A path wends its way through the mesa. First charted by children’s toddling feet, it’s a looping, sort of silly meander through sage, stinkweed, and evening primrose. Today it’s just me and a friend, chatting about kids, school, chickens. The usual. Our skin is warm from spring sunshine. A cool breeze plays in the branches of juniper and pine, causing them to bob up and down in a gesture I like to interpret as ‘hello.’
“This is Happy Canyon,” I say, stopping suddenly as I realize he’s never seen it before. We glance back at the barely visible cleft in the sloping hill. It’s so small it’s hard to notice, just a drainage for water when it runs from one tier of the mesa to another – which isn’t often. Mostly it’s copper-colored dirt. But that channeling of water, over eons, has carved a tiny depression in the hillside, not much taller than my friend and me, and given root to several species of native trees.
I’m leaving this place.
It hasn’t happened yet, but after eight years of almost daily visits with the kids to Happy Canyon for lunches, free time, crafts, even a play we staged some years ago – we’re leaving. Next year, I’ll be teaching in a new location about ten miles north.
I’m excited about this, and sad. Happy Canyon is a friend. It’s been a mentor and sort of grandmother to us for so long. Rain or snow, sun and wind – it’s held us in every circumstance of life. Hundreds, thousands of weathers and moments, frustrations and kindnesses. We took shelter in its arms. The kids used to walk easily under low-hanging branches. Now, like me, they have to skirt around.
Happy Canyon measured our time. It taught us how to find shelter, not just here, but in our bodies. Our hearts and fears. Anywhere. It's amazing what a small tree or a narrow dip can do for a small pack of animals crossing the open mesa. Bighorns and coyotes know this, jackrabbits and bluebirds. Because of Happy Canyon, we know it too.
One day, a great horned owl flew out of an old juniper tree at the top of the canyon, circled us three times at ground level, then soared off to sleep in a new midday perch. Another time a bull snake, nearly as long as I am tall, crawled through our lunches while we squawked at a safe distance like a gaggle of hens. Flickers. Kangaroo rats. Tarantulas. Beetles.
War & Peace
May 4th @ 4pm at the TCA
Performed by the students of the Juniper School
Because of Happy Canyon we know how to find the leeside of a tree in gale-force winds, how currents of air dip and ride through open or broken terrain. March brings stiff winds to these mountains. Sitting in stillness when the earth is raging just a few feet away is like finding a buried treasure. It’s like being the buried treasure.
These things weren’t so much taught as lived. They reminded us that life isn’t a collection of knowledge or stories, but a matching of skill to moment. Rain percolated down branches, but even a good downpour can be held aloft by needles and bark. We observed this, squished together against the trunk of a tree. The color of the soil, dark brown and muddy outside our little home, dappled cinnamon needles within. The fragrance. The memory of shelter and playful fear. Look! There are dozens – wait, thousands – of hazy purple-blue berries on the ground. Let’s make something.
Feel them with cold fingers. Feel them with summer’s sweaty palms. Smush them into goo, a pungent food or medicine for friends imaginary. Serve it on a plate of leaves.
Place. Happy Canyon was a place. Is a place. I’ve been trying to figure out what that means for years. It goes beyond the physical destination. Somehow, place extends into our hearts and stories. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, it’s real because it’s loved.
Stories and songs, lunches and endless arguments. How many scratched knees? We trundled sleds to these slopes when the kids were small enough to laugh and ride such little hills. Ten feet from top to bottom. Watch out for the curve and that stone. Don’t whack the little pine. Hey! Much of the fun was wrestling with our complaints. Too many bodies. Not enough turns. Who knew that frustration could be so joyful?
If we could only freeze time and keep it, but snowflakes melt into water – filling our branches with new life. New growth. Years later, underneath those very branches, we studied how plants use light to split water molecules and liberate hydrogen atoms, which are then bonded to carbon taken from the air through pores in their leaves. Thus, all the energy for life, plant and animal alike, including the physical structure of flesh. All of it. Photosynthesis. Anyone who believes they understand this mystery has probably not looked very close. People only pretend to understand these things.
But it’s a good thing to pretend. Knowledge, like place, becomes real for us because of the way we love it. Truth isn’t exactly our purpose. Light, water, and carbon dioxide – each so slippery and hard to grasp – drip right through the living structure of these plant cells and into the fabric of place. Happy Canyon. The branches, no longer slippery but stiff, easily bear our weight. We’ve been leaning on them for years. This is a mystery that should always remain.
From these mysteries, we carved emblems of our good faith and fortune. Old bears and gnomes, scattered in the soil. Small knives and hands carving birds, beaks, frogs and snakes. Accidents and bandages. There was that one pig. All those juniper hearts. Most returned to the soil, but some are in our homes today, lost in baskets or under bureaus. Stuffed in pockets, riding the floorboards of cars. One graceful sandhill crane, etched with turquoise down its center, flies away this fall.
These are the eyes with which I turn to stop in that lovely little canyon, my shelter and home with the kids for so many years. This place. This place we’re leaving. My friend could hardly have recognized it as anywhere at all. “This is Happy Canyon,” I say, almost an afterthought.
But as I glance back, a new and sudden vision enters my eyes, pushing my capacity for humility and gratitude just that much further. Because if you look there today, if you walk softly through its crevices, you would see nothing but a cleft in the hill. Eight years, and you would hardly know it from the untouched wilderness.
Leave no trace. Let it be written in your heart. You are always written in mine.
This is an awesome piece of writing. Your students are so lucky to have such an organic educational / spiritual experience.
Your students will always have Happy Canyon and they will carry on.