a year of getting up to meet the day: memories of a canyon

Friday, March 12, 2010

memories of a canyon

sunrise: 5:53

The air was icy and fresh this morning, with a hint of wood smoke. Clear and blue. The kind of morning that makes you want to fill your lungs with the atmosphere and blend into it.

I ventured down the back hill this morning into the ravine. The sound of the brook is tantalizing, I sought a change of scene, and J told me when he came walking with me one recent morning that there was a new natural bridge over the stream.

I'm not that comfortable on steep, leafy slopes leading into icy rivers, but the ground is pretty clear now, and still too cold to be wet with mud.

It's definitely not too cold for ice down here - check out this impressive glacial chunk, left behind by winter---

This photo may give you a sense for my reluctance to descend into this gulley - not an easy access or regress. but it is quite lovely, nonetheless...

...even if you do have this handy bridge (hmmm?) to cross the stream. Looks like fun, but I think I might find another way across.

When I looked back downstream as the sun was coming up, the sunlight on treetops high above me brought back wonderful memories.

The summer that I was 10 my older brother and sister, my parents and I went on a trip to the western US. (Twin brother and sister, age 2, stayed home with a nanny). We spent a week rafting on the Salmon River in Idaho, gliding or roaring down between ragged cliffs that dwarf my little backyard gulley. In the evenings, we'd sit around the campfire and try to guess which piece of cliff or craggy clinging tree high overhead would be the last place to hold on to a piece of sun before it disappeared. I loved that game.

I suppose that notions like watching the sun touch the treetops can become imprinted and associated with wonderful things when you're young. I'm pretty lucky to have had parents who filled so much of my life with an appreciation for the wonders of the outdoors.