She Don’t Give a Buck
Cozy coffee corner on the Klamath River!
It’s a quiet life here on the Klamath River. I wake up while the morning is still cool and tip toe to the outdoor kitchen-living-deck so as not to disturb the deer. I prepare my pot of hot coffee and snuggle back into the big, warm king bed that is as soft as a cloud.
After I finish my morning pages, I proceed back out to the deck for a bit of yoga, salutations facing the sparkling river, while the sun begins to stream through the surrounding trees. Then I gather my computer and take my morning meetings creek-side. Around 5pm, after working in various nooks and crannies around the cabin, I amble around the gardens. Tall, sunny yellow Black Eyed Susans, indigo wild flowers, and trees of all kinds invite me to explore the organic pathways winding about the property.
My trusty walking stick helps me down the rocky bank to the river’s edge to plunge my hot feet in the icy waters, then up to shore to find one of the many magical lounging areas. I crack open my grandmother’s watercolor set, amazed that after 25 years since her death, it still lathers up to a rich color. Then back to the cabin for a quick sweep of my outdoor kitchen-living-deck that has, by then, gotten completely covered in leaves and pine needles. I make a lite salad, crack a lite beer, and sit watching the river flow by.
My television here is the deer drama, as my cabin faces their favorite salt lick watering hole across the way. Gerald, the teen buck, doesn’t trust me one bit, constantly whipping his head up to make sure I haven’t grabbed my gun. But Lacy, the fearless young doe, seems to be saying hello with her little wagging tail as she does whatever the heck she likes, eating dirt, clearly not giving a single buck. Gerald has started bringing a subservient lookout who just munches tensely and watches me while G drinks and eats his salty dirt delight. If Mr. Stubbs tries to approach the water’s edge, he gets a swift kick in the head from his miserly master. I’m hoping he comes back on his own to enjoy the dirt that G partakes of so gluttonously.
Sometimes I watch the water so long that everything appears to be flowing: The tree bark, the yoga mat, the cabin siding. If I look too closely everything IS moving, because the bug population is THRIVING riverside. I have seen things here that I have never encountered before, and today, some kind of gray spider with a huge butt and stubby legs who definitely surveyed me like a dog, his head tilting this way and that, sizing me up. I gave him a wide berth on the dish drainer. And even though there seems to be something flying into the corner of my eye at all times, this place feels natural, unhurried, and unworried. I’m remembering how to simply be in my own skin again. It feels good to slow down.
The blue jays squawk a little soap opera around dusk. One screams his heart out, and the other responds as they aggressively chase each other from branch to branch, bickering. It sounds like they’re on the skids to me, but perhaps I’ve got this all wrong. Maybe it’s a love song in a foreign tongue and I’m just a little jaded. It’s possible.
Speak of the devil! Mr. Stubbs has appeared alone at the salt lick as if his little horny nubbins were burning. Aaand there he goes into the river, squatting in the water and doing some dirty deer business as he stares me down. I never knew deer squatted!! Don’t drink the river water, kids.
And the sun sets on another exciting day in the Klamath River valley.
