Names

I can’t quite express my contentment that morning.
The pastoral vistas that silenced me as we moved further into the days' journey.

Thick, green moss softly clinging to tree trunks, solidly hugging houses, senselessly growing on abandoned cars, that green on everything, that green and its need to be everywhere made my breath sink deeper, and rise higher. Neither the moss nor my breath could help it.
It is nature.

As always, it is exhilarating to travel new terrain. Today was in the hills between the sea and the mountains. In Denver we call this between-terrain “foothills” (except in Denver there is a prairie instead of a sea).

Precarious by car, deep ravines, rivers to cross, bumpy beyond belief. I am happy with these explorations. The drivers know these roads so for them it’s just work, for me, it’s a daily adventure, a journey into one more magic kingdom.

Her husband, 87 years old, bearded, kindly, was slightly bent at the shoulders, working diligently on a pile of wood. Each piece he cut was as if it had been measured with laser precision. His work was slow, and his outcome, the woodpile, was beautiful. The rooster crowed while he worked, announcing instructions as they seem to do everywhere. Mikaeliyan Azne, the patient, was a jolly, hefty Caucasian woman with diabetes. Her blood pressure was sky high, her blood sugar was sky high. I guess the sky is a good place for her, it seems to suit her well.
Being a pushy doctor, I exalted her with wisdom and cautions then dispensed her pills as if I were giving her communion. Then I receive the Abkhaz ritual: blessings of health from the host, a gift ( which could be nuts, flowers, candy, typical juice made with bread dough - yeasty and nasty….). This ritual is something I now cherish. I know enough Russian to hear familiar words, to recognize a few phrases of bestowing good health, long life and happiness. I respond with my well rehearsed “thank you very much, pleasure to meet you” which sounds like “ochen spa seeba, priat na paz na com itza”.
Smiles, of pleasure from them, from me.

I saw some deep blue irises as we drove away, down a narrow path. I have some in my front yard in Denver, except they aren’t quite so deep in their blueness. I was told they were Siberian Irises. I have always thought of Siberia as some place so far away, so utterly unimaginable, that it wasn’t really REAL. It was like calling something Bohemian, or Mongolian. They are ideas, images, but hardly a place. But now, I recognize Siberia is just a place north of here, yes, quite a ways, but it is a place with many of the same stock as home, the same stock of flowers, deep blue Irises and the same stock of people, rugged, independent. Siberia, the Caucuses, Abkhazia, Mongolia,…..are just places, not really so far from any of us, with flowers and people so lovely, so unique they deserve a name.

In my human-way, I legitimized some bits of nature by calling them a name.
Meanwhile, nature kept being her usual self, beautiful, harsh, mysterious. She didn’t really need a name.

To you who read and journey with me, named by me and unnamed, I send my love,
genie