I’m grateful every day I make it to the end alive, I really am.
Fresh yellow ribbon down the middle of the road, glowing October cottonwood leaves flicker in a breeze. They’re the same color: the ribbon not yellow exactly though we call it yellow, but the color of cottonwood leaves when they’ve passed their brilliant sunshine stage and a few days before they brown and fall to the ground. That stripe, those leaves, in perfect harmony; the roadside curve signs glinting the same color pointing the way to town.
A female northern harrier flapping and coasting over the arroyo. Guo Gu says “It’s all good,” and explains that even in the midst of great suffering, we can still choose to do the right next thing, whatever that is.
It’s an utter and complete surrender to how things are in this moment, right here: not anywhere else, not another time, not another moment, this one. May I never know the suffering of eight billion others, but only know and never forget, they suffer.
A golden eagle surveys the rolling sage flats from a power line T towering over the dobies. I’m driving to town for the second No Kings rally and protest. I’m grateful for this glorious morning alive.
The speakers were inspiring, the signs were creative, a couple of Portland chicken riders showed up and a big bad wolf. As she passed us the woman I was standing with said, “That’s ICE!” It certainly crossed my mind, it was jarring to see someone completely masked, but my more generous interpretation was it was someone bashful. Nothing bad happened.
There were young people and just a few children, and like last time, most of the protestors in Paonia had grey hair. Some hobbled on walking sticks and some rolled in chairs. I once again saw many old friends and acquaintances I hadn’t seen for years, and was grateful I could recognize and remember more of their names.
There were signs loving America, loving the planet, loving each other, and my own sign Grow Love. I was grateful I had all the right ingredients to throw it together this morning after thinking about it all day yesterday. I had one old piece of foam core board, remembered a stash of handmade paper, and finally found the Mod-Podge I knew I’d had in a box of magazine pictures for collage under the desk for years, but tidied away this summer somewhere obscure.
The inspiration was a distillation of Martin Luther King, Jr’s quote “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that,” plus the idea that we reap what we sow. Not to mention the nearly two dozen geraniums I ended up with to give away, and Garden Buddy’s basket of sunflower seeds in support of Ukraine. I was grateful to come home with only two geraniums and one of those is spoken for.
After the speakers the crowd I estimated conservatively at more than 400 streamed out of the park and marched through the neighborhood beneath autumn trees down to Grand Avenue. I packed up my stuff with a little help from GB and Son, and headed home. But I saw that instead of dispersing as they had done last time, the crowd was gathered at the south end of town, so I made a couple turns to get there. A cop directing traffic at the Second Street intersection let me turn to park so I could join in. They were singing “We Shall Overcome” in front of the High Country News building and I shot some video as they started walking. But I interrupted myself to get a still when I saw the macaw who was enthusiastically voicing his support for democracy.
The rally was joyful and uplifting, as were the more than 2500 rallies around the country and in some foreign cities. Early reports say that nearly seven million people turned out in the largest single-day demonstration against a sitting president. Friends sent photos from Gainesville and Tallahassee, FL, and these from Lexington, KY.
Enjoy photos from more protests around the country in this Atlantic photo collection.
Driving home my heart and thoughts again returned to the glory of the undersung cottonwoods, and I stopped on the road down into the Smith Fork Canyon to capture the colors, from the earliest turning in the foreground just beyond the power line to some of those road line golds by the river. I’m grateful for connection today, for the felt sense of interbeing with community and with friends far and wide. We will overcome some day. We’re in this together!
