the coyote and the dust

the biscuit and the breath allium and armour a clawed heart and titanium tendril

i was crouched down,

slumped over digging into alkaline soil and volcanic rock with my bare hands, using jagged cut off rocks to expedite the digging, as my digging stick was being used by a friend a mountain over, content with the silence, the blaring sun, white powder topped by red and gray of the adobe barrens.

I dug, a waft of onion scent floated towards my face when I perforated the thick woven papery husks that bunched up around the alliums I pawed for.

Pawed, and in awe, I look up at the steep incline I wandered into, and suddenly, I hear rock fall.

tumble,

a few dark round rocks full of holes and scars from past heat and volcanic activity, remnant from a long ago when the ocean waxed and waned hugging these ancient piles and hills and formations—

both making them and breaking them down, and depositing, erasing…depositing erasing.

the rocks tumble

from just over the crest I cannot see beyond as I am tucked hundreds of feet up, practically vertical, in a wild garden triangle formation pouring forth from the dust, and in the rocks are the remnants of past attention and tending in these condemned foothills

I see a furry butt.

a coyote,

I startled him from sneezing,

the pollen from grasses that came up thick this year along these hill irritates my sinuses.

I pause my digging, my hands cracked. the sun bring and blazing for late May, a gentle breeze. Phacelia, Globe Mallow by the thousands wave in syncronicity.

coyote, runs up and over the hill, I catch him at last sight.

what are you doing here, way out here, in these gardens? what are you doing following me to the place of no trees,

of nowhere to hide,

of where the shotgun shells and cow patties stretch up and as far as they’d go mingle with biscuitroot going to seed, wild onions like what I am digging emerging out of piles of rock, the Mariposa Lily still in bloom en masse.

the trifecta,

the coyote,

my heavy heart that falls out of my chest daily,

heaved full,

dark with endless tears that paralyze my inspiration, my will, my belief in love,

the explosion, the cascade, the coyote spirit taunting me: ha! you’re still out here chasing roots even with all the betrayal and loneliness, immense loneliness, i’m here, dancing around you, keeping you locked in

i tricked you into falling in love with someone who you chased here, and he disappears like the coyotes tail over the adobe crest but you’re still here, dying from the pain, doing the motions and a knowing you can never go back.

I continue to dig.

loosening dry clay soil to the left of the cluster and then to the right, moving a rock or two loose, exposing white bulbs, a cluster fat from spring rains, I remember diggin ramps a couple years ago this time, the same bulbs, the same sheaths, the same clusters, deep in the forest of appalachia up high, with my ex-partner who soon after left me in a really dramatic and intense way that still haunts me today in waking and dreams.

everything reminds me of this loss, especially the plants that used to brighten my spirits.

every palpable shape, smell and leaf, senses I don’t expect to bring me right back there to the torment, to the realization of lies and deceit, to the distance forming when all I have ever wanted was to be loved unconditionally and the opportunity to love just so, without resistance and immense trust, to not have my love tainted or doubted, to be embraced fully, squeezed and encouraged, supported and cared for. to be cared for.

I thought I had this, but it was an illusion all along, I learned, as a checklist of my faults and sensitivities was building up in a secret backlog without being communicated and I was convinced my special person had my back and loved me dearly in my quirks and care, affections and gifts, psychic insights and encouragements, innocence and fullness. my heart was so full. at every moment. a glimmer of hope in a dying world. but acts of service and love are a threat to some, even when the greater world is benefitting.

all woven with onion smells and pinon stained sweat, I believed in this love that was a fantasy of my imagination, an illusion being fed to me, while I believed it as truth. I trusted. I loved and cared, the most I’ve ever loved,

like I care for these onions.

be damned those who say your love isn’t enough, or must be a narrow category, contained and neat in a safe package without immense care or hurt, considered. no. we cannot survive this world this way.

I gently pull, and the cluster of onions comes loose. I grab seeds of flat long Lomatium Biscuitroots from my seed bundle, held in the crevices of a well-worn paper bag brought in to the field several times so that there was an option for planting, if the opportunity came up.

and suddenly, just as I pulled, and laid the entire plant, umbel with unripe seeds still intact, in my canvas bucket, I hear a loud sound forming above me.

from just where the coyote ran to, a circle of winds start to dance, the alkali dust picking up with them, and the sounds gets louder. a dust devil, a mini tornado forms at the top of the clear adobe above me and starts to descend straight my direction. it is so loud. I get scared and hug my canvas bucket full of roots and seeds, gathered from a rugged wander over one hill to the next chasing these rock slides, these practically terraced slopes by past humans that seem like nothing from the road below.

I dip my head, and the dust devil literally moves right over top of me and drifts to the loose adobe to the left, the rest of the group looks on and notices, watches the whole scene go down.

there’s such an amazing garden over here! I shout from a distance. and did you see that? they yell back, yes!

I look beyond and watch it drift, getting larger and dancing across the landscape, making micro changes in this sea of exposed soil often ignored by the humans beyond.

I dig dinner. the breadroots here have enormous taproots, the onions substantial, the Calochortus hearty. foods in the barren lands, the lands seen as worthless, the shooting grounds, the burial groves, the dumping quarters, the mystical quiet silence. the glowing umbels where the cows couldn’t reach. the buckwheats with swollen hollow stems, fat and alien, splayed out jutting towards sticky borages and mustards bearing coin-like pods.

I gather seed ferociously after the dust storm in the narrow steep rocky drainage while my students dig across the shallow valley on an abandoned road we tried to drive up and decided would be the end of us if we continued on with a vehicle.

one of my students waits in a car below as the terrain and the heat is too much, and waits for us to bring plants back to show them, as they peer in awe at our escapades in the distance.

the coyote and the dust

the biscuit and the breath

allium and armour

a clawed heart and titanium tendril

for a moment I am not exactly alone, as these people, who barely know me, found their way here with me, and we dig together, for our shared meals, and we celebrate the dust devils, the swirling winds, the food hidden in the rocks, the secret corridors where the coyotes wait in the blaring sun, full daylight, to tumble some rocks forth towards neverending tears , saying to keep going despite the wide changing world, despite those who say they loved you while loving the plants when they never truly did, or perhaps just could not let themselves, the coyote pushes the rocks down to bring attention to the trick. i tricked you.

was it fin?

was it my grandmother’s ghost telling me to go home, to give up on this endeavor that seems endlessly painfully impossible alone?

one of my students said this week, that this whole thing, of seeing the places in the landscape where we must participate, where the ecologies co-evolved with past human stewardship, is akin to that mystery door in the Harry Potter books— a door that was always there but you never noticed, and now you cannot unsee it.

Once you see, you cannot unsee and the truth of it all is painful and beautiful, and we are asked to grieve entirely,

torturously for the earth itself in our personal life experiences,

and not numb them or push them away.

Turning this direction, opening this door, means, that forever there is responsibility to wail, love, laugh and plant back, even if addicted, if heartbroken, if broke and in debt, pushed away or cast aside.

Disposable I might be,

to beloved ones who lied to me,

but here I still paw at the wild onions tucked behind rocks,

and coyote sends rocks and dust storms over me to give me a sign,

to not let anything get in the way,

even those who masquerade as caring.

The biggest disservice we can do to the world and others is to lie,

not be entirely honest and create realities that do not exist and impose them on others around us in order to not look inwards.

alas, it is easy to do, an easy escape we can all fall into.

it’s hard to not feel unlovable these days, when I just want a best friend. for friends who want to live this way with me. who want to tend to me and let me tend to them, pour kindness and service and care and affection simply for the wild-tending it is towards our human ecological kin.

we must wild-tend one another.

to not be allowed, is torture.

Our own inability to truly feel pain and loss, the bigness of this world’s dying as we are asked to choose love over disconnection in a world that encourages us to stay in our lane, to be alone on a computer all day, to live alone, eat alone, have a 401K alone, to do it all alone, for oneself, first without a village, a community, a network of deep bonds and kinship that build and tighten and don’t break easily in conflict. the whole is better when we let each other wail, witnessed, holding fully our kin in wide arms, in spaces where the wail is dedicated to be, an actor of necessity, rather than hidden away.

it is babylon that separates us, that makes up tend alone.

dig alone, eat alone, gather seeds alone, and I don’t know how much more I can do it without friends, comrades and companions who prioritize doing it with me regularly.

walking through the secret door is incredibly lonely and it is hard to not feel broken.

i touch the onions, I pray, I laugh and sing and thank them, and crave the touch, care and tenderness I have not gotten in ages that the plants must miss too.

i am told by distant friends that I need ‘help’ for feeling so, that i must be fixed and go along business as normal accepting things as they are.

the doorway, you cannot unsee.

the plants.

they were so happy to see us and have our attention.

finally, they breathed, someone came to check on us, to give us some tenderness.

tenderness is such a gift to give and we owe it to the land to share it.

and to one another, guarding our tenderness, I guess is a protection, I keep mine to myself too, as I fear it is unwanted, the wrong place to give it, or is threatening.

I coil it in, and give it where it is safe, but I know that the love is wanted, to the onions, the biscuitroot, the lilies.

i barely touch humans because I am told the love is not enough and too much all at the same, time. a threat and not valuable enough, not novel enough, not worth it enough.

it’s hard to hear, or feel in the depth of bones, that you’re not worth it to people you love. its unbearable.

i’m not going to act like there is growth or therapy or self help here. I’m sick of self help. I am tired of hearing I need to be alone in order to be with others when I’ve mostly always been alone. i’m tired of pathology, or formulas of attachment styles. I just love.

I cry when I see pulsatilla. when I had to leave my herb garden my dad eventually bulldozed for no good reason and expects me to want to come back home. and blames me for putting the garden in in the first place. fine then, i will create beauty elsewhere.

coyotes tail matched the color of the adobes. they hang around these vast barrens guarding the gardens, keeping watch, hoping for visitors to take another door.

I wash dust off of my sunburned and tanned back, where the wind storm deposited part of the mountain across my body. and I walk along the river, a day later, heaving in endless grief, at loss, at wishing I had a best friend, somewhere in the world, who could just embrace me in my nuances and pitfalls, for ease, for love, for holding, for care and togetherness.

the longer I venture out, the harder it is for me to adapt back to a world of plastic and commodification and efficiency, fast paced schedules, shallow needs for superficial beauty.

bring me depth and grief and rawness or nothing at all.

bring me coyote tails and windstorms or the silence of winds’ pause.

what is there to live for?

I ask myself that a lot in a dying world. Today, it was the cluster of alliums and having students who cared enough to come along, and be washed over by the root gardens.

today I am alone, yet again, and wishing for a best friend to talk to about the work. the week, the patterns, the plants, the water flowing where it wasn’t before. but i don’t have that. so, here I write, for myself, and to the small subset of seekers who tune in here in hopes of connection and care across convoluted and distorted ethers.