The Aurora Project: A new artists’ retreat

From May 1 to 4, a wonderful gathering took place in Preston County, WV. The Aurora Project, a new artists’ retreat center, sponsored a long weekend for eleven writers.

Michele Moure-Reeves, the visionary woman who has brought the Aurora Project into existence during the past seven years — nurtured an amazing dream, written grants, organized fundraisers — first proposed the idea of a mini-retreat for writers about a year ago. I had just come from my Helene Wurlitzer experience and was enthusiastic about the good things that can result from the gift of time to create. When Michele asked me to organize a long weekend, I agreed.    

The First Annual Aurora Project Writers Retreat exceeded all my expectations and those of every writer who participated. We knew we would have time to write. We did not expect that we would have such beautiful living quarters as well as incredibly delicious, healthy food prepared by an inspired cook (Michele did that, too!). And, though I knew the retreat was near Cathedral State Park, I had forgotten what a beautiful, tranquil place it is: full of virgin hemlocks, wildflowers, and birdsong, the perfect place for a writer to walk and reflect. 

Several of us stayed at Brookside (above), the Adirondack-style lodge Michele operates as an inn. (A few stayed in houses owned by Aurora Project board members.) We came together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but otherwise went our solitary ways to read, write, and think. Some people curled up in couches or in cozy nooks at Brookside. Some settled on the huge wraparound porch. Some went to a picnic shelter at the state park. There was plenty of room for everyone.

In the evenings, we had informal readings and time to get to know one another.    

During the days, we were invited to visit the Utterback Farm (you can see the barn in the background of the above photo) and the Old Stone Tavern, an historic building near the Aurora Project.

On Sunday, before we left, we had an opportunity to tour the buildings, all part of an 1880s resort community, that are being renovated to serve as studios for painters, writers, musicians, and photographers who spend time at the Aurora Project. The history of this place is almost as fascinating as the current project!

The Aurora Project will welcome its first fellows in 2009. More information about fellowship opportunities may be found at the Alliance of Artist Communities website: http://www.artistcommunities.org

Another bunny adventure!

I am off to Portland, Oregon to visit some dear old friends. A couple of days ago, when I realized that I was a few hours ahead on my preparations, I took time to create a new artwork. This is a collage of shibori-dyed silk (dyed by Michael Davis) on matboard. It is held in place by fusible interfacing from the fabric store. The artwork is about a foot square and rests on a larger (18-in-square) panel of matboard, only part of which is visible here. 

Hello, West Virginia

This is what Charleston looked like when we pulled in at dusk last night, after spending a lovely afternoon, night, and morning in Tennessee with my sister Michelle and her husband Scott. My town couldn’t have seemed prettier. Even before going home, I stopped the car at the base of the South Side Bridge, and Michael and I took my favorite Charleston walk up the Sunrise Carriage Trail. Dogwood and redbud are blooming. Daffodils are still decorating the riverbank. In my own yard, the trilliums are still in bloom, and lily-of-the-valley is just poking out of the ground. The red maple tree that Susie Wood gave me in the fall of 2005 has survived its second winter and put out many new leaves. It’s spring in West Virginia!

So, hello to West Virginia, farewell to New Mexico. And, for now, farewell to blogging. I’ll leave it up for a while, but probably won’t add to it after today. It has been great fun, and a great way to stay in touch with my friends, but this blog was never meant to be a permanent endeavor. Maybe I’ll begin new one in the future!

It has been a great adventure for me. Thanks for reading! Thanks for looking! Come and visit me in West Virginia.

Magical Memphis

We’ve crossed over the Mississippi, and here we are in Elvis’s town. We arrived just at dark: too late to consider Graceland, but just in time for Beale Street. It was fun to walk down this colorful corridor, only about three or four blocks in length, trying to decide which of many bars to visit. We finally settled on one, and enjoyed the music and a tasty bowl of gumbo.

Here’s another Beale Street view:

We did not ride in this conveyance, but we stopped and admired it for a while:

Happy birthday, Michael!

Today is the big day, and he’s looking pretty good for any age! Actually, this is how Michael looked a couple of days ago when we were hiking the Vista Verde trail in New Mexico. Now we are sitting in a Flying J truck stop in Russelville, Arkansas. It’s not what you’d call an extravagant birthday dinner, but you can’t beat the combination of great bread pudding and wireless access. You can even get a shower here if you want, and they announce it over the loudspeaker: “Shower number three is now ready.”

It’s wonderful to have Michael’s company on the long drive home, and I’m so glad he decided to join me. We had a really pleasant visit in Oklahoma City with Jane Taylor last night, and by tomorrow we hope to be in Columbia, TN, where my sister Michelle and her husband Scott have scheduled a special showing of “Little Miss Sunshine” as a birthday treat.

Michael’s new venture, Water Gap Retreat, is beginning to attract some interest, which is probably the best birthday gift he has had. Be sure to visit the website and tell your friends!

Last excursions

Since Michael arrived, my New Mexico life has been a whirlwind of activity. On our way back to Taos from Albuquerque, we stopped at one of our favorite New Mexico landmarks, a noncommercial hot springs above Jemez Springs. It has changed since we first discovered it (now there’s a sign that says “Nudity Prohibited,” whereas on our first visit we encountered a skinnydippers’ paradise). But, even with swimsuits, it’s a pretty wonderful place, as you can see.

The hike up the mountain to the springs is not too hard, and the view from the warm pools is spectacular.

The springs comes from a little grotto or cave. This is where the water is warmest, and it’s a nice place to lie down and really relax, as Michael demonstrates:

Then, yesterday, we took a lovely hike at the Orillo Verde Recreation Area, on a trail called Vista Verde, with my new friend Verena. We chose a beautiful spot near a juniper tree, and Verena gave us a “sound blessing” using her Native American drum, flute, and other instruments. The wind and the birds seemed to chime in at just the right moments. It was beautiful!

Along the way, we found petroglyphs, too!

So tonight it’s off toward Oklahoma City. West Virginia, here we come!

Albuquerque reunion

Michael’s in New Mexico! I picked him up at the Albuquerque airport this morning, after my final Rolfing session and a lovely evening (and Himalayan food!) with Vera.

So now we’re at Sheila Key’s and Richard Towne’s house in Albuquerque, enjoying a short visit before we head to Jemez and on to Taos:

Here’s a quick introduction to Sheila. We first met in Charleston (long time ago!) when she and Rich worked for the public radio station in West Virginia, and have stayed in touch, seeing each other whenever we can. Now Rich is the general manager of KUNM-FM, my favorite radio station here in New Mexico. (Congratulations on the recent successful fund drive, Rich!) Sheila is writing a book, “50 Ways to Leave Your 40s: What to Do When Midlife Crisis Is Not Enough.” It’ll be the ultimate guide to the Big Five-Oh, and (having read some parts of it already) I know it’s going to be a fantastic book. Check out Sheila’s website to learn more.

Meanwhile, back in West Virginia

My neighbor, John Street, sent me this picture from my very own garden in Arlington Court. I love seeing that the red trillium is flourishing. Almost as much, I love seeing the blurry image of my neighbors’ houses across the courtyard. I guess I’m getting good and ready to be home.

But I have one or two more fun things planned for the last few days in New Mexico. I’ll drive down to Santa Fe for one more visit with Vera this afternoon. Tomorrow morning Michael will arrive at the Albuquerque airport! We plan to drive back to Taos via Jemez and hope to enjoy the hot springs there on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, we hope to hike in Orillo Verde Recreation area. So…stay tuned for a final blast of New Mexico scenery!

P.S. My Taos neighbor Pilar saw the big bird, too! She saw it during the day, and was able to look at it for quite a while with binoculars. Then we consulted her bird book, and together we have determined, almost for certain, that what we saw was a Cooper’s hawk. Too wonderful.

A mysterious visitor

Last night, arriving home from an e-mail outing, I saw that the nearly-full moon seemed to be hovering over my casita. “Oh, what a sweet goodbye photo,” I thought, and rushed inside to get the camera and, because it was getting dark, the tripod.

Then, almost directly above my head, I heard what I can only describe as a strange, quite loud rattling sound. I looked up and saw a huge bird settling itself on a branch. Well, taller than a foot. Maybe 16 or 17 inches from head to tail. Because the light was really failing, I couldn’t really see it well — it was more of a big silhouette. I talked to it, and even walked over to the base of the tree and tapped on it, thinking it would be wonderful to see the bird fly. But it didn’t. It just sat there, watching me. Like a hawk, so to speak. I felt very special. Like the flicker that visited during the first few minutes of my arrival in Taos, this bird seemed to be there for a reason. (I know, I know. The reason was probably a mouse or a rabbit.)

Then I had an inspiration: the tripod! I turned the camera around and pointed it at the bird, moved the dial to the “manual” setting, and set the exposure for 15 seconds. Amazingly, the big bird hardly moved during that time. It’s not a great photo — by this time the sky was quite dark — but it’s clearly some sort of hawk or peregrine, I think. Bird experts? Any guesses?

Sound and sharing

A few days ago, when I went out to take my laundry off the clothesline, there was a musical instrument sitting on the lawn beside the clothesline. It was a sort of electric guitar on a stand, and it belonged to my next-door neighbor, Mark So. And it was playing a one-note composition (I think the note is F-sharp) he had made in dedication to my laundry and my new fascination with watching my laundry dry. He even wrote out a “score” for me to keep.

Yesterday, my other next-door neighbor, Paul Rudy, treated our whole group to a one-hour sound composition he has created while staying here, a “suite” of sounds that he described as a sort of movie-without-visuals. It was indeed evocative — sometimes disturbing, eventually redemptive.

Both of these kinds of “music” — compositions without a distinguishable “melody” — are new to me. Even though I probably won’t be moved to emulate them (I’m a folkie for life, I think), hearing them has enlarged my capacity for listening: the intersection between sound and art is larger than I’d imagined.

Last week, I met an Austrian woman at the visitor center, and we have become friends. Verena is a sound healer; she has a array of instruments, some of which she brought to my casita after we took a walk today. Others, because they are large, have been left behind in Austria while she is traveling, but luckily she had pictures of them stored on one of those wonderful little flash cards you can plug into a USB hub on just about any computer. So I was able to see a picture of an instrument that is also a table (like a portable massage table). The client lies on the table, and Verena plays a series of tones on strings that are underneath the table.

The instruments she brought to my casita included a Native American flute and a small drum, some rattles of various styles and sounds, a brass bowl, some small brass cymbals/gongs, and a very tiny, wonderful instrument, a silver ball less than an inch in diameter that makes a beautiful, shimmery sound when you hold it in your hand and jiggle it.

We had a “potluck lunch” (she brought soup and zucchini and bread, I provided yogurt cheese and avocado, olives and chile/garlic paste). Afterwards we had a lovely hour or so of sharing: poems, pictures of her homeplace, and even some drumming and singing. Not to mention savory ginger-carrot soup, stir-fried zucchini, and bread with delicious spreads.

I’m tallying up the “sound adventures” of the past three months, and I’m amazed: voice lessons, Al’s piano studio, the flickers’ drumming on trees and metal pipes, the chip-chip of the downy woodpecker at the bird feeder, and now these most recent sound experiences. I have a feeling that, in the future, when I think of Taos, it won’t be just the mountains and the skies I remember.