an idyllic life of freedom, when really, they are fighting to survive, for food and shelter and safety and against the infringements of man.  Death serves in nature.  The soil is fortified by the bones; animals and birds and bugs live off the carcass.  In nature, there is honor in being eaten.  To me, the [dead] deer was beautiful in providing its body to the living animals that were trying to survive.  And I believe this works on a human level as well, although it is somewhat taboo in our society.  I believe we can learn to use death, and let the gifts of the dead help us to become stronger.  Our society responds to death by mourning, and usually, mourning is the stopping place.  It is not the stopping place.  I believe there is nourishment and strength to be found, if only we were not so afraid of it.”

What about you?

Moth, Emerging

Last Friday was a profound day for me.  Intense, and intensely profound.  And each day since has been either one or the other.  The lack of details is not my being coy, but because I simply cannot share everything right now for various reasons.  But I can share this moth.

Last Friday evening, immediately following this bout of profundity, a crazzzzzzy windstorm blew up.  One moment, all was calm; the next, the sky was solid with whipped-up dust and trees were bending sideways.  And then, perhaps half an hour later, the wind was gone, and all was calm again.

I went outside, because I love to be outside just after a windstorm.  And I spotted this moth, clinging to a weed near the ground, next to one of my garden patches.  I knelt beside it, my head low to the ground, studying this incredible moth.  Its body was huge and fat, black and gray and yellow and white, about the size of my thumb but slightly longer.  Its face was awesome; it looked carnivorous, strong, and so incredibly graceful, its wings hanging behind it like a cape.

The moth swayed softly in the remaining breeze, clutching the weed, waiting for something.  Unhurried, unworried, secure in itself and waiting.  Then I saw the hole.  And now I must back up in this story-telling for a moment: Roughly seven weeks ago, I was weeding my garden and saw an enormous caterpillar amongst my watermelons.  It was a glossy bright green, larger than my thumb.  Huge!  I took two twigs as chopsticks and gently moved the massive ‘pillar to the dirt outside my garden plot, near a clump of weeds.  And then watched in awe as the caterpillar disappeared into the earth.  It started digging a hole with its nose and down into the dirt it went, disappearing completely.  The next day, I had forgotten about it.

Now, I noticed the hole in the ground near this magnificent moth.  A hole exactly the size of its body.  A hole where the strange caterpillar had disappeared.  I do believe it made its cocoon in the earth ~ or that perhaps the earth itself was the cocoon ~ and that this moth had just emerged.  And was waiting to fly.

Darkness crept in and I walked Daisy & Co to the corrals, and the next morning, the moth was gone.  Days passed; I wondered about the moth, wondered where it went.  I spent nights sitting outside, watching the silhouette of a bat swooping between my home and the stars every night.

This morning, I saw the moth again, clutching a large rock I have on my deck.  Resting again.  And this makes me wonder, perhaps it is not a bat visiting me every night, but is, in fact, this moth in flight.

UPDATE: The moth is Manduca quinquemaculatus, aka Five Spotted Hawk Moth.  More info HERE.  I noticed this morning that the “eyes” on its shoulder are actually three-dimensional and raised!  Thanks, Keitha, for the link!

UPDATE II: The moth is still sleeping (?) on the side of the big rock on my deck, but has been moving as the sun crosses the sky, to stay on the shady side of the rock!