A Short Placer Creek Outing

Oh, the To-Do list is on my desk, but I scarcely look at it.  Is there anything that can’t be put off or ignored completely?  I make a cup of yerba matte with honey and coconut milk, sipping at it as I write in my journal.  What do I really want to do today?  Well, an outing with my camera, of course.  So, I decide to head up Moon Pass Road along Placer Creek to see if there is any frost or snow at a higher elevation.

I drive up a fair ways, but no frost and only the highest mountains around have snow at their crests.  I turn around at a wide spot and decide to explore as long as I am up here.  A mere couple feet off the road and I am walking into a rain forest – dark, moist, mossy.  Kind of spooky, in a way.  If Clifford had come with me, we might have hiked in a ways, but as it is, I just go far enough to get a feel for the place without loosing site of the car.  Guess it doesn’t help that we just read last night about murders on one of the passes outside Wallace just a few years back.  Should I let that stop me – no – but I wonder about Bigfoot being here; it feels like a Bigfoot type of place.  I walk further in as I take photos of the little stream and after a while, I feel more relaxed and connected to the mysterious beauty of this forest.  I’ll come back another day when I can stay longer.

I head back down the road and turn off on a narrow side-road that goes goodness-knows-where.  I like crossing the bridge, as Placer Creek is right here close at hand unobscured by brush.

I’m tempted to stay parked right in the middle of the bridge to drink my hot tea and do some book editing.  But it is a one-laner and I wouldn’t want to block someone coming up behind me.   Instead, I drive on down the road until I find another place where I can park right by the creek without being in anyone’s way.   It is a habit of mine – trying not to be in anyone’s way, even when no one is there,,,   maybe that is one duck that I should let run wild.

I sit in my car with the engine off and the window down, listening to the gurgling of the creek as I edit, until I get too cold.   I realize there is a part of me trying to find the missing piece of the life-puzzle that was left behind in New Mexico.  Of course, I can’t get that particular piece back, but sitting by the creek helps sooth the yearning.  It’s odd, but my life feels like I am trying to work with more than one puzzle and while each had or has its good pieces, I can’t seem to combine them into one workable picture.  Even if that is not truly how it is, that is how it feels to me right now.  But the piece I am working with today, seeking and sharing beauty, has always been there… and it is good.