From immense, solid Ponderosa pines to ephemeral, whippy willows, trees are intriguing. My first tree memory is a huge, many branched cottonwood tree that grew in front of the old homesteader’s house where my family lived when I was small. Her bark was a grey rough corrugated coat she wore. Her leaves were enormous serrated wide triangles with a sharp point that murmured bright green all summer long. In September, her leaves metamorphasized into golden lemon yellow. Bossy autumn winds parted the leaves from her, and they swirled through the clear glow of the air to earth. The final magic…
Category: Connection with Life
Trees of My Life I
In the land where I grew up, trees were important. This was in the rangeland of north central Montana, in an old, worn group of buttes called the Bear Paw Mountains. Native grasses and trees covered these buttes, as well as irregular patches of shale rock. Bubbling springs and cheerful creeks were salted throughout the buttes, many so hidden they were seldom seen by humans. There were fir, pine, aspen, willow, hawthorne, dogwood, serviceberry and chokecherry, to mention just a few. The trees provided shelter for livestock during stormy weather as well as hot days. Wildlife and birds made their…
Horses, Words, and Herds
Above, we see a photo of my Lusitano, Evaristo, and I. I love this photo because of how attentive and open Evaristo is to our connection. Even though I am facing the person taking the photo, I am thinking of Evaristo, too. He recognizes this, and reciprocates. Without words. I did not mean to include a huge picture of Evaristo and myself, then the same smaller picture of Evaristo and myself. There is only supposed to be one, but WordPress (the platform for this blog) refused to allow me to delete the large one, which is set as the featured…
Glimpses of Jenny's Writing I
Going on behind the scene of Earthwise and the Alabaster Horse, I write essays. I am building my collection so that I can someday turn them into a book. Occasionally, an essay appears as a blog post in a shorter, condensed version. To give my readers an additional taste of the words I write, from time to time I will include excerpts of essays here as well. The following passages are from my essay “Across the Way.” This essay arose from the photo below I took one unseasonably warm 50 degree January day in north central Montana, as I was…
Horses & Roots
Horses and roots go hand in hand. Or, rather, hoof and root. Improbable. We will examine this thought. I speak of the true movement and be-ing of horses. They root. They root to the earth and to the landscape. They root to the air. I recall a line attributed to an ancient Arabian proverb as “horses are drinkers of the wind.” Horses root to their spirit. They root to each other. They can root into us and we into them if we can find this. Or allow this. Trees root. We all know this. Have you ever considered that rocks…
Horses & Life, the Beginning
Here we begin my long anticipated addition of horses to EarthWise and the Alabaster Horse. Horses have, and still do, occupy a huge part of my life. It is hard to know where to begin with them. They have been present in my life from before my earliest memories and throughout each part of it. I can say horses have been one constant in my life. I am considering including more about horses in this space. In these times of digital devices, the internet and the crazy fast pace our lives are expected to be, I find horses a haven.…