8 p.m. on an rare night drive into Upper Smith River. The pickup and I crunched into the gravel pullout at the brink of our descent to the Johnny Gunter place. Newborn Moon rocked backward toward a soft landing on the southwestern ridge. Orion stood tall, watching over her passage. Ursa Major pointed toward the North Star, who exhaled a breeze that traced its way south across my face, cold but not biting. This is the place where each fallen raindrop decides whether to descend into Hardscrabble or Ellenburg Creeks and southward into the Umpqua River, or trickle northwest into Smith River and my ancestral watershed. For now, the pullout remains the last digital contact before I drop mercifully out of service. But a new fiber optic cable is currently being installed in Upper Smith River, and my future will soon be riddled with decisions about whether or not to connect. I’m uncertain whether this “serves” me.
The immediacy of the narrator's sense and love of place is luminous. Thank you, Tom. This is about home. What we can never "possess," but where we can be present, witnessing, and grateful. Your writing in all of its facets reminds me of the gift of this attentiveness.
Oh yes, the access to the 'modern' world...such a conundrum.
Our property in NE Oregon has little to no internet/cell phone access. I Love that. On the other hand, if we had the fiber optic then we Could actually live there, i.e. I could WORK from there... but would that more curse than blessing? (it's destroyed me once before...not able to enjoy a place/property I loved because I was working all the time to pay the bills...).
"The miles vanished without conscious awareness, engulfed in a sea of darkness sweeping in from behind and no longer parted by light"
".. only that black sloshing ocean of Time, with me navigating my little boat toward a small broken house and a warm woodstove. Beyond this, the future seemed vast and unknowable."
I love this drawing into the moment, which is all we have, the future always vas and unknowable, and sometimes the past is too....
The immediacy of the narrator's sense and love of place is luminous. Thank you, Tom. This is about home. What we can never "possess," but where we can be present, witnessing, and grateful. Your writing in all of its facets reminds me of the gift of this attentiveness.
Oh yes, the access to the 'modern' world...such a conundrum.
Our property in NE Oregon has little to no internet/cell phone access. I Love that. On the other hand, if we had the fiber optic then we Could actually live there, i.e. I could WORK from there... but would that more curse than blessing? (it's destroyed me once before...not able to enjoy a place/property I loved because I was working all the time to pay the bills...).
"The miles vanished without conscious awareness, engulfed in a sea of darkness sweeping in from behind and no longer parted by light"
".. only that black sloshing ocean of Time, with me navigating my little boat toward a small broken house and a warm woodstove. Beyond this, the future seemed vast and unknowable."
I love this drawing into the moment, which is all we have, the future always vas and unknowable, and sometimes the past is too....