The Light in the Trees

An ode to our planet and its people

[morgancoyrolawrence]

We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Chai?

It’s 2 in the afternoon and I’m in the center seat of the last row of a broken down bus somewhere in Rajasthan’s Thar Desert. I can’t stop sweating. I fight my way through rows of women and children sitting on child-sized, red plastic chairs – this bus made for 50 but holding 80. Some, asleep - flies dancing around their relaxed faces – some, audibly disgruntled by my intrusion into their limited personal space, most, already off the bus – grateful for the rare opportunity to breathe some fresh air. I hop off only to be greeted by – more dust – the six inch deep sedimentary bowl that passes for a road. I’ve spent the morning bombarded by plumes of dust wafting through the open windows, mouth wrapped in a scarf, staring out at the expanse of treeless plain dotted sparingly with scenes of farmers plowing hopeless fields with thirsty-looking cattle. The openness of the landscape encourages thoughtfulness, and I think endlessly in patterns and swirls. How did I get here? Who was that person I met two years ago in Bangkok? How do camels STAND this heat?

When the bus breaks down, I, along with everyone else on this rickety hellhole, sigh in relief. The dust bowl of a road in this tiny, sun-beaten village is a welcome reprieve. Immediately after hopping off, I grab a pack of crackers, and am greeted by the faces of twenty smiling locals. India. Some beg for money with such warm smiles that I can almost look past their gaunt frames, the desperation that must haunt their existence. I am not supposed to be able to overlook these obvious indications of poverty. I shouldn’t want to. But I move on. India makes you move on, or it makes you crumble. I did a little bit of both.

The cobbled streets of the village wind on, and I follow them without purpose. Always with an eye towards caution – in this case unjustified. I pass a construction site for a new home – a group of thirty men and women are at work, and the proud homeowner sidles out to invite me in. I pick up a load of mortar as I walk through what will be the doorway, much to the delight of the locals who giggle and run alongside me, encouraging me. The men demonstrate the laying of bricks, and as I watch, the whole village seems to filter into the construction site. A gentle woman brings two plastic chairs and places them on the wet mounds of dirt that will eventually be a floor. She motions for me and my friend to sit, gestures questioningly if we are married, if we would like chai. We say yes to both, though neither is necessarily true. For half an hour, locals encircle us, and we delight in entertaining them. Some of the younger girls play with my hair, hold my hand, giggle at me drinking their mother’s chai. The men are delighted by our presence, proud of their work, happy to see outsiders in a village that almost never sees tourism. Westerners mean money, and though India always seems to revolve around the next rupee, there is genuine curiosity and respect in these interactions.

The mother of the house brings out two hand-made red bracelets covered in jingling charms and ties them around my wrist with a smile in her eyes. A gift. I give her my silver Ponderosa Pine earrings. She glances away, cheeks red, as the group of onlookers pipe up in excitement. I catch a glimpse of her childhood. How can I ever understand what it is to live in the Thar Desert? To breathe sand from birth? To eat roti like wheat bread? Will she ever hear the wind applaud the sky through the needles of a ponderosa? Probably not. But we’ve touched it. We’ve touched it. What is more beautifully human than realizing we’ll never know it all? My friend and I give our thanks and walk out in what feels like a wedding procession. I am moved beyond comprehension, and this memory is one that takes months to approach in totality.

We walk twenty minutes together before my friend and I split up and I am drawn to a group of women in orange, purple, and red chattering lightly on a stoop. I stop, fearfully realize I can’t speak Rajasthani, then sit down and smile. One woman immediately stands and says “chai?” I nod yes. She hurriedly invites me in to her home, tenderly placing a straw mat on an aged wooden seat. I am fed grapes, figs, roasted peanuts. A gurgling baby is placed on my lap. And though I can’t speak their language, we eat together, smile, laugh, and I feel that we’ve exchanged even truer parts of ourselves than language allows. Without warning, I hear the bus roar to life, and two hours after I mistakenly arrive in this dusty, unassuming village, I fight my way back on to the crowded bus and watch through the rear window as this little world fades away into the desert.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

[forestwoodward]

Weeping walls

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Arrowleaf

Sometimes my heart feels like a

red fist under my ribs;

pounding, collapsing

grasping, seeking.

Hear me! Hear me?

I wondered how the memories of you

did not crack my ribs

with demands.

I tried to pass you through language,

              through words written on blood cells –

              to bleed strength into your veins,

              pour decision on your breathless bones.

But your heart is a red fist

so darkly cloaked in fear that it looks like

independence.

I grew tired.

I slept

and dreamt of you on Everest,

happy, relieved.

How could you smile?

How could you breathe without feeling me swimming

around your chest?

It seemed such a shame to waste

the blooming yarrow

on the vision of a woman who couldn’t find love in it

or the hug of a friend.

I tried to muster the strength to leave it all behind.

Where was it?

Tell me where and I’d run, I’d fly on

hand-crafted wings

to surmount the black pain.

Anything to drown the warmth of your body.

I really had to let you go,

even with all that love left in my heart to give you.

I never liked throwing things away.

It’s not your voice,

But there is a voice,

that repeats “I am not enough” and

“too much” –

or all of it in one sloppy package,

even as clear water slides over river rock

and the geese honk their autumnal goodbye.

Am I part of this world?

Why can’t I join in their letting go,

their giving in to loss?

You felt like the mountain I came from

When I forgot that I belonged to the sky.

Now, instead, I’ll forget you,

or not you,

but our pain –

as my body glides through deep, cold water

as I climb mountains

as I swallow rivers

as I dance with the arrowleaf balsamroot.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

The Long Peak

Dreams of tumbling rock and alpenglow.

Slept through the alarm and woke up with what felt like a heart attack at 2AM – the sound of 4 happy feet running up the twisted staircase of our 125 year old Victorian home to wake me up.

Threw some pants on, grabbed my pack, shoveled down a piece of bread suffocated in peach-cardamom jelly – the glamorous life of a woman who wakes up late pretty much every damn day.

The car ride is a blur of dim streetlights and dark potholed roads – Taylor Swift refusing to allow the warm invitation of sleep.

By 2:45, the parking lot is nearly full with eager, headlamped hikers. A brief moment of irritation darts around my body before I recognize that I’m one of them, this community of people who love the mountains, dedicate their sleeping hours to stumbling under starlit skies for a chance at a sunrise summit. And I’m not in Montana anymore.

Spend our first two hours hiking in a dark, dream-like state. Oddly characterized by a lot of fist pumping and exclamations of wonder. How are we so lucky? Why? Night drapes over Long’s for just long enough to catch the mountain adorned in starlight, cast in magnificent shadow. We pass people periodically and I cheerfully shout morning greetings – receiving every reply from “Y’all are hauling!” (hello Texas!) to “No, it’s not.” No matter, we’re on top of the world, as least as far as we can see.

Sunlight drenches the porous rock just in time for us to hit the famous Keyhole. Mountains warmed with an orange glaze, valleys blue with cool dawn. The Boulderfield and the Narrows are like adult playgrounds – an obstacle course through the mind as much as the body.

Trudged up the Trough but had a blast. What could be more fun than suffering up a mountain that allows you a communion? The trough opens up to an expansive view of Wild Basin and the Front Range – ah.

Do rocks sing poetry or does it just seem like it? I think most people view the alpine as dangerous, unapproachable – the alpine brings me to life. Body cold, mind sharp, breath short – it’s all so magnificent and magical. Words are a pathetic match for the alpine in the early morning. The pika-squeaking, hardass, steep, thriving alpine.

Danced happily along the Narrows to the Home Stretch. Short bursts to the summit where I – just – stood. Astonished. Enos, I understand.

Fifteen minutes of adoration before R and A joined me. We laughed continuously and with abandon. I played James Brown. The pure joy – a gift from the mountain – the safe passage. Long’s became a friend.

The joy continued for the journey home, and happily included a full solar eclipse. What are men to rocks and mountains? Or pizza for that matter. Which I ate in plentitude post descent. Still learning to be astonished.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

What do you think?

I love poetry and I love mountains. And I think they are one and the same.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it. Go home and be there for all these things.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

The Highest Mountain

Amazing

How you don’t see the beating hearts of history

“This man climbed the highest mountain”

But where was his heart?

I ask you, where was his heart?

Was it beating for her?

Was it beating in spite of her?

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Lemon Blossom

I smell sweetness. Sweetness in the crook of the strong, soft arm where my body rests – little arms wrapped around the freckled, warm neck of my mother (where will those arms climb). She doesn’t know it, but when she places me in her embrace, she does so with a natural love, an irrepressible expression. A love that can’t help it.

(My mother sings more beautifully than the choir of angels at St. Monica’s church on a Sunday morning. I watch her from the pew and dream of heaven. She does not know.)

Her face so near to mine, I childishly play with her turquoise earrings, the corners of her berry red mouth – pushing them into a smile. She does not move my hands. She whispers to me on golden light as her brown hair plays with my cheeks.

           “Smell that sweetness, Itsy?”

I nod enthusiastically, feeling the ocean breeze dance with the deep-green, waxy leaves of the tree in front of me.

           “It’s a lemon blossom – this white flower.”

She gently caresses the petals with hands that are characterized by strength, by sadness, then turns her gaze to me with the same love and attention she gave the tiny blossom.

Open up little flower.

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Tango

[slk-t]

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Sunrise at the Taj Mahal, February 2017

[morgancoyrolawrence]

The world of literature offered me the sustentation of empathy...and I ran for it, I relaxed in it. I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything - other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned: that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness - the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the field or deep inside books - can redignify the worst stung heart.

Mary Oliver, Upstream

[morgancoyrolawrence]

How wonderful that the universe is beautiful in so many places and in so many ways.

Learning to be astonished in Mt. Sneffels Wilderness, SW Colorado

[morgancoyrolawrence]

Pain has a home in my heart

Pain sits in my heart;

I search for her in the heavy sagging darkness.

She knows, and mouths hello through a 

cracked looking-glass. 

I watch as she rifles

through memories,

tenderly placing them on the twisted satin

of her bed sheets- 

with a soft and sad glance towards my darkened eyes.

Gentle, steadfast, then raucous, reckless,

She moves through 

guilt

fear 

misunderstanding.

Pain has made a home in my heart before

and moved on without a vacancy announcement.