Homebound

 I have been in a long movie, day after day, looking upon the same field, the same meandering rock wall.  Watching time pass. Weather changes it from brilliantly bright to dark.  The chroma,  to the misted veil as if a theater curtain hangs between the rock face and the back of the Ponderosa pine forests.  Yet in spite of the sameness of parts and pieces, daily, nightly, at dusk, and dawn, it is magical.  Breath-taking and I can’t seem to stop noticing and writing about the wonder before my eyes.    suppose that I am expressing gratitude and love for my brilliant decision to come back and experience the wonders before me.  If nothing else, it is a feast for my eyes and heart.  And gives me joy and further trust in that intuitive knowing to return without any assurance other than I am here.  And soon the view before me will be invisible in its darkness and only my image reflected back at me through the portal before me. Now isn’t that magic?

Kat
31 March 2019



 

Mora County Residents Exert Their Rights Over Fracking

photo by Sharon Stewart

What is it that holds this county apart from other places in this vast landscape? The silence at dawn and dusk when all is still, when my awareness of my breath and heartbeat alert me to my aliveness? Is it possibly the prolonged dry and windy seasons that tear and strew everything about with hell’s might?

Or could it be the baking heat that draws insects to our parched fields and gardens when that is the last assault we can bear? Or is it the people who have lived here, then and now, who made their mark so deeply into the heart and soul of this land we call Mora County, New Mexico?
Could the land and the people be what is bringing about my own spiritual evolution and awakening my thirst for all that this community has valued for generations?

In a land of mountains, forests, fertile wet valleys and vast open plains, these Hispanic and Indigenous Jicarilla Apache people hold onto their ancestral values and nurture the old ways in spite of the onslaught of the 21st century. This has been a stunning glimpse for me into what I would call the mastery of self-determination and a healing gift for mankind.

Mora County’s population is 5,200 with 67 percent of its residents Spanish-speaking, who live in small community villages on ranches and farms. It is a place where people barter and help one another because this is a community that understands its connection to one another, as well as their relationship to the land.

All 1,944 square miles of the county’s rural landscape is unadulterated by industrial development, making it one of the last few places in the U.S. where a land-based culture has yet to look into the eyes of corporate industry.

But that is all about to change if Royal Dutch Shell has its way and industrializes this landscape for its hidden natural gas and the money it will bring them. But the citizens of Mora County appear to be aware of what could happen if the oil companies, who currently hold more than 144,000 acres of mineral leases, begin to drill.

They have heard from San Juan County, New Mexico ranchers, who like themselves, are caretakers of their ancestral lands, who have told them that if Mora County citizens “let the oil companies start their engines here, it will be all over for them” and that they would be “lucky to get a job as a dog catcher” or to safely drink their well water, let alone breathe clean air.

Most of the oil and gas wells that are proposed for Mora County would use the method of hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking. Fracking is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and toxic chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.

The outrage over fracking for the people of Mora County reflects their understanding of all that natural gas development entails. Folks from Farmington, New Mexico, where more than 14,000 operating oil and gas wells have turned their once agricultural land into an industrial zone, speak about the proliferation of prostitution, amphetamine labs, housing shortages, arrests, and high asthma and cancer rates among children. Other reports reveal that in Pavilion, Wyoming, the aquifers now contain benzene, 2-BE and other carcinogenic chemicals where natural gas drilling is taking place. In these communities, there is often a significant rise in the cost of living that ultimately displaces local people from their land.

The people in Mora County understand what is at stake. The bottom line is our knowledge that the local culture will fade as their language is displaced and their ancestral adobes are ploughed under and built over with high rises and country homes in the mad frenzy to welcome the fossil fuel development.

Not unlike other communities, there is caution about how to move forward in the midst of such an affront. However, a citizen committee presented the three-member Mora County Commission with the Mora County Community Water Rights and Local Self-Government Ordinance in September 2011, which was modeled after Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s CELDF rights-based ordinance that bans oil and gas drilling and fracking. It contains a “Community Bill of Rights,” exerting people’s inalienable rights to clean water, air, land, health and safety. And, at the core of the ordinance, it exerts the right to local self-government and prohibits harm by industry and writes out corporate “personhood.”

This ordinance is outside the box of U.S. corporate-government intention, and today, more than 140 communities have passed these ordinances into law. With the brilliance of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), who developed and crafted these community rights-based ordinances, Mora County is exerting their rights to continue to protect all that has been long valued, and to stand in solidarity with the communities across the U.S. who have passed these before them.

Will what has continued to hold the people to their rural landscape and culture in Mora County weather the onslaught of this current corporate-government siege? Will the commission exert their authority on behalf of their ancestors and children? While this land holds sacred the water, people, air and animals, it will take the courage and moral compasses of each the Mora Commissioners to protect these ancestral rights.

Kathleen Dudley
22 January 2012

New Mexico March 2019

Update

 

Back four months now, and one month living in  the PNW, December-January.  And a full moon.

What has clicked for me?  That I love living here more than I had imagined I would. That the beauty of the landscape is a joy to me every day.  The view from my writing desk, inspirational. That the isolation is only in one’s mind.  That loneliness is surmountable.  That home is in the heart.  

When I first returned, I took on a very physically challenging remodel, lifting and installing 2 x 8 x 12 rough sawn pine floor joists (that I bought from a local mile and hauled home, unloaded, stickered and stacked) as i readied to install the finish wood flooring..  I injured my back, pulled two ribs.  I had not worked into my physical body’s strength for the work.  I spent the next three months, nightly, sleeping in a hot water bathtub most of the night to ease the pain and catch some badly needed sleep.  I had developed plantar fasciitis in August and only upon returning in January was I able to finally begin running daily again.  My entire physical balance of strength, endurance, ease and integration of muscles needed realignment. It has taken until just a few weeks ago to begin to feel at home in my body again.  Working cutting wood, stacking rock, trimming orchards, hauling debris, walking inordinate distances on uneven land, etc. requires  well honed body fitness, I find.  

While I once was able to do this when I lived here prior, my last five years in an urban lifestyle that while I biked everywhere, walked and ran on the beach daily,  along with a dedicated daily yoga practice, working here, on the land, rurally,  requires a different sort of body muscle alignment and oneness with the work.  It has taken me much longer to find that than I would have realized.  However, I feel strong and healed today.  Some residual lower back issues, but I no longer rely upon a bathtub in the middle of the night.

I suppose I wondered if I could manage living so remotely and find a way to thrive.  And I have and I do.  And that is a joy.  I have found that whatever I set my sights at, I can achieve.  Which has been true all my life.  It is about realizing about intent, is it not?  As you pointed out.  And of course, I have always been aligned there.  What this opportunity allows me is to create my ideal life and live it.

As I sit typing, the wind is blowing up a snow storm.  My window to the outdoors reminds me of a large movie screen and my own personal viewing.  Nothing gets much better that what I set my eyes upon.  Nature holds me in its grip.  Stunning beauty.  And her force….well, nothing comparable.  I found that while living at the ocean and observing the Mother, daily.  Here the wind and rain storms,  and soon thunder and lightning will be thrilling me to no end.  Those 3,000 watt blips in the meadow and that roll over the heavens… my cup of tea.  smile

Of course in writing all of this, I spent enough time facing my fears of loneliness and fear not being able to thrive..  I have learned to become an observer of myself, and to stand solidly in the face of my challenges.  Being a Capricorn water dragon, I have a fair share of courage to bring to this experience.  And in that mix is a confidence that befuddles even my closest friends.  Yet comes in stride along with breath.  

With each challenge, I have figured out a solution, whether it was financial, around hauling tree limbs, fixing broken plumbing, finishing electrical—I find that with enough stillness and observation, an answer arrives.  And along with each answer, a bit more self empowerment and love of the sheer capacity within.

I melt into meditation every morning, awakening an hour later with the clarity and gratitude that refreshes me and upon which I begin my day.  

Kat

22 March 2019

Electricity is Out

The electricity is out today.  It is no more quiet than when it is on.  The mark of living so remotely. As I write this, I know folks are driving to Long Beach to convene to make music.  I note the community of musicians, fondly.  My mind gathers together all the experiences of my musician friends that I have met and shared music with over the past three years when living in Oregon at the ocean.  My heart swells as a sponge in water after being in a dry dish for too long just thinking about all the melodies that will rise up today from the passionate music-making in the gathering.

The landscape outside my window this morning moves toward me from black and white skies and distant snow covered conifers to yellow field grasses tipped in white across rock walls to red caliche exposed soils.  As if Technicolor had a distance to span before reaching my retina.  

The snow comes strongly and dotting my vision outside my window.  Then the sun begins to brighten the landscape.  Now my leaking gutters drip down in front of my window, showing me the nearing of the end of the snowstorm and the warming temperatures. That elongated dripping that slows to broken droplets to slower drips until none.  But until then, it is still dropping minute snowflakes sideways in a light breeze and the landscape continues to fill be with awe.  A view I will not tire of for my existence.

  

I am reading a book right now “Easy to Remember: the Great American Songwriters and Their Songs” by William Zinsser.   Nancy gave it to me for my birthday this year and I am glued to its pages.  Even I am finding my way to understanding the structure of song-writing without intending to do so.  I do love understanding the parts and pieces and how they all connect together in this glorious fabric of music that I am blessed to participate in these days.  

I have been asked about my plans for the future.  I have none right now.  My sense is that by May, when my six month sojourn in NM comes to an end, that I will still be here.  To have my own land, my own home, a well with clean water, gardens and greenhouses, fields and forests, chicken coop and beehives, open space and mountains….clean air and lots of room to be peaceful.  How can I leave such a place, when my heart and soul tie closely to all these gifts?  I must have been in crisis mode when I left five years ago.  And most certainly I was.  And to have come back full circle, I was obviously fed deeply by loving friends in my music and writing circles, to even entertain such a solitary existence I live today.  

I have come to accept that what is least considered possible, can become reality.  And that with an open heart and gratitude for each and every day, life unfolds and can be just as miraculously delightful as what I dream possible.  I know that I will sing and play with all my Pacific Northwest musician friends again.  Just have no inkling of when that might be.

Sending love and joy from my box canyon to my friends in the Pacific Northwest wetland.

Kat
13 March 2019

Reflections

It is a melancholic posture of the heart to know such diversity in climate, loving the extremes that draw and nourish. It is also an exciting awareness to live and appreciate these worlds so distinctly unique in their contrasts.

I am grateful to have experienced them fully.  And to delight in them deeply.  Those wild winter ocean gales and sideways rain. Already I anticipate the desert thunder and lightening that light up the llano as brightly for a second, as a 1,000 watt bulb.  And in awe, daily, in the vastness of the sky and its broad banks of cumulus clouds hanging eastward catching sunset washes, in pinks and blues.

To be alive is truly to witness, is it not?  What and how describes our uniqueness, as people.  And defines who we are through our reflections back into the world.  Not unlike that bank of clouds in the eastern sky, catching the colours of the fading sunlight.

 Kat

2 February 2019

This is Where I am Located

I am in northeastern New Mexico.  An hour east from Las Vegas, New Mexico.  An hour and a half south from Taos.  Two hours northeast from Santa Fe and three hours north of Albuquerque.  I am located in a box canyon outside of a hamlet called Ocate.  In a county of 1,944 square miles with a population of 5,200 people.  I have no sense of the number of mountain lion, bob cat, bear, badgers, racoon, porcupine, deer, and elk, let alone cattle or sheep.  But I do know that there still is wildlife, predators and prey, a mix out of balance, but lives that run freely and live off the land.

 The box canyon is called Los Hueros (the blonds, named after the Castilians).  It is about as remote as one can get in the United States, is my sense.  Rimmed by the Sangre de Cristo mountains and blessed with big sunrises washing the sandstone mesa, its sunsets tinge banks of white cumulous clouds in the east, sending god songs across its vastness. Blueness, true as Technicolor, lifts my eyes upwardly in awe of the colour-wash doming this canyon. 

When I returned for a short trip in October. I knew that I must return to live once again.   I am clearly a mountain woman seeking solitude, clear air, water, good soil, and a way-of-life that feeds my soul with nature’s bounty, pristine and intact.

I bought chickens as soon as I arrived, planted my subterranean greenhouse, which now provides my winter greens. 

It is here that I will write my books, feed my soul, and calm my inner fire.  It is a good place for humans to align in oneness with the universe.  Nature heals and can unite our disparate parts together into wholeness.  I have experienced that in the past and am relying upon it now. 

I awaken daily, with joy.  Fall asleep with gratitude, nightly.  A good prescription for this woman.   

This is where I am located.

Kat
25 January 2019

Ponderings on What Make a Community

In a whirlwind of time, my life has turned colour.  The shift of seasons from summer to fall caught me up in its kaleidoscope of inevitable change. And tripped me, tumbled me, as the winds tumble leaves and ocean waves loosen their rocks upon the shoreline, easing rough edges smooth or smoother.

Asked to ponder when and how does a gathering of people become a group, when and how does the group morph into a team or band, and when and at what point does it become a community, the answers slowly developed over a moon's cycle. To reveal the obvious through an achingly somatic experience that this cyclical process embodies a sacredness not only for myself, but for each and every person within the gathering who has become part of the group and in time, the community.

These questions, posed to me once I left my Seaside and Astoria communities and traveled northward this September to begin a new life, held me riveted day in, day out. Sensing that I could not rest until I understood the deeper meaning within this riddled set of ponderings, I came to realize that I was a part of the grand evolution bestowed upon those who come together into a group to share their passions, and ultimately morph into a community. And that I was mourning leaving behind community, connection, respect, nourishment and love for and from the people in my groups. I had no idea that leaving would would throw me into a depression.  Nor that my leaving would impact others.

To be the wayward wind, identifying with a disconnected alone sense no longer defined who I was. While I had not considered myself a group person, over time I found my writing group,  my music groups and other groups nourishing me, holding me connected, feeding my deepest passions.  Stories unexamined for too long, held in the subconscious, unexposed to the light of consciousness, can imprison us, keeping our pathologies alive rather than freeing us to live with an ease to explore maintaining continuity and connection to self and others.

 

Jill Liedloff in in her book “The Continuum Concept: In Search of Happiness Lost,” writes about our need for continuity.  Comparing a stone age culture’s intact social structure and the impact upon the children, and ultimately the ease among the village, she shows us the suffering tribal members experience who leave their village to live elsewhere--their loss of connection, acceptance for whom they are, their place in the tribe and their importance as a tribal member. Ultimately, the impact upon their psyche.

True to her studies and postulating, leaving everyone and everything jolted me deeply.  There was little solace for my sadness.  The light that shone, went dim.  I withered along with the autumn leaves.  My voice grew still.  Briny tears fell in rivulets down to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, to the shoreline, commingled and became one with this tributary, taking sorrow out to the Mother herself. On down the coastal currents, into the waters across the estuaries making their way to the mouth of the Columbia, crossing the state line into Oregon, and to the shores of Astoria, and further down the coastline to Seaside and beyond.

It was through these tears and sadness that I understood the pondering riddle.  We morph from one shaggy individualistic bunch into a diversely connected passionate group and community when respect for one another, appreciation for our individual gifts and personalities, participation through our commitment to show up,  responsibility to share our creative process, and acceptance and honouring of others is maintained at the highest calibre.  The icing on the cake so-to-speak is the learning and teaching exchanged in the process.

The continuity of a group and ultimately a community is as dependable as the moon in her cycles, the tide in the oceans, the seasonal shifts from one year to the next—binding us together in a metaphorical sense of home and nourishment for the soul. Always evolving, shifting, as everything alive has a pulse, ultimately commingling into a richer gathering of people with each passing moment. As if nature’s commitment to show up, be present,  is guiding us in our own values, understanding that we, too, commit to the greater group and through that, thrive in our interconnectedness to self and others.

Kat 

12 October 2018