have been, have being, to be: meditations in the mountains of jemez

benjamin green

The planet floats within a swirling and whirling universe. The land moves, migrates: as continents, as mountain ranges, as single rocks falling, as grains of sand flowing in a river, or as particles of dust flying in the wind. The cosmos is a force; it shapes, it shifts, it puts creatures in motion (birds and whales and pronghorns and elk). Sometimes they crawl up-mountain and down, like our local tarantula migration from mesa top to river bottom every fall; sometimes they swim upstream and down, like salmon and steelhead in the Pacific watersheds; sometimes they fly from north to south along the Rocky Mountains. Every year, sand hill cranes fly from New Mexico to Montana, and back. I am not immune to the moving force of the universe. I cite the spirit as the trigger that motivated the migration to my new canyon home.

Migration can be a determination bound by hours of sunlight, or angle of sunlight, or by temperature, food, body weight, or maybe even the position of stars, or some balance of hormones in the blood: one spring morning the sandhill cranes all leave to fly north. Somewhere in Montana, in the early fall, they fly again, back to New Mexico. But migration must also be memory, consciousness, intelligence, imagination, an expression of what it means to be a sandhill crane. And what is true of cranes is true to any, to every species, and it is true of me. Migration is a reminder that I am alive in the world.

The elements here are simple: red dirt, the density of cottonwoods in the river bottom, the verticality of the rocky canyon wall, the ponderosa-studded flat mesa rim, and sky. 

It is a pretty big place to try to keep company with, and I keep moving. I keep walking, I wander through the elements, but the landscape does not change; the emptiness, especially, goes unaltered by my presence. It is still empty. I change. The place alters who I am.

The simplicity I see here makes me want to keep quiet. The less there is surrounding me, the larger the vacancy, the more I want to be alive, to be born again, to see the red dirt with a child’s eyes, to see the twisted density of the cottonwoods as if for the first time, to see the canyon walls give shine to color after a rainstorm, to balance on the mesa top, to feel the wind move the sky.

I am most like myself when knowing and understanding elude me. I am a newcomer and a stranger here. No wonder I feel so at home.

This morning, a new wind blusters, forecasting some real weather. The sand creeps, leaves descend. I watch to see what happens, what the world will do to itself. When the sun slips behind the mesa, the sudden change of light feels like something has closed its eyelids.

A new element arrived in the canyon today: an obliterating, almost white cloud freezes into swirling globs of wet snow absenting the blue desert mountain air, erasing the mesa top, vanishing the vertical face of canyon rock, misting over the angled buttress of red rock scree, covering the red dirt at my feet. Only the nearly leafless cottonwoods remain in sight. The few remaining leaves, having gone from yellow to gold to bronze overnight, fall and drift with the snowflakes; the sinuous riverine trunks branch as dark blurred silhouettes in a white world. Great slabs of cloud drape down into the canyon, flowing like the creek, spilling huge flakes of snow.

Every day until the solstice the canyon eats a little more sunlight. Winter bares its teeth. Birds still thicken the cottonwood branches, resembling leaf shapes, and I still hear song, but the air is a razor, it cuts; my lungs burn and my lips bleed. A shadow on these cold days is a blunt blade; the darkness in the canyon cast by the mesa walls is an axe. I am bruised and scabbed, and night is still to come.

The sky tastes of dirt and ice. The clouds thin and pale; the moon blurs behind them. Cold air continues to pour into the canyon and the snow swirls down and the piles grow deep on the ground. The drifts are composed of weightless crystals of white, so nonexistent they do not even melt but just disappear, all two feet of them, leaving the red dirt just as dry as last summer.

One spring day, snow drops the clouds into the canyon and they cling in wet masses to the canyon walls, and as rain falls on me, I can see the snow stick to the ponderosas on the high mesa rims. Below my feet, the red dirt turns darker. Higher up, the rocks turn gray. The trees turn gray. The storm lasts, and I see white; the absence of color covers the mesa tops.

I cannot mirror a colorless world. I cannot reflect even this little canyon, or one rock in it. But the world, the canyon, every rock— mirrors me. I see myself in bird-flight, in fish scales, in insect hatch, in rock fall, in leaf shimmer.

I wonder if the cottonwood roots know where they are heading? The cottonwoods join creek to sky: roots dig into the earth until they dissolve into the river, they drink deep; the trunk divides and branches; and leaves, like golden hands, hold the sky.

Today, the wind is a messy rake. The wind talks, but says nothing. Am I a fool to repeat it? The wind has no intention to sing, but it has stirred the cottonwood leaves into song. The creek sings, too, a jazzy scat over stone, and the sunlight dances over the moving surface of the water. A sudden gust of wind causes leaves from the cottonwoods to fall and scatter like sparrows.

Summer, and the air in the canyon’s marrow thickens, warms, and vibrates a luminous blue. I witness ravens carrying clouds up the canyon in the morning for the afternoon thunderstorm. The cloud-bottoms eventually scrape the mesa tops, scratching off charged atoms and climb, filled with electricity, toward the moon. One spark of lightning, one loud clap of thunder rumbles down the canyon, turning and echoing within the rock walls. The air shudders. I can feel it before I can hear it.

Next morning, the sky nests in puddles: the canyon floor becomes a tunnel into sunlight. Things here, they all inspire me, and I try hard, but usually fail, to not see them as a sign. This canyon is not a symbol or shorthand for anything else. It is what it is and now I am a part of it.

Voices. I hear voices. Sometimes I hear an unspoken language of silence. Sometimes I hear a speech so full of words breeding like cockroaches that climb walls when the lights are out and then hide in dark corners with the sound of a door opening, or a light switch. (When I hear words spilling on the floor like that, I know I am merely talking to myself and do not need to pay attention). Sometimes the voice I hear grabs me with nothingness, the way a frog can climb a window, or better, because it evidences muscularity, the way a snake climbs a tree. Sometimes I hear voices that hurtle me with the force of the wind (which makes me feel like so much inert matter being moved).

The coyotes speak after dark, they are the voice of the canyon tonight, talking to the sky. I do not know why they bother questioning the moon, she gives a different answer every night. Today was so dead that nothing moved, not even the wind. The canyon was a quiet place: the birds whispered, the trees hushed like a feather falling, rock and sand were practically silent.

Vibration, heartbeat, doors opening, windows closing, tick-tock of aspen or cottonwood leaf in the wind, tides, waves, seasons, aging, the light and dark of sun and shadow, of moon and reflection, growth, birth, death, love. I hear voices.

Forces of nature wrinkle the land over time. My body is mostly water, and I live here at the risk of being reduced to dry, red dust. In the meantime, time scars my skin; I have wrinkles. The land tells its stories, everywhere, and there are those who have lived here long enough, listened hard enough, to hear more than geology. They hear the universe.

The earth’s heart resides in stone. It is easy enough for me to connect to rocks and soil: I walk on them, dig in them, touch them with my hands. It is more difficult to connect to meaning, but thought is a light in the shadows.

I spent the night reading, then thinking; I missed the early stars and a late rising moon. This morning: red dirt, cottonwood density (aglow with the season again), canyon wall bright with sun, mesa top studded with ponderosa, and an almost colorless sky. On my hike: my thoughts are cairns, small word piles that sometimes achieve an idea, become a landmark.

I rarely speak, while, every day, this canyon says the same thing over and over again. I wonder why it bothers. The place must know itself, and understand itself, so perfectly that there is no need to speak, no need to articulate. So, why? Maybe the canyon does not sing the refraining chorus to benefit itself, maybe it sings for the sake of others. Maybe it sings for me. Then, again, maybe the canyon is like a bird—singing for the pure joy of the song. What do I know? I am here to find out.

I am a world-shifter. My focus changes my image of the world. I go on a hike and transform the cottonwood bosque into a square foot of bark with an unknown caterpillar climbing up-trunk. I climb the mesa and turn the landscape into two ravens circling in a gaping chasm of air.

I came here for inspiration, but the thing I like most is how little I want to say. Some days I go for walks. Some days I look out the window. Both days, it is the same arrival: I come home.

When it rains, the water does not sink, it floods off the surface, gravity bound toward some passage. Within minutes the normally dry creek beds fill and flow with thick brown water. Later there will be pools that last for days, surrounded by animal tracks. The landscape here seems equally impervious to my description. My words pool on the hard dry surface of rock and sand.

Yes, I hear voices. Words speak in every atom. I hear the grammar of the universe. How many million, maybe billion years—and always the same speech, the same word said in many voices, one verb: to be. And, I think, if you are lucky: to live. I used to give my writing students a list of words to avoid. Sometimes those words blossom into meaning: have been, have being, to be….

The longer I live under these canyon walls and study the ponderosa-studded mesa tops and the glow in the shimmer of cottonwood, the more expansive is the world into which I become insignificant.