Yesterday I knew exactly what I wanted to write for this post. I was headed down an empty highway of this big, open valley, headed to work in a neighboring town on my day off to get a few things done, and I was listening to "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart.
Oh how I love that song. I know the lyrics well, almost, but not quite, by heart. When I was younger I was drawn to the escapism, the exoticness, and the romance of the song, crystalized in the first verse:
On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat
Anticipation is the teens and twenties. A restless desire to be anywhere but the present. Life is wide-open, full of potential. The now sucks, but the future is open, there to be molded by fantasy, dreams and aspirations. One morning happiness will just appear it seems. The right woman to make everything right. "She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running / Like a water color in the rain." Wow! Finally, at last. Happiness:
She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
That is youth, or at least mine. Only a little of it was reality. Most of it was my imagination. But I did have a couple of weeks when a female friend from Germany came to visit while I was in college. We went on a long road trip from Dallas to Big Bend National Park and crossed the Rio Grande on a row boat to Boquillas, Mexico, spent the day strolling dusty calles and playing with the village children. So there was a woman in a country where they turn back time. I had my Year of the Cat.
Yesterday though, I was more focused on the final verse:
Well morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away your choice you've lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat
Recently Marci and I decided we would have to leave Dry Creek. The teaching positions we've been waiting for five years in this county of two people per square mile opened for others and not us. It seemed it was finally time to leave this fantasy and move on to the city and reality.
Listening to "Year of the Cat" yesterday, I realized I have two loves: Marci and Dry Creek. As a child, I couldn't wait to get away from here, but from college on, I have been driven by the desire to return. Because Dry Creek is in a rural area and employment is scarce, in a very real sense, it is in another land. Children grow up, go off to college, get careers, and spend the rest of their lives trying to get back to this area. For 13 years I taught in Arizona, spending nine months each year pining for my chance to return to Dry Creek each summer.
Finally, five years ago I decided to heck with it, I'm going to live the dream instead of simply measuring out my life in spoonful reality. Without any jobs in place, we packed up and moved to this piece of paradise. Although I didn't regret that decision--five years is five years after all--it seemed like the time was right to move on.
But in the process of letting the residential treatment center where I teach know I was looking for employment elsewhere, I was offered a healthy raise. I discussed it with Marci.
Well morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away your choice you've lost your ticket
So you have to stay on.
Marci is my life, not Dry Creek. I will follow her wherever she needs to go. Yet, in a weird way, Dry Creek is the other woman. She draws me, she dazzles me, she occupies my dreams and my time. I guess my mom had to deal with the same thing. My step dad was always outside spending time with this land, often only a block or two away, but away none the less lost in his secret connection with his other woman, this place--a daily wild, exotic escape from reality.
Life is uncertain. To learn and grow we must free ourselves from the demands of the selfish "I". We must be willing to let go, eventually, of everything except our connection to our creator. So, I can't say we'll be here forever, but for now, we're going to stay
in the year of the cat.
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| The van stuck in the driveway Christmas time 2006 before our house was built. |
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| Mitchell helps grandpa burn at the bottom of "the big canyon". |
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| My favorite maple grove on the property |
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| Rio in the apricot tree |
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| Rio and Everest with Grandpa at the front gate of Dry Creek |
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| After Dad died, I erected this sign near the apricot trees he loved. |
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| The line of cottonwood Lloyd and I planted along the road |
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| A piece of old farm equipment that came with the property |
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| Everest at Dry Creek |
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| The first garden bed outback of our new house |
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| Planting the first vegetables. |
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| What led to building Marci's shade house. |
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| It starts to come together. |
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| Adding a fountain and dining |
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| The front walk and grapevine |
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| Marci feeds our new chickens. |
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| A fine fall morning at Dry Creek |
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| Fall snow on Mount Katherine |
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| Winter at Dry Creek |
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| Our dog Darth at Dry Creek. She loved this place. |
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| Building the grill pad out back. |
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| The grill pad with its new deck. |
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| Gravel for the eating area |
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| The deck stained, the planters hung. |
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| The grill pad complete |
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| The main backyard path |
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| Marci's cut-flower garden in the fall |
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| Grapes ripening in the Hanging Bucket Garden |
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| The new swing in Marci's Shade House |
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| Sunflower Station, step 1 |
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| Sunflower Station, step 2 |
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| Sunflower Station, step 3 |
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| Sunflower Station, step 4 |
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| Sunflower Station, step 5 The work and escape continues |
