Category: nature

Shift the Route

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Something happened this weekend I think you’ll appreciate. A gateway life hack to a creative life.

I was in San Antonio, the tail-end of wildflower season, and I was bent on seeing fields of bluebonnets like they show in pictures. I wanted flowers at my feet like the pioneers met when they first crossed the country. Flowers as far as the eyes could see.

We headed northeast for Washington County, the proclaimed bluebonnet capital of Texas. We had the name of a town and list of country roads. The wildflower report 3 days prior said bluebonnets were waining, but to my mind, waining’s not the same as ‘gone.’

Preferring a slower pace, settling into the road, we drove backroads and country highways. We love seeing the countryside and how folks live. I expected surprises. There always are.

We saw green lawned parks filled with families beside lakes and rivers. And historic 19th century town centers looking frontier. I wondered on the people who settled those then-outposts. I felt no inspiration to stop, tho, and at two hours, I was done. I didn’t want the last 35 miles. We’d not seen one bluebonnet or tiny wildflower the entire day. On the way home we stopped at the new IKEA for the fry pan I wanted.

Next day, I was tired, feeling low. But we revived the idea and I found a different route. A loop to the northwest promising best ever bluebonnet views. We agreed we’d turn back if nothing showed, flowers or adventure, in 45 min.

Within 20 minutes we were in the famed Texas Hill Country, and it was gorgeous! Rocky, green….and covered with gold-yellow buttercups. They bordered the road forever in front of us. Spread like carpets out either side. They hugged up to the edges of homes, up under bushes and trees. They reminded me of happy gangs. I noticed folks mowed a small swath for yard and path to cars & barns, let the little flowers dance. I liked that, and thought how magical it must feel, living in a field of flowers.

Soon, orange spikes & purple dotted the yellow. And large low-lying pads of white and pink primrose. As we went higher, burnt orangey-red mixed in. (We looked them up later: Red Blanket flowers). And then, their places flipped. We traveled thru burnt orangey-red, the little gold-yellow buttercups mixed in. 

I wasn’t prepared for the thrill of the bluebonnets. The blue so distinctive, it seemed it belonged only to that flower. Like a Carolina Blue sky, seen nowhere else and hard to describe. Pictures don’t exactly get it. They took my breath.

I noticed more ranches in this higher country, and where the land hadn’t been mowed or grazed, flowers filled the fields.

I was half starved a good part of the way, every single place (including fast food) closed after 1:45 Sunday, and I didn’t care. I had hours & endless miles of gold-yellow, burnt orangey-red, and that bluebonnet blue. Spots of other mixed in. For a surprise, fields with frilly white poppies for a mile or so. “This is what heaven’s like,” I said.

When we whipped in at a small ‘public restroom’ sign, pulled up to the little cinder-block building, I wasn’t prepared for the surprise there, either. “I’m fine,” I told my husband. “I’ve used outhouses in the middle of nowhere.” And as if angels got there before me, it was the full monty of best roadside public toilet: clean toilets, toilet paper, hand-soap, running water, and plenty of clean paper towels. Once out, I saw the strip of land was named a park. A few shadeless benches set high above a small, most likely damned, river, the banks down to the water encased in concrete. A man sat sideways on one of the benches. Legs crossed, back hunched low, he smoked a cigarette as he stared at the ground. He hadn’t moved since we got there. I looked around, and supposed watching cars cross the bridge could be a passtime.

Later, my heart filled, my Soul fed, feeling full of gratitude, I asked myself ‘What happened? This wild shift in my mood’.

We changed the route. We didn’t go back the same way, hoping for something we knew wasn’t missed. 

And I changed my expectations the minute I saw flowers. The fields became a treat.

That night I dreamt I had giant white wings. Gold-yellow, burnt orangey-red, and blueonnet blue – the colors I saw all day – poured over them.

My invitation to you…when it’s not working, when it’s clear it’s not gonna work, shift the route. And shift your expectations if that’s what it takes so you can see what’s there. Open to the magic. I swear, it’s worth it.

Getting to Wise. A Writer’s Life.
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The Heart of the Message in Spring

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“Somewhere around the corner of your mind there is a place
where Angels and Dolphins dance.”
~ Hannah Swain
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Spring in the New Mexico high desert is a subtle thing. Swings from 40° highs to 60s. Big wind. Flowers in full bloom against warm adobe walls that are barely buds elsewhere.

This year we had a ton of snow. Every week, water-soaked ground. Melt from the mountain filling the reservoirs above town. The junipers got happy early, donning their thick brown coats of pollen begging a breeze to carry the little beasts off. And boy, did it. We’re a town snarfling, clawing eyes that feel on fire, walking foggy brained from lost sleep. The store shelves wiped clean of all remedies, natural or pharma, that promise relief. And still, I headed out for dawn walks as soon as it warmed above 34°.

Spring brings changes that seem to happen overnight, but oh, not true. The best stuff is as it unfurls. What’s changed. What’s not.

The bunnies are still at the house I’ve found them the past two years. I’m comforted to know they’re still around, haven’t fallen prey to a hawk. Like saying things continue.

Tree branches covered in tiny leaf buds have turned to lace, no longer look like long skinny fingers. The cluster of leaf buds on a tree in my yard looks like moss today. I know the moss’ll turn into tight fists before the baby leaves push to open, when those fists will into small turbans. 

Even the sky’s changed. Winter’s overcast softening, breaking up like arctic ice. Clouds like islands on flat blue plains. Like giant longboats or submarines sailing by. Puffy, soft gray & palest yellow billows rising from one side, as if dust from wheels of chariots just passed. I can almost see another world up there. I know how all those pictures of a heaven in the clouds came to be.

The light is different, too. It hits the world sooner, softer, rounder, looking warmer. The other day a tree stopped me short. It was so different from anything around I could think it from a parallel dimension. Flat looking, ethereal, suspended in air, as if cut from fragile gold gilt. I recalled once hearing the Navajo/Dine word for dawn means yellow light. In that moment I didn’t think sunlight, I thought gilt.

Right after that big wonder and awe of the gilt tree, I noticed the birds had quieted. I thought how I once actively sought birdsong each morning in an act that felt like saving my Soul. 

We were in Florida, pushed on short notice from our home in a historic neighborhood I loved. Where I walked 9 blocks each dawn to stand on the edge of Tampa Bay, watch light & color on water, a profusion of birds, mullets and dolphins, the sky shift as the sun rose. My path on brick streets lined with oaks, jacarandas, and palms, an eclectic mix of homes and vintage apartment buildings built 1910-1950, in and out of rich fragrance of gardenia, jasmine, fruit blossoms. Sometimes I strode in the dark when bats fly and possums venture across streets. And though our rented home was way far from ideal, I’d often wind thru ten extra blocks on the way home, in love with the magic of palms and the beauty, human and nature.

The place we moved to was very different. It was a circular complex of two-story condos, immaculately landscaped with lawns and lovely palms, three blocks off a continually lit commercial district that wiped night from the sky. Our condo was pristine, completely redone, everything far higher than average. We rejoiced once more having a large kitchen. Every view out the big windows was pleasant.

I often worked at the dining table where I could glance out double glass doors to a narrow lawn that sloped 12 ft. to a strip pond. It was a tad wider than a car lane, and ran the length between two rows of freshly painted units. Tiny flocks of ducks swam onto the bank, napped in the sun. Egrets and a half dozen kinds of herons slow-stepped on stick legs, hunting fish. Dragonflies buzzed, and occasionally the snout of a turtle poked the water’s surface.

Mornings I could walk laps around the circle within the short stucco walls of the complex, see the sky and clouds reflected on the big round lake at the entrance. Or I could escape the forever lit garage and porch lights, go out into the hood. 

The neighborhood was nothing like my complex. Small, simple one story houses, many still with sandy yards. What we’d call ‘old Florida.’ Nothing like the gentrified neighborhood I left. There were big trees, tho, where birds gathered to sing their hearts out. And regular spots mockingbirds stood singing a full-throated chorus to someone on high. I found them all. I found dark places on roads where I could see stars, too. Birdsong and stars were like finding Home for me, and healed me for a day.

What followed that memory was a comment made at the time by someone I thought a friend: Her husband said we moved where we belong. I was confused which he meant, the complex or neighborhood. It didn’t matter I got no answer. Because it felt like a slight, and hurt. Neither were Me.

Walking the last block home, I pondered why this memory settled on me now, after my moment of wonder and awe. It took a while to understand…. it was a gift.

That friendship dissolved with never a visit to my new home. I could surmise my assessment right. And what I need to get is my response at the time reflected my feelings. How I saw myself.  Which was…out of place, inside and out. Alone. Wondering if who I am is okay.

That memory was a reminder we learn as much about ourselves by our response to what others say as we learn about the people who utter the words.  And it was a nudge to notice what’s changed.

Spring and that memory, both saying ‘Be Present. Notice.’

Home is still up for me. Perhaps in some way it always will be. What’s isn’t up is my question ‘am I okay.’ I know my insights some call weird are Superpowers. That they’re why I work like Bruce Lee, with a sixth-sense clarity, presence, direct to the heart. With results. I am more than okay.

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You may also enjoy reading my very short first blog, Born Today, about the wonder I felt walking that historic neighborhood. How I answered why I do it when someone asked.

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A Road to Creativity

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I’ve always said I’m not into rituals. It’s not true. I’m out before traffic starts each morning. 6 blocks up, and more than 6 blocks down. It’s a far cry from the 3-1/2 miles I walked for years when I lived in Asheville, NC. And there’s no small group waiting to watch the sunrise with me like I had in St. Pete, FL. It’s OK. I’m letting go of comparisons.

I walk through a park on my route each morning. A grassy expanse two blocks long and more than a half block wide. It’s bordered by tall evergreens and cottonwoods. Some seemingly ancient, their bark thick & deep-grained. One’s missing part of her outer coat on one side, revealing her smooth, hard core. The shape of the outer bark at the opening is draped, gnarly, reminds me of hanging flesh. And is somehow beautiful. Trees that flower each spring are in the mix, too.

At one end of the park is a smallish bed tended by master-gardener volunteers. Irises bloom there now, and it looks like an impressionist painting in the soft morning light. I know later there’ll be bold hollyhocks. Their big, luscious trumpets of frilled edged flowers clustered up thick into straight towers.

‘The Rose Garden’ is at the other end. 4 long tiers of a wide concrete promenade down the middle of hundreds of bushes, a fountain at the bottom. Spots of color teased for weeks. Then almost overnight it was all awash in pinks, reds, corals, and yellows, big and small, begging to be adored. Older residents come in the early hours, snip them with shears for their own private bouquets. When the breeze is right, rose fragrance drifts to the top of the promenade. I’ve put my nose in so many, I know only a few offer this gift. I always stop at the blooms I can count on. One smells like orange sherbet.

The morning walk and this park are my ritual. . . to wake my senses and move my body. To step out of my head and shift the view. To observe with awareness the world around me. Vital for surviving the chaos that reigns across the globe right now. And for writing.

I realized how much it brings me back to center one morning at the top of my Up. The toes in my right foot began to throb so painfully I had to stop. That foot’s had three surgeries. My toes are an ugly mess as a result. Coming so sudden, I thought ‘I’m supposed to pause,” and waited for the Why. I heard the insistent chatter of a male bird working hard for attention of his intended. I watched his dance up and down and fluttering about. I remembered hearing other birds the day before as they chased their hoped for mates. When I stopped at the fountain in the rose garden, I heard each individual drop before the fall of water. The cascade sounding huge in the whisper of breeze thru leaves all around me. At home, I opened my computer to this by author Kim Barnes:

“I am sitting late outside in our yard, which is the forest. To the east, the sound of a night bird I can’t identify–it sounds like a rusty windmill. To the west, a distant neighbor is calling her cat: “Kitty? Kitty?” To the south, a coyote clan is throwing a wild party. A few yards to the north, a gravid doe is stamping and blowing. All around me, beetles and shrews are burrowing beneath the fallen dead needles of winter. The trees are talking, talking, talking. I want to stay out here all night and listen to this dark world.”

Listen.

One day I walked up on a very little bird like a tiny sparrow sitting on the edge of the fountain’s rim, facing the water. Not wanting to disturb it and fearing my shadow might, I stood still for minutes. When it didn’t startle, I took a chance, sat down 3 ft. from its perch. It stayed. The two of us together. Then, slowly, it moved 2 ft further away from me. As I sat, I felt random drops sprinkling my skin, and realized the little bird faced the fountain for the spray like a soft shower. As I watched, it bent forward, scooped water into its beak from the wall of the pool. Again and again, scoop and drink. It was still there when I left ten minutes later.

Be still. Notice. Understand.

Other days I’ve seen small flowers growing in the gutter. The petals soft pink, delicate, tender. I’ve stood besotted over my first glimpse of the soft blush of mauves, cream, lavenders, and faintest hint of green on the fresh blooms of a yucca. I’ve watched a raven as big as a 2 yr. old walk upright across the street, birds twirling in a mating dance high overhead,  and I know where the bunnies are. I’ve found roots that broke ground & wore down to look like large foot prints. Observed the white and pink clover spread day by day across the park lawn, and noted the slow addition of plants in a neighbor’s landscape project. I know the visitors, like the hawks that stayed three days.

See the everyday unseen.

I’d not intended to live close to The Rose Garden. I’m 2 blocks away by accident, or perhaps not. Here on my yearly sojourn since moving away, squeezed to find a home in November (read, low inventory), only weeks left before I returned east to pack, I was bent. I know this town, how I live in it. I knew what I wanted and yes, needed. I preferred the north side. It wasn’t looking good when I said, “OK, angels, I’ll take the rose garden.” The next two houses that showed up were right here. I mean, the.next.two.

There’s a bigger plan.

Twyla Tharp’s book, “The Creative Habit” has been on my bookshelf more than 10 yrs. I’m reading it for the first time. She talks about rituals for getting into a creative space. I’ve written about the same in my book “The Writer’s Block Myth.” And yet, her’s opened my eyes to the fullness here.

One day, drawn to walk up the opposite side of the park than the one I usually walk down, I saw for the first time a huge tree rising above the others. The canopy of the giant is full, tall, shaped like a perfect soft-edged cone. The bottom of the canopy’s immensely wide. A van could drive under and never graze a branch or feel a drop of rain. The first day I stood beneath it and looked up I was awed by the thick, stair-step arms of branches that radiated out like rivers. I came back with my camera. In the photos those branches look like giant undulating spider arms. The lower branches off one side below the stair-step, the ones I felt were arms of Grandmothers who came before, didn’t look that way at all. And the shelter of her canopy. . .shattered by light. It was impossible to capture what I saw and felt.

Each morning I walk to that big tree, stand under and look up, up, up. And as I walk back toward home, hunting the sprinkling of clover in the grass with hopes bees find them before the mowers, I wonder what exactly this ritual is about. This relationship with a tree that feels intimate and full of discovery. Perhaps it’s about being alive, connected to the mystery I can touch. Perhaps it’s about cracking open to Creativity. Perhaps all of that. After all, it’s the heart of my work.

  • What’re your rituals for getting back to center when you feel bent?
  • What rituals do you have before you begin writing or creative work?
  • When you’re out & about, what do you notice around you most ?

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The Color of Autumn

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Fall in my neck of northern New Mexico is about studio tours. Artists across valleys and in small communities display their creations & welcome visitors. It’s a decades-old tradition. Many of us regulars look forward to visiting our favs. Know there may be cookies, apples, or posole. One I’ve attended every year since 1994 is the Abiquiu tour in the Chama River Valley. These days as much for the place as the artists.

The Chama valley is where I take visitors. For me, it glows, and holds the magic of northern NM like no place else. Not even the dramatic stretches beyond that lead to Ghost Ranch. This valley speaks of land and people. Orchards, vineyards, lavender farms, the Rio Chama winding in big loops thru it.

Yellow is the color of autumn in New Mexico. We get a few russets, a bit of burnt orange, but it’s yellow that we see everywhere.

Sunshine groves of aspens that stretch swaths across the high mountains. Luminous golden yellow cottonwoods seemingly lit from inside that line waterways, sprout on mountain sides, cluster in valleys and on old homesteads. Fields & roadsides of sage green chamesa crowned with fuzzy looking yellow flowers. Mediums & neglected patches of ground covered with leggy yellow daisies.

The sky was clear the day we headed to the studio tour. Writing this, remembering how my friend and I felt lucky for such a day, I realize clear skies used to be expected. I couldn’t wait for it when I landed back here during those years I lived on the east coast. Then there was the year of wildfires. The smoke coming up from Arizona, and all directions around Santa Fe. But it cleared. Then (I can’t remember when), I noticed how many days the skies seemed bleached. A shroud of haze hanging on the horizon. It reminded me of my visit to the Grand Canyon five years ago. Me wondering if it would ever clear as the smoke from the electric power plant on Navajo lands continued.

This is smog from Albuquerque that blows up, my friend says. It’s smoke from the entire west up in flames, I think. We are all linked.

Our last stop on tour was the lavender farm. We sat at a table on the porch of the small wooden dwelling they call their teahouse. We sipped lavender tea, looked out on fields striped with rows of short domes of pruned lavender under a solid blue sky lifting to heaven. Light filtering thru the cottonwoods at the borders tinged the air golden.

A half dozen people sat or strolled about, quiet and mellow. So, when a woman came onto the porch and brightly proclaimed the sun strong for this time of year, she stood out. Not from here, my friend and I  said. The sun’s always strong in the high desert, even in winter.

In 1993 I drove across country to live six weeks in the Berkeley Hills above San Francisco and get a  hypnosis certification. I rented a small room in a house high above the bay, and 6 days a week drove over the mountain to the small town of Lafayette. It was a really small town then. Not having near the wealth that predominates the township now. I don’t remember much about the place, except the 2 pump gas station I filled up at. The first time I pulled in, I got out of the car. A guy who looked and spoke as if of middle eastern descent came over, chastised me, told me to get back in the car. It took me a moment to realize he was going to pump the gas. Full service stations had all but disappeared in North Carolina where I lived. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m not from here.’ The next moment has never left me. His expression and demeanor immediately changed, softened. His voice turned quieter, kinder. I’m not from here. He’s not from here. We shared something, including understanding that feeling of ‘not from here.’

This wasn’t what I thought about when the gal walked by where we sat, tho. ‘You’re covered with flowers,’ I said. She looked down at her blouse and the large, vibrant, clearly defined flowers on a white background. I guess I am, she said. She was from Charleston, SC, a place I know. We chatted briefly.

Somehow it came up – yellow is the color of autumn in New Mexico. I told her how the trees seem to be lit with thousand watt lightbulbs at certain times a day. She quieted as she looked across the grounds and up the mountains in the near distance. Noted one tree tinged russet. Then said she thought she’d hang around, not return to Ghost Ranch right away, as planned.

17 yrs. later, while in Bluefield, WV doing research on the coal fields for my second novel, a friend offered to help me see what I was looking at, as she put it. She interpreted the landscape and culture, gave me perspectives. Like the sun is always strong in thin air. My experience of the place and understanding of where I was shifted in magical ways. I wasn’t thinking of this, either, when I greeted the woman from Charleston.

In fact, I’m not sure why I spoke to her. It might’ve been a way to mollify my initial dismissal for myself. And I think it’s because I felt something in her besides the space she took. She truly was earnest and engaged with being there. And completely unselfconscious about it! I simply wanted to share what I love, that I’m always in awe of, so she could love it, too.

In the end, I gave her a way to see what she was looking at, like my friend did for me in West Virginia. And a way for us to connect, like with the guy at the gas station in California.

The experience at the lavender farm has dogged me for days, and just now I understand why. I talk often about observing with awareness. Awareness the key word. That experience illuminated a whole new level of what awareness means. It’s more than presence and noticing. It includes the meaning we don’t know. It includes the Other – nature, human, place, culture. It’s allowing our understanding to expand.

It’s the heart of the work I do with writers. Allowing their relationships with themselves, their work, and their lives to deepen & shift toward what they desire. Because unless a hurricane drowns your world or a fire swallows your life whole, change happens in shifts. And presence to the creative process is about flow. Constantly changing in small shifts.

It’s the questions answered in the retreats and workshops I offer, such as the women’s retreat with amazing visionary artist Kendall Sarah Scott that’s happening on the full moon in March. Questions such as how do we go toward what we’re drawn to? How do we see all that we look at, and engage with awareness? How do we take what we see, and deepen our relationship to ourselves and this world that seems to burning, drowning, and crumbling in so many corners? How do we find our allies, the ones who support us feeling stronger, more alive, connected, and full of good stuff?

It’s a journey.


Tell me. . .What sparks you when you look around?
I’ll tell you a secret. . .The field of alfalfa really was this green, the sky really that high, and those trees really that luminous.

**Special Thanks to my angel messenger this week: The woman from Charleston, covered in flowers.

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Another small journey. Getting to Wise.
A Writer’s Life.
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Write as the World Turns

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“From most points of the universe you can’t see stars. You may vaguely see a few smudges of a few galaxies. Thus our Earth vantage point is rare and very friendly and
sparkly compared to the loneliness of most of the universe.”
~ Catalogue of the Universe

I’ve always had a dream to go into space. To see Earth from where stars dwell. I once read every astronaut felt changed inside once s/he saw Earth from space. Something deeply spiritual blossomed inside them, a reverence, whether they stated it in religious terms or not. None felt smaller. All felt more one with the Universe.

I feel that way when I look up at the stars. And when I look at nature. Knowing I can never comprehend the vast worlds that exist in either sky or this planet.

Many years ago my husband and I visited Oregon. Landed in Portland, drove thru the Columbia River Gorge, then down the coast, returning to Portland up thru the Willamette Valley. Every moment of every.single.day looked like a picture postcard. I stood at tidepools with rainbows stretched over me. Gazed out onto the most beautiful valley patchworked with flowering herbs. Rode across Crater Lake, the bluest of blue water. And the crown jewel was the Columbia River Gorge. It left a lifetime impression on both of us. Pictures are pretty, and there’s no way to convey the slightest inkling of the majesty. Now the gorge burns. Nearly 40,000 acres scorched to tinders with 7% contained after a week.

We smell smoke here in Santa Fe. One morning the mountains on the western horizon were indistinguishable, covered by a brown haze. Montana’s burning, too, so could be from anywhere, I thought.

I planned a trip to Oregon in October for an speaking workshop. I looked up smoke reports. NASA has pictures. Smoke obscures the entire Pacific NW, goes east to St. Louis, streams across the US on the jet stream. I imagine it sailing across oceans, like dust from the Sahara in Africa does to South America.

I’ve been thru this before. Arizona and too much of New Mexico burned all around me one summer. The sky turning yellow, the sun blood red. My body’s reaction to chemicals and smoke extreme. I won’t go to Portland.

Here’s the thing. . .the fire at the gorge was started by teens flipping firecrackers into a ravine. Their response when someone called them on it was smart-mouthed and flippant. They live where undeveloped nature is their backyard. What got lost on them?

As I drove out the other day, I thought how we humans may be the only species who willingly, consciously despoil our beds, this planet we call Home. And perhaps the only species who will self-extinct. Harsh, unpopular thought? Perhaps. And it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s time for major shifts.

Nature’s all around us, even in cities without parks. A flower can’t help but grow in the crack of a sidewalk if let alone. A bug will find a plant in a pot. The wind and birds care nothing of buildings in the way.

We start now, teach the kids everyday to look and see the world as a place of fascination. Because when they’re taught natural sciences, are taken out to observe the natural world with a guide, they appreciate it and become protective. They turn into monitors and stewards of creatures and the land. Creeks restored, prairie lands nurtured, habitats protected. And they’re not afraid to speak up to grown-ups in defense.

We re-teach ourselves. Writers observe with awareness. I say let’s sit ten minutes somewhere close to the ground. Write what we see and feel and hear. Make it part of our writing practice.

  • How does the air feel on our skin.
  • What does the light look like thru a leaf or blade of grass, or off rough bark.
  • What do we notice about a bee on the sweat of cheese in the sun, or the path of a small ant.
  • What happens when a cloud passes over.
  • What’s the sound of the rhythm of wings overhead.
  • What’s our heart doing.

The Columbia River Gorge will not recover in my lifetime, or even my grandson’s. I say, let’s come Home. Tonight, turn off the porch lights. Look up to the friendly, sparkly Universe above. In the aftermath of the hurricane’s rage, when no city lights pollute the sky, look up. After all, we are stardust.

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One last thought for those where the natural world’s crazy, turned you sideways. . .

Please be aware forest animals are fleeing the flooding, hurricanes, & fires, and may show up in our yards. The forestry dept. urges us to bring our animals in at night. Let the wild ones pass thru. Put out buckets of water for them. They are scared, exhausted, have lost their homes, and need to refuel to find new ones. Just like us.

 

Yes, Please!

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