GiGi Amateau

What I'm Thinking About

February 2008

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? Percy Bysshe Shelley, the British Romantic poet, and Nancy Cook, my twelfth grade English Literature teacher, turned me into a secret poet with these eight words. When Ms. Cook taught Ode to the West Wind what exploded for me is this: Language connects us to each other, to nature, to our Creator -- even across death and time. Shelley wrote West Wind in 1819; I first read the poem in 1982. Since then I have drawn comfort from this one line whenever I have found myself in a harsh winter (i.e. when life has sucked due to a broken heart, unemployment, poor health, general malaise, or if you've visited here before, you know my coldest and loneliest winter has been the death of my grammy last April).

Winter is not the end of the story. Spring is around the bend and spring brings with it new life, new promises, and always hope. Grammy strengthens me still; cracks me up daily, and when I am tempted to act saucy or sassy she urges me to remember who I am. Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't, but that's an entirely different poem. Acting sassy? Now, sassy poetry is not for February. Sassy poetry is for reciting by the river, on a hot night in June. We'll get to that later this year. I'm thinking Anna Akhmatova.

Since 1966 the Cerulean Warbler population in the United States has declined more than -3% each year due to degradation of habitat and deforestation. This tiny, fair blue warbler needs large tracts of old-growth, hardwood forest to survive. Why I love the Cerulean: their main source of food is pesky insects (moths, beetles, weevils) found high up in the forest canopy and by eating these insects they keep the forest healthy, the cerulean reminds me of my Grammy's eyes, and ceruleans come to breed each spring in the Sipsey Wilderness near Wren, AL and in the Shenandoah National Park, among other places.

To learn more visit:
audubon2.org/watchlist/viewSpecies.jsp?id=64

Just off the Natchez Trace, in Lauderdale County, Alabama, a man named Tom Hendrix, who is a granddaddy if there ever was a granddaddy, has built a stone wall honoring a walk taken by his great-grandmother. The wall tells the story of her forced journey to Oklahoma on the trail of tears and her decision to walk home to the Tennessee River. This story is powerful; this place is sacred. If you go there bring a stone and bring a quiet heart.

Read about Tom Hendrix and the memorial he's built:
www.ifthelegendsfade.com/author.html

I met a mule and her name was FIRECRACKER! For seven years after a horse accident, I rode feeling scared every time -- breathing too fast or not breathing at all. Then I met Firecracker and Ike. All it took to get my head right was a surefooted mule, a kind quarter horse, and the wild forests of Virginia. Deep in the woods, beyond tangled vines, well past ruins of old CCC camps, over felled trees, down and back up ravines, you come to face and reckon with yourself. You either cross the river and jump up the bank or you break down. Riding a mule into the mountains helps, because a mule will take care of you when you don't know how. A mule teaches you a whole new layer of the word trust. My friend Firecracker, of Virginia Mountain Outfitters, helped me release my seven-year hold on fear. Ike, a quarter horse, helped, too. He taught me to play polo. He responded to my rekindled confidence with enough good judgment of his own that with Ike I found I was breathing again and wanting to canter through the forest!

If you're ever near Buena Vista, Virginia, check out Virginia Mountain Outfitters for a trail ride into the mountains that you'll always remember:
virginiamountainoutfitters.com/trail_rides