The Other Flute

Last Week of April 2008

The “other flute” rolled off the trunk of the car in the windy campground of pine filled Bandelier National Monument in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. That day I wasn’t paying attention and it fell off the trunk while I was having a delightful conversation with a fellow hiker and only hours and miles later did I realize it was gone.

I retraced every mile, every stop to find it, to no avail.
After weeks, phone calls, and searches later, back in Albuquerque, while learning to breathe with the pollen and smoke, I visited Ingrid, the Flute Maker, to see if any other flute called to me. I was tired, wheezy and really not up to decisions regarding new flutes (or much of anything else for that matter). AND, I missed the delight of playing the lost one. In her post event inventory, Ingrid had one flute that would do though it did not call to me the way the last one had. The need to play was greater than recreating the prior sound so I bought it. I was leaving in a few days for Yellowstone…

June 13, 2008

I sit at the river, watching the sunlight on greens, blues, browns and white—water, sky, forest, bird and snow. The flute softly sings of warm days to come, of disappearing snow, of goslings and Mother Beaver with her young. It talks of the impermanence of time, the changing of seasons, and the variance in life stages. It tells of quiet and of windswept places hit by roaring storms, the ever-changing symphonies of Life.

With the “other flute” that now sings (or so I am told) in ancient Anasazi caves, I might in all this beauty, have just floated away on the heart notes that it sang. Instead, the little replacement keeps me here feeling the water breezes mixed with melted snow. It carries me midstream to Goose Haven on One Pine Island. It adds humility, surprise in small things, a fresh look at the startling Life mix of this place with its diminutive, wisp of a sound. We are getting to know one another at this spot by the Yellowstone River…and being with what is.


The Hong Kong Mystic
June 18, 2008

A sudden short-lived downpour brought crisp clarity to the early evening sky. From the second story window in the store’s dorm, I saw Tommy, standing out in the middle of the field in a t-shirt that says, “How can I think outside the box, if you don’t let me out?” Tommy is from Hong Kong. Unlike most of the Chinese students here, Tommy was born and raised in Hong Kong not the mainland. He is very tall and thin and every move he makes is an all out event of arms, legs, smile and teeth. Facing west, he was standing as still as if his long body had been planted there.

I went down and stood watching the sky with him. After a bit, he said that he was waiting for purple to come to the rosy sunset. We stood and watched in silence until the last of the color faded and then he turned to me with a big smile on his face and said with open arms, “ Here, every day is a new surprise!”

What a description that is, for this forest and lake filled wonder of a place!

When huge cumulous began to appear on the darkening horizon, he offered, “At home I watched the news; here the sky tells me everything I need to know about the world.” With the lack of technology combined with the ever present intimacy of the living/working conditions here at Fishing Bridge General Store, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, one does begin to lose the sense of time and the outer world and to feel the deeper rhythms of this planet Earth.

We stood taking it in, until even Tommy became conscious that the temperature was rapidly dropping. Then saying good night, we walked back to our respective dorms.

June 21, 2008

Today is the last day of a five-day work shift. I run up and down a flight of stairs 20 or 30 times a day stocking clothing of the t-shirt and sweatshirt variety alternating with days on the cash register. Initially, I was to be a “food server” and then after two ten and a half hour days of that, I justifiably concluded that Life is way too short and way too precious for anything of that nature at this juncture. My legs tell me that they will be happy for the two-day reprieve, as does my psyche. The river calls me and the possibility of just “doing nothing” is delighting the corners of my awareness. This really IS “another world” here, as much due to the distance from anything else and the very communal living and working conditions, as it is to the astonishing presence of Nature. The students from Russia, Colombia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China are a joy to be with and the opportunity to practice Spanish or on occasion use my rather rusty French is very gratifiying. More later….There's a new slide show below--“YNP Three Weeks in June 2008”. Enjoy and Much Love to You All, Emily
Emily A. Easton©2008