Solitude in the Canyons
I poured my heart and soul into that place. It was all I had dreamt of doing for years.
I harvested cherries naked on my birthday. Juneberries and mulberries for breakfast. I made bon fires and listened to coyotes howl. I wandered the endless canyonlands and tended the home and garden day after day in the long hot summer.
I planted all the seeds, pulled the weeds, and watched everything grow.
Comfrey by each and every fruit tree. Medicinal herbs everywhere. Citrus mint wafted up every time I stepped onto the porch. Interplanted with the orchard were thyme, lavender, echinacea, calendula, pumpkins, squash, sunflowers, clovers, and lupine everywhere.
I planted more corn beans and squash as well as tomatoes across the ditch.
This was home for now. Under the giant weeping willow. I decorated the old tree with lights and sat under the canopy drinking wine and watching the stars at night. It was a garden of Eden.
The canvas tent walls became my familiar sanctuary. The sound of the strong winds blowing the willow branches and rain rocked me to sleep. I would hear mountain lion calls some nights, a mother and cub lived nearby.
Most of the time it was quiet. So quiet, it is hard to find places that quiet anymore. I enjoyed every sunset, some nights the sky would catch fire and all I could do was sit there in awe, smile and laugh with no one around to witness.
I was alone, and not. My attention went to keeping the thirsty growing garden alive. I got to know the rhythms of the day and the other inhabitants of the isolated canyon. I would see the marmots cooling off in the hay sprinklers while I cooled off in the stock tank. The cliff swallows would swoop through camp and then the bats came at dusk.
It was a time I had in my youth to cultivate an inner quiet. This time of solitude tending a garden in the canyon allowed me closer to nature, closer to God. Without an inner quiet, I don’t know if I could ever really witness the otherness of nature. The hummingbirds eventually got to know me. They would hover by my face and look at me in curiosity. I played music on the porch and occasionally had guests for a rustic camp dinner.
Thunderstorms did come eventually, the monsoons. I could hear the rain rushing over the sandstone cliffs behind me, I climbed out of bed with my headlamp to go see the waterfall, an ephemeral sight in an otherwise dry landscape.
The night when the cougar came onto my porch. The mere energy of it woke me up and my breathing slowed, listening closely. I had my Dad’s .22 rifle next to me, that I’d probably be too scared to make any use of.
It’s a moment of aliveness I won’t forget. It’s a season of life connected to nature I will cherish.
We tend to feel alive close to death and our senses come alive immersed in nature.
