I can't help that, but it has occurred to me that at times it may come across as an obsession. I realize that I tend at times to say just enough without saying much of anything. I seem to either say far too much or not enough and am often accused of being too vague.
There are reasons for that. One, I hesitate to create a thought for someone else. If I'm feeling a particular thing for myself, I do know that it is my own feeling, my own experience, my own piece of truth in that moment. I see that there may be something of worth in the idea of a thought that perhaps someone else can draw from and make their own for their own moment and I want for them to take that thought, feeling, idea and make it their own. Too often I find that we want to have things spoonfed to us, and there are times when that is not only appropriate, it's necessary. Then I run the line of being far too blunt due to not being willing to allow the parameters be fiddled with. See why I rarely go there? Only in serious situations, where it truly matters. I don't close doors on people for times when I am not certain that I understand, I will always clarify and ask so that I can know.
and Two...I want to say something without it being said.
So there.
See, you were probably right on that one a few times.
Now, this mountain.
It means something to me. It did something for me. It gave me something.
My reason for clarifying:
I did go back and look at my collection of poems. I hadn't looked closely at the whole for a bit and I see that they need to not be together. There is a distinct set that need a particular audience. I worry about letting those out. I sent one to a friend last night as a test run, one originally written years ago on that mountain, brought back out recently. It's my most deeply personal poem and is taken from events long ago that splintered my young soul. She's a solid person, and was feeling fiesty at the time, so I asked her if I could show her something. So I sent it over email, with the precursor that it was maybe a little tough.
I then spent the next hour with her in my arms consoling her as she sobbed.
Granted, a huge part of this is due to the fact that she knows me as I am now, so her friend love for me made it harder. She knew that things had happened, but being as close as we are, I had never gone into anything more than that.
She is now the only person who knows what she does, the only other who has seen that poem. I've never told anyone, not the counselors, not mom, not family. My former spouse knew of something because of things my father had said, but never asked. And I never spoke of it. So, the dubious honor of that belongs to this dear friend into whose hands I would willingly and without question put my life.
But I came to a conclusion that the things written of that particular time need to be used for a good purpose. I'm hoping to find a way to donate them, if possible, copyrighted of course, for use by survivor groups. It's a new, new thought and I haven't fleshed it out yet. It feels like the right place for them to be, somehow.
It's been said that people never truly heal. I don't know about that. I don't know what it is to not have this as a part of me, so I have nothing to compare it to. I don't feel damaged by it anymore. I know the scars are a part of me, but I don't feel a negative influence any longer. I truly did carve and bleed it out of me in large part, many years ago. On that mountain.
So, the 2nd set of poems that landed in a group revolve around the years that the mountain came into my life. And leads to this clarification.
In 1976, as my parent's 2nd divorce was becoming final, we were living in CA...my mum knew she had to get me away from my father. If we were in a different state then the visitations were of a different kind, and his regular influence would be diminished greatly. My sister lived up here in the state, in Graham, and had for a few years as her husband was stationed at Ft Lewis. We had visited at least once a year for a couple of years and I had spent time alone the summer before with them. WA felt like home already, and mom loved that darn mountain and the sea. Sound a little familiar? :) She always had us out in nature, she and I and whatever dog we had at the time. Happy memories. So, it was a natural thing to move this way, to be by family that she hoped would be a steadying influence, to find a new start, a new life.
We stayed in Graham for a short bit, I started 6th grade there, but on October 31, Halloween night, we moved into our first house up on Star Route, Mtn Hwy, just outside of Ashford city limits.
I remember us crashed on her mattress, tossed into the middle of the floor in the living room, after I had had my first lesson in starting the wood stove, and I said to her, "it feels like home, momma". She said that yes, it was. It was a new start for us. We were safe and everything was going to be an adventure.
We'd moved most of my life, from state to state, town to town, house to house...but this was the first time she'd said that to me. I can see it now.
In the days after, exploring the new world where i was, meeting friends at school who took me in right away (trust me, I was stinking good at being the new kid, I knew all the things to do...and I didn't need to), breathing that air, feeling the wind, walking in the woods behind the house, finding the creek and logs and finding the elk in the meadow behind one morning, sleeping...I watched them from the log that ran across the creek until I thought I was going to freeze.
Magic. Not perfect. People are people and this small town had it's share of an entirely different kind of people that I hadn't encountered before, but it was ok.
I was used to being alone, but here I didn't actually FEEL alone.
One day, while walking on Reese Rd, I couldn't help but notice, as I always did and still do, little things around me. I looked at the road. Funny thing, it was made of the most amazing collection of pebbles that looked so perfectly placed. Beautiful. The colors, I can still see those also. I looked up, at that angle of light that hits that time of year, silver in it's shine through the clouds, the outline of the most amazing trees black against it... And a thought came to me. My first poem took shape that day.
I'd never written anything. I'd always had thoughts but they hadn't come to me in such a way. Over time it was fleshed out and matured, but in the truest parts of it, this is it:
Home
At the base of a mountain
A town so small
That to blink is to miss it -
A store, post office, garage -
Life began.
Only in a place like this
Where everything is nothing
And nothing is all,
Could the scattered pieces of a broken soul
Come together as a spirit and begin to live.
This place, where a road of pebbles tossed in random order form something of use and worth -
Where the imperfect pattern of trees against the sky create a perfect vision to be seen -
Where the wind speaks truths and the river washes everything clean -
Where the hills and rocks and sky are big enough to take the pain
And change it for good…
Only here
Could life begin.
I count that moment as when the healing did begin.
It took awhile. It took work. The more it began to happen, the more it hurt, for awhile. The itch, the ache, the pulling, shoving, fighting, tears, all within myself. I have holes of memory, but much less from this time. In fact, very little. I was very aware that something was happening.
There are many rough drafts of things that I pulled from those years, the ones that weren't burned and buried in the purge. So many never came off the hills and that's ok. The hills took the sacrifice willingly, it was right.
I wrote constantly, always a notebook with me, songs, stories, loved to do reports, everything. I found my funny voice, read as much as i wrote. Took up guitar, put down guitar, took it up again, put it down again...my hands cramped, my fingers are always so tender and i just couldn't take it. So I contented myself with the rest.
That's what the mountain did for me.
We moved briefly, to Colorado, right at the end of 8th grade. We were back by the end of December, in a tiny dive in Eatonville (it's still there...still a dive...but it was heaven to us), and I started at the high school. At some point we moved back up the hill, mom worked in Elbe. From there back into Eatonville, to a very cute little place. So much happened while we lived there. Jazz Singer came out, John Lennon was murdered, the Iranian hostages were released, I had my first heartbreak, fed a deer by hand, got my license so I could drive LEGALLY, my first car (Dodge Dart, blue, thank you very much)...so much more. Then in my Jr year we moved a bit further out, to a house on a lake on the corner of a farm at the end of Weyerhaeuser land.
And then.
Mom moved us away. During my sr year, the move happened. I commuted for a bit, but after a weekend up at a friend's house, coming down off the hill, I had what I call a grand mal panic attack. It had hit me, hard, coming around a corner on the swing into Eatonville off the cutoff road, that I wasn't a part of what had been so vitally crucial to me anymore.
I slipped into a terrible depression, broken only by moments of blinding panic. I felt shattered again.
I wrote this:
Lost
Without the mountain
My voice is gone.
I can’t find it.
It screams.
I can’t find it.
It cries in pain.
I can’t find it.
The blackness swirls wild, pulls me in -
I’m drowning.
Silent.
Without my mountain
My voice is gone.
And I am lost.
Again.
It was the last thing that I wrote for almost 6 years. My sr year writing class, they gave me a P on it instead of a grade. They were very aware of my situation, I was in deep therapy, and they had my transcript from EHS, so they knew I could more than do the work...had I been able to.
So. The mountain.
Where I found myself.
The first time.
Joy returned. Hope, ambition, happiness, love, friends. Graduation, Clover Park, etc.
I couldn't go up there for a couple of years, it was too full of ghosts. Of regrets.
But that passed. And I healed, because that's what I do.
I found myself again.
And eventually, on the back of a horse on an island right here by where I now live, I found my voice.
So while I will always hold a deep affection for, and gratitude toward, that place, there is no obsession. It is and always will be HOME to me, wherever I am. I don't need it in me the way that I did once, I found those things that it gave me inside of myself, and it's no longer dependent on anyone or anything or anyplace outside of me. That was the goal, all along.
There's a set of poems...as I said...
about the mountain.
Not enough, without the others, but I'm never without inspiration.
Just personal snapshots of time, places.
The animals, the trees, the magic, the mist.
What they are, in many ways.
The mountain is alive, she breathes, she gives and takes, she watches and nurtures all.
I don't need to be there to feel it all again.
I don't need to be there to see it all again.
It's inside of me. In the scars, in the blood, in the core of me.
And always will be.
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