Tag Archive | Orion

Vaccination!

Mar12
I’m beyond grateful today as Nurse Karen sticks me with the vaccination needle. Notice I’m not looking?

A year to the day from the last time I ventured willingly from my home, I got a Covid vaccination. On March 12 last year, I was reluctant to take Stellar to the vet in Montrose an hour away for his acupuncture appointment, but did so because it felt necessary, and I did my own grocery shopping for the last time before lockdown. We left the vet and drove to the south end of town to Natural Grocer, where half the energy in the store had an urgent edge, and the other half was blasé. Clerks, however, were wiping down the counter and the conveyor belt between each customer. There was no six foot rule yet, but some of us innately stood farther apart than normal. It felt very strange, new, superficial: these are the precautions we start taking today, now that we know this is for real. Already toilet paper shortages were beginning, and I loaded up on staples for Stellar and me: lots of grains, rice, quinoa, polenta; citrus for weeks; frozen meat; and chocolate, lots of good dark chocolate. I mean, forty dollars worth of chocolate, which felt extravagant, but turned out simply to be sensible.

This morning I approached the day with a sense of benign curiosity: what will it be like, today? From the moment I stepped out of bed, gratitude flowed. Stellar was fine, happy, and we walked the Breakfast Loop, ground still frozen but air barely cold, ideal Mud Season conditions. I led a meditation on Telesangha which people seemed to appreciate. When that was over, I gave Stellar a couple of Charlee Bear cookies and a second CBD chew and asked him to stay in bed, then set off for town. On the way out the yard I snapped the first cluster of Iris reticulata to open to spring. There was a redtail hawk on the Smith Fork nest, which thrilled my heart; a golden eagle soared insolently below a nagging songbird just above Hotchkiss.

I’m grateful for the volunteers and staff of the North Fork EMS, and all the support and comfort they’ve provided our valley during the pandemic. At Heritage Hall in the Fairgrounds, volunteers directed traffic to parking spots, and handed out paperwork to be completed in our cars…
…prior to entering the vaccination processing facility.
Vaccinator tables line the north wall of the building, and the crooked county commissioner welcomes each of us to the zig-zag line…
There is an oddly jubilant mood at the vaccination table: There is such benevolent warmth from the staffers, and plenty of smiles. There’s a palpable sense of relief, a subtle celebration, in the whole of the Hall.
A very thin needle and a slow injection ensure minimal discomfort going in, and after. Yes, my arm might be sore for a day or two afterwards, but the shot didn’t hurt a bit. Notice I’m not looking? Grateful Nurse Karen’s cohort across the table offered to take pictures for me.
Waiting at the back of the room. Nurse Karen sent me off with “Here’s your get out of jail free card, you can leave at 10:35,” with a sticker on the cardboard clipboard they sent me home with. I was grateful to be guided to the last seat at the back of the Hall, right by the open door. Grateful a couple of friends recognized me in my cap and mask and stopped to chat.
My vaccination card, clipped to my second shot appointment reminder, and paperwork to be filled out before I return.
Grateful to greet the crocus patch, welcoming me home after a fascinating journey to town. How they age, wither, and die, just as we do, and are reborn again each spring.

Tonight is Zoom Cooking with Amy. I slept most of the afternoon, slipping between naps, meditation, animal needs, and naps from one til five, thinking I might not have the energy for our date. I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and felt compelled to lie down. It might have been ‘covid-shot fatigue,’ or the cessation of stress after a trip to town; it might have been the half-hour soapy hot shower when I returned, or the pure physical release of tension after a full year that the first vaccination afforded my mind. Any which way, I wanted to sleep til morning. But Amy, our plans, and Sarah’s peanut soup beckoned through the ethers. I’m grateful for Amy, and for the inspiration from Sarah for what is now in my recipe file as Sarah’s Peanut Soup.

The recipe calls for Red Curry Paste, but Sarah substituted Massaman. Philip couldn’t find Massaman at the grocery store, so I made some… toasted spices, roasted garlic, fresh sliced ginger, and a little coconut milk zapped in the food processor, et voila! Massaman Curry Paste. Turns out it’s like Garam Masala and other spice blends, there are almost as many recipes as there are households who make it. I mixed and matched three to get my version, based simply on what I had in the pantry. Shrimp paste is definitely going onto my shopping list. That may be the missing secret ingredient that gives Massaman its unique flavor. But my unique homemade blend worked just fine for seasoning Sarah’s Peanut Soup, and there’s plenty leftover for the next few culinary adventures.
Amyface toasting at the start of our meal. I’m grateful as usual for all the elements here: Amy, Zoom and its technological antecedents, peanuts and their controversial history in this country, the Victoria tortilla press I bought a few weeks ago and Bibi’s generous advice on how to use it for flour tortillas, random red wine and the friend who purchased it in Grand Junction months ago; grateful for Apple laptop and all it took to get here from the mainframes of the nineteen fifties; and grateful for the friendship of Rosie and Chris, and the beautiful handblown wineglass they gave me for my fiftieth birthday twelve years ago, which only comes out of the cupboard on special occasions, like Zoom Cooking with Amy.
I’m grateful for and dumbfounded by the fact that I can photograph Orion from my front porch with my effing telephone, down to the multiple star complex at the tip of his sword. I mean! In addition to this daily gratitude practice, I further commit to sitting or walking outside after full dark each night until the next spring equinox. I’ll take a few minutes out of my busy life each night to remind myself where I am in the universe; what is my exact location and my inexact insignificance.

It was a great day! So much happened, big and small, here in this little slice of the world I inhabit. I’m grateful for every minute of this day in which I got to be alive.

A Quarter Century

Feb17

img_2924

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, an International Dark Sky Park, just down the road from home.

Sirius the Dog Star is dazzling again. The night sky is more full of stars than I have seen it for years. I live in one of the best places in the country for stargazing. Nearby Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was designated as an International Dark Sky Park in 2015. Though my new bionic eyes aren’t yet completely healed, I stood outside tonight and cried because I can see Orion’s bow again; I had forgotten it.

I used to sit on the roof of my trailer and watch the sky, as storms passed by to the west and east, as the sun came up in a fan of blue and white stripes or set amid blankets of orange and violet clouds, as stars appeared one by one and five by ten to fill the sky. I don’t spend as much time outside at night now that I live in a snug house full of other things to do. And also, I think, because in recent years the stars have been disappearing, the sky darkening with my deepening cataracts. Stargazing was making me sad. No more!

The night sky is just one reason I love this place. I was horrified a few years ago when I looked out from my bed and saw two bright orange lights across the valley. There aren’t many lights on at night around here. What kind of idiot needs that kind of security light in this bucolic landscape?

The Bad Dogs drove home from here one night and scoped out the source of this dreadful sight. Once we discovered it, my irritation evaporated. The lambing lights came on again a few weeks ago, and now I welcome them, knowing that they’re temporary, and signal the coming of spring. About the same time the first crocus shoots appeared in the mud as the snow began to melt. Their first blooms opened this morning.

Nearly all the winter’s snow has melted, except on north facing slopes and in deep shadows. Last week the nurse at the Health Fair asked me, as she was drawing my blood, “Are you over the mud?” She had just moved here from Kentucky. I pondered, over it? “I’m over being bothered by it, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “You adapt. It’s just another season. Mud season. Comes between winter and spring, and then again sometimes between fall and winter.”

When I drove to town that morning it was cold. On the way home an hour later, mist rose along the hill road from the south-facing slope of a deep arroyo just now catching the sun. Up on Stewart Mesa the mountains were shrouded in clouds and sun blazed down on a golden field full of cows. A bald eagle sat on a power pole in the dobies. That half-hour drive never gets old.

I’ve been making that drive now for twenty-five years, nearly half my life. Cynthia and I got the giggles today trying to figure out how old I’ll be when it has been half my life. The math was too much for me. “You’ll never get there,” she posited. “I have to get there!” I insisted. We finally figured it out: when I’m 66 I will have lived here 33 years. After all our calculations I realized I could have just doubled the age I was when I moved here. Sheesh! I’d been tumbling it around for weeks, ever since I woke up on February second and marveled that I’ve lived here for a quarter of a century.

 

In the years after I left home at 18, I’ve walked away from more past lives than I can count. (But then, I’m not that good with numbers.) I’ve moved for jobs, schools, or whims every year or two or three. I left two states to escape relationships gone bad. When I landed here I knew I’d found my soul’s home. Planting myself here, I’ve softened. In a community this size, you can’t walk away; you can’t let anger or resentment sever ties. I’ve tried. Someone hurts you and you swear you’ll never speak to her again, and a decade later you run into her at your best friend’s party. Or a week later you meet her in the grocery aisle. You have to learn to let go.

As the lambing lights come and go, and the crocuses, and the mud, so I have settled in to the rolling seasons, ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows and a bottomless skyful of stars. When I bought this land, I was seeking peace of mind. After a quarter century, some days I think I’ve almost found it.