Mietzke's POST Holden Adventure

Sometimes a melancholy sets in with change and with so much golden beauty being expressed in the trees along the path. I find myself a collector of the golden dead picking up pieces that have been shed by another. I always want to capture a moment, to hold onto it for a few moments longer than possibly is good. When I let go it is only with the aide of finger priers who keep uttering “It is for your own good, just let go.” Thank God for the people in my life who can listen to reason and who respect the letting go time when I want to hold on with a desperate grasp. I have been observing the fall changes closely, not wanting to blink for fear of missing something that I can’t get back. Something that has struck me in the change is the brilliance of the moment before the letting go, the absolute perfect beauty, as if the trees are giving this change everything they have before the resolve of quiet stillness and loss. My personal process of letting go is not so beautiful, there are often tears, laments and sometimes all out temper tantrums. Why do I fear the change so much when everything around me seems to embrace it with fullness?

Can you believe we live here?..

The Kids' Class on Hikes...

Some of the Family...

A Sign of Things to Come...

There is a golden mantel on the hillside
As if a thousand angels have gathered
To present the mountain with a gift
They stand in solemn splendor
A tribute to the season
Waiting for the ceremony of celebration
To begin
It begins softly with a whisper that sets
Golden arms a blaze in movement
Quaking like coins on a gypsy gown
Each leafy trinket dances gently at first and then with wild abandon
Covering the ground in a golden carpet of praise and thanksgiving
These stately angels know how to throw a party
Bowing and bending to the whim of their maker
Laughing at the change
Letting go of the golden dead
This wild autumnal party could go on for days possibly weeks
Before the white blanket of sleep comes
To cover and still the festivities
Of thanksgiving

We took the girls for their first back packing trip ever and they were troopers. We had Friday and Saturday off and we hiked with Jordyn and Nyrie’s class up to Holden Lake. It is a five mile hike and they carried their sleeping bags, ground pads and clothes. It was fun hiking with the class and strange to have them leave after a couple hours at the lake and for us to stay. We hiked up and the kids all played by the lake side and we ate lunch. The class stayed for a couple of hours and the kids explored and found many fishing lures and some old fishing line. We were going to try to fish but the line was too brittle. It was a beautiful warm day and when the class headed down the hill we all jumped in the lake. It was COLD! The “swim” didn’t last very long, but it was worth a try! When we had dried off we headed towards the small campground to set up camp. It didn’t take long to set up camp and when we had hung the food we set out for the bolder field at the far end of the lake to explore. Autumn is really here, and I was astounded at the fall colors in the alpine meadows the depth of the reds and the bright yellows set off by the dark green of the pines. We camped right next to a creek and had a view of the lake and the glaciers that tower on the cliffs above. The quality of light was amazing and the mountains and forest were reflected in the water of the lake.
We hiked to the boulder fields and the girls had a blast seeking out little caves, climbing large rocks and wading through clear pools, while listening to the sound of glacial waterfalls. The girls played a long time in the pools and I rested on the banks taking in the amazing scenery! We found one pool where you could clearly see the footprints of a bear at the bottom of the pool they went all the way across and up the other side.
We headed back to the camp ground as the sun was setting and made a little fire and cooked some supper. Then the girls baked apples on a stick because we forgot marshmallows. It was a good evening. The night was a different story because along with forgetting the marshmallows we forgot the second tent and we, as a growing family of four really don’t fit well into a two man tent. We were squashed, yet warm. Anytime one person turned over the rest of us had to turn over as well. Nyrie got a stomach ache in the middle of the night and we had to go find her a quick potty place, which meant crawling over everybody to get out, and then crawling back over everybody else to settle back in. We will make sure to bring a bigger tent next time, or bring ones for the girls to sleep in.
We woke up early the next morning and had nuts and power bars for breakfast and one more apple on a stick, then we packed up and went back to explore the bolder fields some more. While we were out there we saw a Pica, and a Martin that kept poking its head out to take a look at us. We headed back around noon, and as we walked the weather began to change. The wind picked up and the smell of rain followed us through the forest and down the hill. The wind picked up the dust on the path and it flew ahead of us down the trail. We stopped for a snack on the side of a cliff on the way down and the wind had really picked up and it sent yellow leaves racing and dancing past us down the valley. We could feel the weather changing and we also hurried down the valley towards home. Nyrie was hiking so fast that I kept telling her to slow down. We made it back to the village just in time we had just started to unpack when the rain began to fall, and a chill settled in the valley and stayed. Autumn is here

A Lament

Some days it seems so strange that we just packed and left our life and community to come to this remote village in the mountains, which has become our home for the last year. Today is one of those days where I long to run around town, stop somewhere for coffee with a friend, call someone on the phone, go see a movie or go to the farm for fresh veggies. It doesn’t happen very often that I get this lonely, but today has been one of those days where I am missing all that Tacoma had to offer with good friends and familiar places, and the freedom to get in the car and go. I am wanting sushi, or Indian, or Vietnamese food, and I am wanting to be with someone who knows me inside and out, past present and potential and loves me anyway. It takes longer than a year to dive deeply into friendships and I miss being with people my age who are trying to figure out the life, marriage, and family thing. I love this village, but I am missing all of you who made up our daily home in Tacoma for so many years. That is enough lamenting, but I do miss you!

A couple weeks ago Mom and Dad came for a visit, and Dad and I went Bear hunting at Holden Lake. I quickly found that the hunting was just the beginning of the work. To be fair the hunting part wasn’t much of a hunt, as the bear came to me while I was eating breakfast. Dad and I went up to the lake on Saturday, walked around a bit and came up with a plan for how we wanted to hunt the area the next day. We got up Sunday morning and started eating a cold breakfast, I was sitting there munching on a piece of beef jerky, and saw a bear walking past our camp out of the corner of my eye. It was so close that my rifle propped against a log was half way from me to it. I got up walked over to my rifle and it was even closer. It was so close its head filled my rifle scope. It was then that the work started, preparing the bear to be carried out on Dad and my pack boards. We worked continuously from 7:30 to 3:30. Then we had to shoulder our packs with about 50 pounds each of bear meat to bring back down the four and a half miles from the lake. By the time we got it all dressed out and ready to pack out, Dad said that if we saw another bear he'd be more likely to throw a rock at it than shoot it. It was, thank goodness, mostly down hill. We left some of our gear up in a tree at the lake, Ang and I went back up to get it on Monday, so I did eighteen miles and four thousand feet of backpacking in three days. Quite a bit more than I have done recently, as a side note Ang, the girls and I went back to Holden Lake the following Friday and spent the night. The girl's first overnight backpacking trip.

It took me a while to post this story, because I know that there are some of you that read the blog that may not approve of, or understand hunting. I didn't want to alienate anyone, but then I thought, "This is something that I enjoy," and it is a good story that I would like to share with you all.

…“She could Smell, you know.”
Tolly took a great breath of the spring night.
“Do you think she could smell the stars?”
“I nearly can myself tonight. She could certainly smell the kind of thing that stars belong to and happen in. Sometimes you make things smaller by giving them a name to themselves, like ‘star.’ Imagine Susan taking a breath of it and just thinking all that.”
Tolly took a lungful of star and cherry blossom and fresh-water river and yew and sleeping violets, and then leaped into bed.

From
Treasure of Green Know By L.M. Boston

Dave shot a bear today. I was walking through the dining hall after dinner and as I passed a table my friend Steph said “so, I hear Dave got a bear today.” It was the first I heard of it and she told me that Andrew had seen Dave while out hiking and carrying the bear back towards the village. I told Mary and we walked down the road to meet them not realizing that they were already back in the village. As I walked my imagination got the better of me and I began to think of how I might feel if I had killed something. Was Dave changed because of the experience? When I did see him back at the village he was carrying a cooler filled with bear meat. He was quiet and I experienced a long moment of shyness as if I was meeting a part of him for the first time. I opened the cooler and looked in at the ribs and a leg, muscle and ligaments perfectly formed around the bone. It was beautiful in a strange way. The colors were brilliant; reds, purple, and white molded carefully into the recognizable shapes that made me think of my own internal workings. I wanted the whole story before anyone else got it. I wanted a little piece of his change, his adventure, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to know him in a new way.
I wanted to know how he felt, was there adrenalin? Was he scared? Did he have any moments of regret or sorrow, or did he experience joy, accomplishment, triumph? Did it make him feel more like a man, and if so, what does that mean? What was the work of gutting and skinning it like? Was its fir soft? The questions coming from me all were based in wanting to know his emotional process around his first kill in fifteen years.
His hands had a fishy smell from the bear fat that I could smell all through vespers. I kept taking glances at him wondering if we were separated by this experience. I also wondered what other people thought about it. You can’t do anything in this village without everyone knowing about it.
When we went back to the house I asked for the story. I wanted to know how you skin a bear, how you pull out the innards, what do they feel like to the touch? Was there lots of blood? Was it strange to take the bear from a living creature down to four packs of meet that you carried down the mountain, separating bone from bone and flesh from flesh? I wanted to understand him to be a part of what he experienced.
Dave and his Dad shared the work and the story, and this evening after vespers we sat and talked and I was able to ask all of the questions that I could think of. The details about the gutting, skinning, and sawing were all answered, but the question of feeling still sits on my heart. Can you really be neutral when it comes to the taking of a life, or do you have to enter in and feel the thankfulness for the kill, and the regret for the life lost. Is that dichotomy living inside of Dave and where will it take him? Where will it take me as I am eating bear burgers?
I am still trying to decide how I feel about all of this. I also want to know the process of where my food came from to see it from start to finish so that I can really appreciate both the life and process.

Ok, so the first part of this entry was all of two weeks ago and since then I hiked up to Holden Lake with Dave to retrieve his pack and see where the bear story took place. It was good to be with Dave and I have been trying to put a name to my feelings around it but I can’t.
I have been a meat eater for most of my life but aside from fish and a duck or two I have never really seen the process of taking an animal’s life, so this has been a good experience for me. I felt a strange thankfulness towards the bear, a thankfulness that the bear is an animal who had lived a healthy natural life free of restraint, and that it’s diet was healthy. There is something in knowing that the food you are eating had a good life and that the energy that it provides is good energy. I was also thankful for the adventure of learning how to cook something entirely new. I also had a good time with Dave talking about his experience and there is something good in having the ability to provide your family with good food. I was amazed at how much work went into the process of skinning the bear and gutting it, and carrying it down the mountain. I am also glad that Dave and his Dad got to spend so much time together up at the lake.

The path wound its way through the pine forest near the river then up through the cotton wood and out into the sunlight on the winter avalanche shoot. Empty of snow, it is now filled with low brush, service berries, mountain blue berries, raspberry bushes, ferns and sparse aspen. The colors of autumn are just starting to appear in the bushes, the service berries are ripe, red and orange bright against the dominate green. Leaves are starting to change at the edges spreading green to red and yellow hinting at the cooler weather to come.
We came out of the forest onto the avalanche slope and headed up the steep path to Holden Lake, amazed at the extent of the beauty that the view from the switchbacks offers. We could see up into the valley of Big Creek with the giant gray rocky slope that pours into the bottom lined by evergreen and pine. I wanted at every moment to be taking a photograph so I could hold onto the beauty of the light filtering through the patchwork clouds. It was so fun to just be with Dave. The two of us don’t have as many dates as we had in the outside world and we were in need of time together.
We chatted about many things as we made our way up the trail, and part way up we ran into a grouse that was hanging out on a rock about two feet off the trail. We took a couple of pictures and the grouse just sat there looking at us. Then jokingly I said to Dave, “I bet I could pick up that grouse, and he said I bet you can, so I did. I reached over and put my hand on top of it and picked it up, and held it for a picture, and for one moment my primal self kicked into gear and wanted to cook that bird up for supper, but then logic overtook me and I let it go because I did not have the proper hunting license to do so, although it wasn’t much of a hunt.
The rest of the trail was amazing and the diversity of forest and shrubs was constantly engaging. It felt like every step had another familiar secret to offer. I felt like the trail had always been there and that I had always been walking it, at the same time that it felt familiar it also had a quality of mystery that made me want to know every inch of the land, each rock and stone as if they carried within them some kind of answer that I was in desperate need of. As we wound our way up and through the woods we quieted taking in the beauty and the sereneness of the landscape, and it felt good just to be together.
As we came into the basin rocks spreading out above us I was in constant wonder. We could see the Glaciers high above us piles of Ice blue and green in color within the guise of white. After five miles of walking the forest opened into alpine meadows with low growing vegetation and trees. The meadows offered the feeling of peace and rest in their quietness. We came down through the meadows and around the trees where the lake lay and we both stood in awe holding hands and taking in the enormity of the beauty in that small place. The water of the lake was crystal clear moving from the brown of the muddy edges to aqua green and resting in an icy blue that darkened with the waters depth. The cliffs and trees and the glacier high above were reflected in the glassy surface it was as if we had been waited for, this was the final presentation and we were the guests of honor! As we pressed through our amazement I took the camera out and we both felt that we had to see the lake from the other side as well so we kept walking to find the perfect place to have our lunch. We made our way through a glacial boulder field and found a beautiful flat rock right on the edge of the lake. We spread out our blanket and ate pastrami sandwiches. They tasted so good after a long hike! Dave took an hour nap on the rock and I sketched and wrote in my journal, always pausing to look up for fear of missing something, a change in the light, and animal on the side of the lake, or the fish rising.
The fish seemed to be doing some sort of interpretive dance that afternoon rising and falling creating ripples that reverberated out to the edges of the lake, and it was beautiful to watch. Across the valley in from the far side of the lake we could see the peaks across railroad creek that surround the big creek valley, the layers of vegetation and color brought me to tears. Who am I to have a life like this and the opportunity to experience nature in such a deep and amazing way. It was the best date I have had in a long time and it felt good to be close and experiencing these wonders together.

I woke up this morning and took a hike with the Holden Elementary School which consists of five children and their teacher. We hiked up to Honeymoon Heights and then on up to the upper tailing piles above the village. We walked around in the woods amid the rubble that had once been homes and lives. We found old bottles and plates as well as beds and stoves rusted and flattened from the weight of winter snow. The thought that kept occurring to me as we walked was that the people who thought making a home up on the mountainside between two avalanche shoots was a good idea must have been crazy. The view was amazing and on the hike up we saw many different species of mushrooms. It was fun to listen to the kids as we walked sharing their amazement and discoveries. Olaf, the five year old mayor of Holden Village is the newest member of the school and the whole way each of the others took turns making sure he was safe, well fed, that he wasn’t too tired. It was neat how they all care for each other, and each take time out of what they are doing to acknowledge each other’s finds.
When we got up to the top piling we had a little picnic and looked down on the valley and across at Martins Ridge. There are little patches of red and gold creeping into the hill sides and the trees. Then the kids tuck turns throwing rocks off of the tailing pile. From that height you could see the village a long way off and down the valley in both directions. There were clouds in the west and they made a patchy circle around the mountains letting in light right over Holden Lake as if it were protected from any darkness, illuminating it. The whole trip took a couple of hours and we were back in the village by lunch. I enjoyed getting time with Steve the new teacher and the children seem to also really be enjoying him.