Jar of Glass: Words Collected by Tamara Lopez

 Dear Joshua,    Recently, a wonderful man who I had the honor of meeting on several occasions passed away way too soon. As I was driving home from Redding today, I thought about him and the last conversation I had with him. I told him that I had not been writing, but I was dreaming about it. I would wake up in the middle of the night and the words "You are a writer" would be imprinted in my brain. He told me, "Well, then you need to write." It was so simple, but sometimes the things we know in our heart need to be said out loud. As I was thinking about that conversation, my mind began to focus on you and a letter composed itself in my head. I thought about if I really needed to write it or if you just knew, and then I thought about what this man had said to me, "Well, then you need to write," so here I am seven years after your death, writing you a letter.     Sometimes when I have a moment to myself, when the obligations of life are not calling me in eve...

   As of May, I "own" a lawn, a front one and a back one, in fact. As of August, a gopher has laid claim to the front lawn, and where there was once a green, lush, unmarred bed of grass, there is now the construction of an elaborate gopher mansion with brown mounds of dirt strategically placed to get the choicest grubs. This gopher had no permits, no land title, no consideration of how its presence would affect me. It has taken something that I was proud of and killed it aesthetically (kind of like how strip malls have killed the beauty of the natural landscape). This miscreant gopher has strip malled my front lawn.      When I saw the first mound, I didn't think it was a big deal. It was just an animal trying to survive. I believe in coexistence; I could handle one mound. When I saw the second mound, I did what any person would do in a crisis; I turned to Google .  Google gave me lots of options which seemed to favor non-lethal methods of extraction. Upon...

 Yesterday, I went on an early morning walk on  a road that cuts through the valley allowing for views of the small town on the bank of the river, the rolling pastures, and the fields of green. There is inevitably a sighting of  mountain quail skittering across the road, and the cows and horses stare as the lone wanderer or occasional bike rider passes by. I regularly walk this route because I can walk for miles on end and take in the lazy landscape. Occasionally, a person in a car stops and assumes I am lost and offers a ride. On this particularly walk, I heard the sound of a car pull up behind me and stop, and a man asked through his open window, "Hablas Espanol?" I responded, "Solamente un poquito." He proceeded to ask me where I live. I was not about to give some stranger my address, so I responded in very vague terms. He said, "I have lived here for thirty years and have never seen you. Where do you live?" He was very insistent on knowing where I live...

Yesterday I strained my way up Magee Peak via the Magee Trailhead. I had attempted this hike in June from a different, less steep but significantly longer trailhead that skirted some alpine lakes, but the snow was still too deep, and I felt the prudent thing to do was turn around lest I slip off the mountain and no one was there to witness it. The local Native American tribe had named this peak many years before the Anglo name “Magee” took hold. It was named Che’wah’ko. The Pit River story is that this peak was the origin of most of the animals in the world; salmon, bears, deer came streaming down the mountainside and spread about the world. In 2020 and not being Native American, I cannot hold this story in my heart because it is not my story, but I appreciate the beauty  and sacredness of it, and it made the steep, unforgiving hike up to the peak have more meaning than a pretty landscape of geological interest. I pondered this story as I came down the mountain. I was too busy tel...

After about two months of being isolated in the Intermountain area with my son, my mornings have begun to consist of opening my eyes, remembering that I am in lock down, and quickly switching my mind set to be grateful. This particular morning the sky was overcast, a layer of boredom had settled on my eyes, and a lethargy from indulging in way too much sugar had fogged my body and mind. I hardly ever watch movies, let alone in the morning, but this was just where my morning was going. The movie was Just Mercy. As I watched the depths of human insecurity, pain, injustice, and then the highs of justice felt only when there has been great suffering, my face contorted and tears flowed with overwhelming compassion, love, and disgust for the human race. I was shocked that a movie could have such power over my stoic self, but perhaps I was remembering that we are all human and all in this together despite our different types of isolations that are imposed upon us and sometimes in which we i...

Today, a beautiful, warm, spring day and also the day before Easter, Joaquin and I searched for the giant cross on the hill that we had seen so many times in passing. We parked on a dirt road that looked semi-close to the peak, and we forged our way through manzanita. At times, we found fragments of  what looked like used to be roads, and at times, we just took what was the least brushy path upward. On our journey upward, we encountered a hummingbird buzzing amidst the dry brittle branches and the flowering manzanita. Its brilliant green was a gym amidst the browns, tans, and yellows of a dry earth. After a brief pause of complete absorption into the magic of the tiny miracle of nature, we continued upward until we reached Brush Mountain Road. It struck me that we were not going to the top of the hill, but a small mountain. We followed the road upward noticing the monarchs and the orange tipped, white butterflies going about their business. Eventually, we came upon an excava...