December 9th and 10th

Looking back to September and October

After August, we had to get away.

Not on a plane. On the road. Sometimes a long stretch of the highway is the only tonic that will do the trick.

The summer between my final high school years, we were assigned reading for next year’s English AP course. I can’t recall if it was for junior or senior year. I also don’t recall what the other book was, although I remember it being equally enjoyable; it just didn’t have the lifelong impact that Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon would. I had no idea how vast the United States was until I read that book. But reading it did more than that: it created a permanent picture of America in my mind, an America that certainly no longer exists now, but had likely stopped existing when I read the book. But it’s always Yesterday during some Time. The year of his journey was 1978, the book was published in 1982, and I was reading it in the early or mid-90s. It introduced me to travel writing and, without then having words for it, the concept of a spiritual quest. It also showed me that there were others (I didn’t view them as ‘writers’ yet!) who were as interested in others’ stories as I was. William Least Heat-Moon was not a religious person, then or now, and yet his writing opened a new portal for me for finding one’s way around the complex highway which was my own life. The book became a metaphorical blueprint for getting on the road when looking for nothing in particular, which is to say, needing to get away to find everything again.

So, in September we went to visit Jamie’s aunt and cousins in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.

“With a nearly desperate sense of isolation and a growing suspicion that I lived in an alien land, I took to the road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.”  ― William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways.

Texas really is its own country.

Jamie’s cousins–we hadn’t seen them in too long–had planned a wonderful visit to celebrate his birthday which included rest and exploring. It was hard to select photos!

A group of friends celebrating friendship at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.

Fell in love with this mural in Carrollton, a city in Dallas, Denton, and Collin counties.

Why not? Bishop Arts District, Dallas.

October: pumpkin love and something new

I knew I wasn’t able to be with my nieces and nephew for Halloween this year, so I went to visit family earlier.

While it was a very unseasonably warm, even for southern California, here in New Mexico the season had turned to balloons for the annual Balloon Fiesta in October.

And then I got lucky by discovering a collagraph workshop!

I had had no time since August to even imagine written words….between work, teaching (note, the two no longer mean the same thing), us, family, my lack of headspace…so, I decided to learn something completely new: collagraphs! Collagraphy is a printmaking process in which materials are applied to a rigid substrate. It requires creating a collage matrix with textured papers and materials and then pulling prints using colorful Akua Intaglio inks. Lots of playing with textures and colors. Lots of process without worrying about the end product. Lots of being okay with not knowing how something will turn out. Lots of imagining that which isn’t visible. When it comes to writing, I need to ‘see’ in my mind in order to write, especially fiction, but when it comes to creating art, I had to learn how to see that which isn’t there. Jamie says that people who study art are taught to both see what is and isn’t there. Magicians! I am not a visual artist and I don’t have any professional training; so, I did the best I could. It brought me a lot of joy because I didn’t expect anything spectacular from my efforts.

Beth is an artist, an art teacher, and offers these amazing creative workshops out of her studio space in the Cedar Crest mountains. Serendipitously, I went to Cedar Crest mountains for horseback riding back in September, so as to be without thinking, and learned about her workshops. Wanting to be near a horse (or the sea) never led me astray.