"How to Regain Your Soul" by William Stafford

"Children of the Mountain" by Thomas Moran, 1867

Come down Canyon Creek trail on a summer afternoon

that one place where the valley floor opens out. You will see

the white butterflies. Because of the way shadows

come off those vertical rocks in the west, there are

shafts of sunlight hitting the river and a deep

long purple gorge straight ahead. Put down your pack.

Above, air sighs the pines. It was this way

when Rome was clanging, when Troy was being built,

when campfires lighted caves. The white butterflies dance

by the thousands in the still sunshine. Suddenly, anything

could happen to you. Your soul pulls toward the canyon

and then shines back through the white wings to be you

again.

"How to Regain Your Soul" by William Stafford from The Darkness Around Us is Deep.

© Harper Perennial, 1994.

Happy Birthday, Georgia

Today is the birthday of Georgia O'Keeffe. Would that we could see even a fraction of the beauty and sensuality that she saw in nature.

The Beautiful Blue and Green Music, 1921 

Cow's Skull: Red, White, and Blue, 1931 

Deer's Skull With Pedernal, 1936 

From the Faraway Nearby, 1937 

Rust Red Hills, 1930

An Orchid, 1941 

Flower Abstraction, 1924

Ram's Head, White Hollyhock, and Little Hills, 1935 

Oriental Poppies, 1928 

Red Hills and Bones, 1941

Blue Morning Glories, 1935

Family Post: Remembering Matthew

This is my brother Matthew's birthday. He was the youngest of seven children in my family, the fifth son. I was the first son, and Matt was 12 years younger than me. He's been dead now for ten years. Truth is he drank himself to death when he was 42 years old.

I found myself gravitating to some western art by Frederick Remington. Matt loved this kind of stuff, even though he was born after the family had moved away from the West. I like it too, and I really like this drawing. Matt looked just like this cowboy, with the long hair, drooping mustache, and steely gaze; but he preferred a black leather jacket and a black Stevie Ray Vaughn-style hat.

"Arizona Cowboy"

He was a big man, and worked construction until the day he died. He was rough and profane, and bossed various motley crews, and knew how to use his fists when necessary to assert and maintain his authority. He drank hard and partied hard, and went at life hell for leather. He was always dashing for something, and away from something.

"A Dash For the Timber"

Yet he had the eye and heart and skill of an artist, turning out intricately detailed pencil drawings. And when my daughters and their cousins were little girls he was their favorite uncle. They were drawn to him like bees to honey. He loved that, but was uncomfortable with it. He loved the family, but he distanced himself from us. He sought a safe refuge, but even in the wide open spaces of his own exile he could never find rest.

"Stampede" 

"The Scout: Friends Or Foes?" 

I think he would have loved this painting. Maybe he knew it. I imagine him looking at it with a mixture of fear and longing: fear of what the wolf reminds him of--the darkness forever stalking his troubled soul, and at the same time longing for what the wolf is. For the wolf in his kingdom of night is purely what Matt most wanted to be--and what I hope he is: free.

"Moonlight Wolf"

"Spring" by Jim Harrison

"Rain Clouds at Sunrise" by Tina Bluefield

Something new in the air today, perhaps the struggle of the bud

to become a leaf. Nearly two weeks late it invaded the air but

then what is two weeks to life herself? On a cool night there is

a break from the struggle of becoming. I suppose that's why we

sleep. In a childhood story they spoke of the "land of enchant-

ment." We crawl to it, we short-lived mammals, not realizing that

we are already there. To the gods the moon is the entire moon

but to us it changes second by second because we are always fish

in the belly of the whale of earth. We are encased and can't stray

from the house of our bodies. I could say that we are released,

but I don't know, in our private night when our souls explode

into a billion fragments then calmly regather in a black pool in

the forest, far from the cage of flesh, the unremitting "I." This was

a dream and in dreams we are forever alone walking the ghost

road beyond our lives. Of late I see waking as another chance at

spring.

"Spring" by Jim Harrison, from Songs of Unreason. © Copper Canyon Press, 2011.

HAPPY EASTER

Another Guy Who Liked Clouds

Albert Bierstadt, who painted epic idealizations of the western American landscape.

Storm in the Mountains

Overland Trail

The Oregon Trail

Mount Whitney

Indians Hunting Buffalo

Western Landscape

Estes Park, Colorado