Turning Toward Home: Communion with Place
When we take walks, my dog, Juju, trots along contentedly at my heels. Then, when the moment arrives to turn around and head towards home, she throws a little dog joy fit—first prancing on two legs, then full body wiggle-wagging. On the return, she gets out front, confidently taking the lead. She does this even if we are camping or on a hike and home is only a tent or the car. Her impeccable dog memory associates return trips with a meal, a comfy bed and the solidity of her people around her. This is what puts a spring in her step. Flagstaff...
read moreThe Stone Village Ecosystem: A magical web of family and place
Caring for aging parents is a rite of passage many of my friends, now in our fifties, are navigating with various degrees of grace. Despite the common human experience of parenting our parents and facing the inevitability of our own demise; for each of us it is uncharted territory. Luckily I have two sisters to share this journey, and support of my partner, Mike. Together we formed a loving, joyful ask force; teetering between brutally realistic and unrealistic. Our mission: to help my parents sell their home of 50 years and move to a 500...
read moreDance Church; Communion through Movement
“We kept on dancing last summer though the dancing had been called subversive. We weren’t alone at the end of this particular world and knew it wouldn’t be the last world, though wars had broken out on all sides.” Excerpts from the poem In Praise of Earth by Joy Harjo appear in quotations throughout this essay. By the time Sunday rolls around in a farm week, it is necessary to abstain from the tasks of watering, weeding, harvesting and selling. My spirit needs attention and renewal. The farmer and writer Wendell Berry observed Sabbath by...
read moreFarming in the floodplain: Lessons in resilience
On the spring equinox, I was in the midst of arranging bouquets for the first week of my spring flower share when flood waters rose rapidly. Beaver Creek is across the street, 500 feet from our farm gate, and was steadily becoming more fierce from rain on top of snowmelt pummeling down from Flagstaff. Within minutes we were considering evacuation, as our entire street and the lower half of our farm was consumed by the river. We escaped with our dog, our WWOOFer volunteers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), fixings for dinner, and buckets of...
read moreThe Necessity of Joy: pairing flowers and poetry
In between snowstorms last week, I braved the snowbanks in downtown Flagstaff to visit the Bright Side Bookshop. Inside the store, it felt like spring. Colorful words bloomed from book covers, and flowers, birds, and butterflies alighted from blank journals. I was searching for inspiration; in particular the poetic kind. Like the squirrels who have survived winter on their nut cache, but are yearning for fresh tree buds, I am hungry for the nourishment of new ways of seeing the world. I can always count on poetry to satisfy this need. Poetry...
read moreWhat Truly Matters; Sharing the present moment
Winter seems like a good time to take a break from farming and travel somewhere warm and relaxing. Instead, I vacationed in snowy Vermont, taking time to help my parents, now in their early 80’s, prepare to sell the house they have lived in for over 50 years. Last year they decided it was time to move closer to my sister in a different part of the state. Soon after, my mom fell and broke her hip and the plan to sell the house progressed slowly while her physical ability declined steadily. The house portrays a timeline of their lives—relics...
read moreFloral Foraging: Finding Beauty in Unlikely Places
Most white women my age do not fear being arrested during a trip to the grocery store. But for a foraging florist like me, the thought has definitely crossed my mind, especially when I notice a police car in the lot. Armed with hand pruners, practicing what I call the art of “civic pruning,” I trim branches and berries to add to my flower designs. I usually pass as a landscaper, dressed in worn work clothes and a straw sun hat with a patina of garden grit. While I am technically taking something that does not belong to me, will tell you how...
read moreJourney into the Heart of Corn Part 3: Seed School
It’s mid-October and the sky echoes with endless blue. A halo of deciduous trees embraces the change of season. The corn fields on our Rimrock farm have turned from green to golden, which means it is time to harvest. Fifteen people—many of whom I have just met—are wandering through the fields in search of ears, as if on a treasure hunt. Flint is a type of corn used to make masa for tortillas, tamales or hominy for posole. Unlike sweet corn, which is picked fresh, flint corn must cure on the plants. The hard-like-flint kernels allow these...
read moreLove People and Feed Them; Journey into the Tamale
When you receive an invitation from an abuelita at a Mexican market to help her make tamales, the answer is always: YES. My July FlagLive column (link) begins with corn seeds in Oaxaca Mexico, and now Chelsea (my farm friend and traveling companion) and I find ourselves in a small village an hour outside of Oaxaca City. From the moment we met Marita and tasted her homemade tamales, we were smitten by both. The tamale is a labor of love, even if you start with a bag of corn masa from the supermarket. Add the growing and processing of the corn...
read moreA Journey into the Heart of Corn Part One: Oaxaca Mexico
The full buck moon rose bright enough to illuminate clouds from an afternoon monsoon burst. The corn fields at our farm shimmered with beauty and aliveness; the sheer will and life force of these plants drawing me in. Although is only their third full moon, they have now surpassed me in height. This corn field is full of green arrows of purpose on a mission to make another generation. Everything has a beginning and an end, yet with seeds, the arc of time is expansive. Seeds hold multitudes of stories within them. This soil remembers corn...
read moreFinding Home; Words are bread crumbs on the path
Do you recall those times in your life when you never thought you would find home? We grow from family roots—maybe it’s a deep taproot, a creeping rhizome or a shallow one that breaks off to tumble in the wind. Yet rootedness does not come naturally for people. Instead, we have legs, cars and suitcases. We can roam freely and transplant ourselves. Unlike plants, when things go wrong we move on to another place. I remember times in my own life when I planted, uprooted and transplanted myself, again and again, never believing I would find...
read moreA Home-grown Retreat; Ringing in the new year with silence
On the first day of 2022, the sun rose into a cloudless sky, emerging from star-studded darkness and quiet. With my partner, Mike, I rang in the new year silently, savoring the last hours of a self-directed 10-day meditation retreat at our farm homestead. Outside, the garden chimes jingled in the cold morning wind. The quiet was ringing inside my body, an outgrowth of this time we set aside to meditate. There is no way we would have attempted to do a home meditation retreat without having experienced a formal one. Two years ago, we began the...
read moreWhat the trees teach: Living amongst the giants
As we enter the darker side of the year, the veil between the earth and spirit realm is a gossamer curtain. As the leaves fall and the days grow shorter, I sense the transience of each moment. It is time to say goodbye to the garden and I grieve the loss of all of my flowers. A few marigolds are still blooming, and I leave them for the bees and butterflies who may be visiting ancestors. Many details about my ancestors and those who lived on this land are not known. Both my maternal and paternal grandmothers descended from Ireland and...
read moreWe are the Seeds
Seeds are tiny miracles. I never tire of witnessing them burst from the soil — full of purpose. Our monsoon pumpkin patch grew fast and furious in the long, rainy and humid summer days. When I survey the tangle of vines bearing pumpkins — some over 20 feet long — it seems impossible that they were once tucked inside a teardrop-shaped seed smaller than a dime. They grow infinitely, tendrils grabbing onto anything they can find to get closer to the sun. I am stumped by a mystery pumpkin that does not resemble any of the seed packets in my...
read moreFamily growing: Growing and nurturing together
The first day visiting my family in Vermont this summer began in my sister Kara’s garden. We sipped coffee and relieved our jet lag with a barefoot stroll through robust perennial islands displaying fireworks of color and texture. While we oohed and awed at the garden, Kara shared her ideas to revise and expand, yanking weeds as we walked. She inherited this established garden four years ago when they bought the house, and she and her family dug right in to make it their own. Garden joy runs in my family—the love and work of growing,...
read morePollinator Gardens; finding balance and beauty
June is National Pollinator Month and hopefully Flagstaff has made it through the last frost of the season so we can start to enjoy the benefit of pollinators in our gardens, both for joy and for higher vegetable yields. At Wild Heart Farm where I live and grow specialty cut flowers we are delighting in the daily drama of our pollinator garden. About a year ago, we received a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Friends of the Verde River to create permanent pollinator habitat on our one-acre farm. There were days I...
read moreSpring awakening
I turned 50 years old this year on April 9. There was nothing I wanted more on this day than to wake up alone in the wilderness. It’s not easy to extract oneself from a life caring for plants, especially as temperatures reach the 80s. Fortunately Beaver Creek Wilderness is just a few miles upstream of the farm. By late afternoon I had finished my chores and was on the trail with my faithful canine companion, Juju. Spring was in full swing, and my favorite plant allies were blooming along my journey—Indian paintbrush, sego lily and...
read moreBeginning Again; “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
In early January I was planting the last of the daffodil bulbs, digging into the cold, not quite frozen earth, when my spade nearly sliced into a hibernating Woodhouse toad. I held the toad’s cold, stony body in my hands to try to detect a heartbeat. He looked vulnerable and yet peaceful. I immediately tucked him in to rest beneath the daffodils until spring. It has been quiet without the toads. Last summer they were a constant presence. They fed on the spiders, ants and insect larvae and hunted moths by our front stoop at night. In the heat...
read moreThe Portal: Reimagining our way through
Wintertime, with its lack of light, turns me inward. While my farm sleeps (its more like napping) I can reconnect with my writing practice. The first week of 2021 I retreated with my dearest friend, Karla, who I met while working on Grand Canyon trail crew in 1997. Since then, we have been seeking the truth of our lives through writing, wilderness and our vocations. For almost a decade, our annual retreat is a ritual to renew our friendship and our practice as writers. We write, read to one another, walk, drink wine and work...
read moreA Handmade Life: Creativity and Healing
Last week I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday. In many ways her life is a miracle. The day she was born her mother, Lorena, died in childbirth. They were only able to save her. “I thought about my mother all day,” she tells me over the phone. When I hang up, a wave of grief flows out of me in great sobs. I still feel the loss of Lorena, not just for my mom, but for myself; for the grandmother I never knew. Over the course of my life my mother has recounted the events of her birth without emotion, as if a distant...
read moreLetting It Go; A lesson from rosemary
I rang the bell in the October dawn light to open our first silent mediation retreat at Wild Heart Farm, our one-acre farmstead in Rimrock where my partner Mike and I have lived since early this year. When Mike and my friend Molly first proposed the three of us do a self-directed silent farm meditation retreat, I felt resistance. The idea of doing nothing but alternating between walking and sitting meditation for the weekend felt like a luxury I could not afford. A long list of end-of-season farm tasks loomed. I feared I would not be able let...
read moreBlazing the Trail for Women; A Tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In the wake of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death this week I have been experiencing many emotions. The first is anger, seminal and cleansing. I am angry at the patriarchal system that we have still not been able to dismantle. Angry thinking about all the times Ginsburg sat alone in a room full of men and had to work twice as hard to be heard. Angry for all the times she was discounted and questioned. Angry at myself for all the times in my life I questioned myself and did not speak up. Angry at assumptions that are made about women. That it is...
read moreA sister witness; First summer on the farm
One unexpected delight of the coronavirus has been the presence my sister Kelly on our farm this summer. She was en route to Vermont to visit the rest of our family, as her work in the school system allows for seasonal migrations. The painful reality of a worsening global pandemic dashed her plans and she decided to shelter in place with us. In the short weeks she was at the farm, Kelly had already started to grow roots. The seeds she planted emerged and were rapidly growing into toddlers. Kelly is the youngest sister of three so she has...
read moreThe Intricate Web: Farms and people need one another
The creeping tendrils of the COVID-19 virus has touched every aspect of life all around the world. The virus reminds us each day that we are an interconnected web of humanity and nature woven into a thick cloth. To realize this is a beautiful gift despite all the losses and hardships it has brought with it. With mother nature as my business partner, I am tangled in a vast web on my farm and my goal as a natural farmer is not to disturb or destroy it. On my daily rounds in the high tunnel greenhouse, a covered growing space with no heat or...
read moreBroken the speed of the sound of loneliness; Remembering John Prine
The list of things the coronavirus has taken from us is growing longer each day. I try to make it a practice to count the things I am grateful for instead of what I have lost in its wake. John Prine makes the top of both lists. He passed away on April 6 due to complications from COVID-19, but he lives on in his songs—songs we all know how to sing. His first album, the self-titled John Prine, entered the world the same year I did, 1971. It is loaded with signature hits like “Angel from Montgomery” and “Paradise,” as well as the heartbreaking...
read moreSong School; Unlocking the Secret to Songwriting
It’s first thing on a Monday morning and I’m sitting in my folding chair pew at the Church of Mary. There are about 25 of us circled around singer songwriter Mary Gauthier under a tent canopy on the grassy lawn at Planet Bluegrass. The festival stage is nearby, and just beyond, the St. Vrain River flows fresh from the Rocky Mountains. Part preacher, part midwife, Mary speaks the gospel of songwriting with authority and tenderness. In her sermon this morning, she tells us that songs come from God to teach us something. She asks if anyone wants...
read moreThe ultimate chaperone; The making of humans and canyons
My 17-year-old nephew, Will, is the eldest of my Vermont sister’s six children—her first teenager. She has been expressing concern about his regular retreats to the Internet and his lack of plans for after high school. I remember this time in my own young life. I felt bound by the smallness of rural Vermont. I wanted badly to be free but the future was clouded in uncertainty. How does one leave home and imagine a new life? In response, my Arizona sister, Kelly, and I began crafting a plan for Will’s Western coming of age visit. It was...
read moreRemembering Charlie; Life with a Canine Copilot
There is nothing like the love of a good dog. Like so many things in life, you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone. A year ago I lost my 9-year-old English Labrador, Charlie. She passed suddenly (in a matter of hours) when a mass ruptured internally. Charlie was a Seeing Eye dog school dropout. Although she was exceptionally smart, she had some issues she could not overcome, like a fear of stairs and startle barking for no apparent reason. Her mother, Kelly, belonged to my friend, Darcy Falk. She was a full-wagging, smiling, gentle...
read moreFarmers market moments; Connecting people
Farmers market season is in full swing, and if you are like me, this is the highlight of your week—a chance to socialize with the community and interact with farmers, sampling the array of what can be grown in our region, booth by booth. Last year I worked at Whipstone Farm’s market stand in Prescott and Flagstaff. The hours flew by while ringing up vegetables and counting back change, restocking vegetables and flowers, and sharing recipes. The morning is a blur of short, satisfying interactions with people who are buying what we grew,...
read moreSex in the orchard; Another vote for science
Spring is the most intoxicating season, even more so in the company of fruit trees. I descend the switchbacks of Oak Creek Canyon in the morning quiet before the tourist cars crowd the road. They are still waking up at their campgrounds, the smoke from their fires signaling a vacation day ahead with coffee and bacon. I stop at Sterling Spring and fill my bottles with the cold, rushing power of water that has just emerged from the earth. Rarely do I find myself there alone, more often I meet others filling jugs and we exchange pleasantries...
read moreRowing for her life; A friend’s healing journey
Cancer. The word spoken aloud can pierce your heart with fear. It’s not possible to live without being touched directly by this disease or watching helplessly as it affects someone you love. My dear friend Kristin, a botanist, river guide, herbalist, healer and Hopi language activist, has been struggling with breast cancer since she was diagnosed five years ago. I met her almost 20 years ago when we were in graduate school and spending summers in the Ponderosa pine forest studying how plant communities recover from fires. She was the first...
read moreHome on the range; Living in a house without walls
It was two years ago that I left my job at Grand Canyon Trust and my home in Flagstaff to learn how to be an organic farmer in Santa Cruz, Calif. I spent my last month at the Trust’s Kane Ranch headquarters, a central part of the geography of my heart. This cowboy outpost cobbled from limestone in the 1870s is nestled at the foot of the Kaibab Plateau where it meets the House Rock Valley. From the front porch there is a sweeping view of Vermilion Cliffs, Echo Cliffs, and the crack of the Colorado River as it travels through Marble Canyon....
read moreThe necessary darkness; Writing through uncertainty
The darkening days of December are a struggle for me. I should be sleeping but the process of turning inward keeps me up all night by the fire, reading and dreaming and scheming. This is the time of year to plan the next farm season. For a novice, landless, itinerant farmer this means a great deal of uncertainty and unrest. On a recent long night, I remembered a trip down the winding Big Sur coast road at sunset. It was the last week of my apprenticeship at the UCSC Farm and Garden, and a few of us decided to volunteer on the farm at the...
read moreSeasons with the apple trees; Awakening to the wonder
This year, in Flagstaff, we were fortunate to enjoy a long, lingering autumn. I drank in the last warm days surrounded by the ripeness of the world, just as it is at its peak, before yielding to the natural cycle of rest. I relished the shock of gilded leaves falling to the ground and the pungent perfume of summer decomposing into the earth, appreciating this reminder from the plant world of the endless cycle of death, decay, and dormancy that preambles growth. My behavior is rather manic in the days leading up to imminent hard consecutive...
read moreBeginner’s mind; Apprenticing in the plant world
If you’ve ever started over in a later stage of life, you may relate to the challenge and frustration of humbling yourself to the daunting task of learning something entirely new. When I decided to delve into the occupation of farming in my 40s, I encountered the walls I had constructed in my own mind around learning. Because I worked in the field of botany and restoration for 15 years, I had inevitably developed a persona as “an expert” when it came to plants. I did not anticipate all that I could learn and experience when I let go of...
read moreThe Heartmakers; Planting seeds and singing songs
I left Flagstaff last year on a windy spring day in April. I was going to be an apprentice at the University of California Santa Cruz Farm and Garden to learn how to be an organic farmer. As I drove west on I-40 my heart was swelling with emotion. This dream was planted 15 years ago and now I was on my way. But I was also leaving everything I knew and loved and had no idea what the outcome would be. I was worried about finding people who I could sing with. I had recently accepted the fact that music was the center of my existence (plants...
read moreThe rule of No. 9; Thinking like a mountain
Every once in a while there is a day in your life that you never want to forget. I’m thinking of one of a day in Yellowstone National Park a few winters ago that reminded me why I am committed to conservation work. I was at a leadership retreat in Montana with a group of people working for conservation organizations. We had spent days inside discussing the human side of conservation in small groups, taking notes on flip charts and scheming about how to transform our organizations to be more effective at our work. We snuck in a...
read moreMoonlight meditations; The world from the seat of a tractor
Presently, I am obsessed with tractors. I feel the longing to drive one like a teenager who is counting the days to a driver’s license. When I was a kid we moved dirt and made fortresses with our Tonka trucks. Big machinery has always meant power, freedom from the drudgery of hand tools, and entry into another dimension of scale. Tractor time also brings me closer to becoming a farmer. At farm school we studied cultivation like you might a dance routine. We learned the moves, reviewing the timing and the mechanics behind them. I squirmed...
read moreFarm food 911; Cook as if somebody’s life depended on it
Two weeks ago when I visited my friend Tony Norris in the intensive care unit at Flagstaff Medical Center he was on life support. His large and loving family gathered around him shell-shocked while machines kept him alive, and I tried to imagine how I could help. In the intensive care unit you can’t even bring fresh flowers. Besides trying to sing him back from beyond, the only kind of life support system I know how to activate is to cook a homemade meal. During moments when I feel most helpless, rolling up my sleeves to make something always...
read moreWinter solstice; 108 reasons to be grateful
The winter solstice is always significant to me. There is something powerful that happens when the Earth stands still. Darkness and light face each other as equals—the longest night and the shortest day. After the winter solstice there are only longer days to anticipate. I celebrate with friends, fire, food and poetry. On this long, dark night we burn the regrets we want to leave in the darkness and manifest the dreams we want to amplify in the coming light. A few years ago I started marking the solstice by doing 108 sun salutations at...
read morePoetry is the salve for everything, especially aspiring farmers
Do you ever just have a moment where you fall to your knees thanking God and everyone else responsible for the creation of poems? In the short weeks of early October before my apprenticeship at the UCSC Farm and Garden ended, I was wandering the streets of downtown Santa Cruz slightly bereft, and came across a man sitting behind a vintage typewriter. This man, named Kevin Devaney, will write a poem for an occasion, person or situation of your choosing at which point you can decide how much to pay him. “I actually have a graduate degree in...
read moreTypewriter journeys; One key punch to the next
It is a leisurely spring evening on the Kane Ranch front porch and the doves are moaning away in a chorus of mournful harmonies. But there is nothing sorrowful about the golden hour in Marble Canyon. The horizon is a wide, panoramic expanse stretching for miles. Here you can look and look and fill your head with the possibility of anything. A desert spiny lizard that looks like he might be at the top of his wrestling league languishes on the corner fence post, soaking up the magic. Fellow Homer Jean Rukkila provides percussive accompaniment...
read moreBeing the nanny; Lessons in love
I lived with the Wadsworth family for two summers while I was in college. I was their nanny: the babysitter, the live-in help, and a full-time diversion for three young children. I lived a double life as a hippie on the frontier of the country club. Their tennis whites only enhanced my tomboy-beatnik style. I wore torn, ill-fitting jeans, red converse high-top sneakers and a Boston Red Socks baseball hat turned backwards. Gwendolyn, their Jamaican maid, tenderly pressed my worn tee shirts, and the father of the house insisted I remove my hat...
read moreNot the same river twice; Exploring the Rio de Flag
On windy June days with the monsoons a distant dream, I long for moisture. I find my way to the dry riverbed of the Rio de Flag. The rustling of coyote willow leaves is the closest water-like sound for miles. Twists and turns in the Rio reveal surprises—a morning cloak butterfly, a red fox behind a shock of bulrushes and an overturned shopping cart. This is my inheritance, this ephemeral drainage springing from the San Francisco Peaks. It winds past downtown and travels northeast to join the Little Colorado River. Most days of the year the...
read moreTime is a river; Where will we be in 50 years?
“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” –Marcus Aurelius Last week I sat by the San Juan River for two days with my colleagues at the Grand Canyon Trust. We gathered to consider the future of conservation across the Colorado Plateau. When you sit by the river long enough, you can’t help but consider time. What will this place look like in 50 years? We speculated that it will be more...
read moreThe call of spring; Annual reinvention on the Colorado Plateau
The Russian poet, Vera Pavlova wrote in her notebook: “There are moments when I feel the universe expand.” I too feel these moments of expansion, barely audible at times. I am lying on my cot at Lees Ferry reading poetry under a canopy of new, green leaves. They shimmer in the thin blade of moonlight while stars dazzle in the negative space of dark sky. Every spring it is the same. Fierce gusts of wind, lengthening days, and the songs of small birds passing through on their annual migration leaves me restless. The desert near Tucson wakes up...
read moreLate night woodstove meditations; Sisters across the divide
The end of winter is near and the woodpile is dwindling. The nights aren’t as long or as cold as they were a month ago, but I still take comfort in the fire. I dial my sister’s number and it rings in an old farmhouse across the country in another time zone. Her voice sounds so much like my own but on the other side of the receiver she lives an entirely different life. We take turns talking and listening as the flames from my woodstove flicker and dance until the wood is consumed to a heap of gleaming embers. Her life is full of little people...
read moreDoubt and reinvention; An artist’s winding path
Darcy Falk is in her studio painting a 10-by-10-inch canvas. The background is awash with shimmering lilac, overlaid with a grid of silver dots. She adds another layer of red and orange acrylic to a pair of glowing poppies. A thin, white halo around the blossoms lifts them from the two-dimensional surface. She reveals how scary it is to be making these “weird little paintings”; the world knows her as a textile artist. Darcy shakes off the looming fear. “I know this is not what people expect from me. It’s a giant risk. You have to be brave.”...
read moreDeer Creek Patio; Worshiping at the Church of Desert Creeks
All this talk about the Rapture, Judgment Day and the End of the World has me thinking about my own religion: I belong to the Church of Desert Creeks. Deer Creek in Grand Canyon is home to the greatest patio in the world. It is part of sweeping bedrock shelf of Tapeats Sandstone that perches next to the creek as it enters the twisting narrows and finally plunges to a 100-foot waterfall near the edge of the Colorado River. The patio probably got its name from river runners, who are professionals at enjoying the outdoors. If Sunset Magazine...
read moreProtecting paradise islands; National and state parks start may soon be the last of the pristine
In the early morning mist, we wake to an unfamiliar orchestra: the melodies of gibbons, stork-billed kingfishers, rhino hornbills, and countless insects and frogs shrouded in a mysterious curtain of jungle. We sleep on a 30-foot klotok (a traditional river boat) on a tributary deep in the heart of the last remaining rainforest of Tanjung Puting National Park on the island of Borneo. This river expedition feels strangely similar to a Grand Canyon river trip, even though there is no white water and crocodiles patrol the waters. A crew of...
read moreMariachi state of mind; Soundtrack to La Vida
A quick glance at my colorful mariachi hat collection can lift me from a gloomy November Sunday afternoon funk and into a mariachi state of mind. Mariachi and norteño music travels that thin divide between melancholy and fist-pumping elation. The staccato notes of trumpets go straight to the empty places while the accordion notes cajole you to live in full color, like the traditional Mexican song “De Colores.” I long to find my way into the heart of this music—to delve into this melting pot of influences that traveled from Eastern Europe to...
read moreFrom the bottom; Redrawing the map of creative life
Last summer we suffered a large water leak that went unsuspected until a catastrophically expensive water bill showed up in our mailbox. Much later we discovered dampness in our crawlspace, where I stored my old art portfolios. The “greatest hits” of my entire artistic life were in various states of moldy ruin. As I sifted through the devastation, I saw vivid images of a developing person and pieces of my old selves falling away. Inspired by Picasso’s drawing of Igor Stravinsky, I made many contour drawing portraits where the likeness is...
read moreChoosing your battles; The smoking mushroom of hope
As our mountain summer dances with autumn, I cling to the fleeting glory of the rain-soaked San Francisco Peaks. I revel in the details—of lichen, flower petals and recently, the taxonomy of fungi. One day spent crawling around the forest studying mushrooms opens a fantasy world not unlike the one Alice found in Wonderland. Smoking cup mushrooms command the bulk of my awe. These delicate, slippery craters have a fondness for rotting logs and resemble a creature from a coral reef. If you blow gently over them, seconds later a puff of spores...
read moreMaps to place; Stories bring landscapes alive
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.” –Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” I have always been drawn to maps. The swirling topographic lines over miles of the Earth’s surface grant me the rare insight of a soaring hawk. I have a habit of collecting maps of places I would like to go. I study the folds of ridges and the names of distant mountain ranges and dream of someday navigating through them. The world map that hangs in our house, acquired from a thrift store, resembles the maps from elementary school classrooms when I first...
read moreA Song For Chihuahua; Familia on the side
My sister and I climbed into the Quezada and Sons shuttle headed to Casas Grandes, Chihuahua. The 15-passenger van was full of people heading home, and we were the last to board. Nobody flinched as we clambered into the back seat and wedged ourselves between the big shopping bags and a strapping older Mexican man. We were the only gringos on the van and at first everyone was quiet. Then my sister, Kelly, the güera who is fluent in Spanish, unwrapped her homemade burritos and offered one to our back-of-the-bus companion. He graciously accepted...
read moreDeer Creek patio; Worshiping at the Church of Desert Creeks
All this talk about the rapture, Judgment Day and the end of the world has me thinking about my own religion: I belong to the Church of Desert Creeks. Deer Creek in Grand Canyon is home to the greatest patio in the world. It is part of a sweeping bedrock shelf of Tapeats Sandstone that perches next to the creek as it enters the twisting narrows and finally plunges to a 100-foot waterfall near the edge of the Colorado River. The patio probably got its name from river runners, who are professionals at enjoying the outdoors. If Sunset Magazine...
read moreIn transit; Daydreams and culture of the bus
My bus commute takes twice as long as it does to drive to work in my car, but that time is not wasted. I put those extra minutes to good use daydreaming, or reading a poem. I listen to music, write notes to myself, watch people and stare out the window. Riding the bus creates a suspended state of dreamy traveling in your daily schedule, unlike being behind the wheel yourself. You can be lost in your thoughts while you are carried into or out of the details of your day alongside the living, breathing current of humanity in transit. When you...
read moreThe last sacred place; Protecting the treasures of Grand Canyon
What I love about the Grand Canyon is … all of it. But what I absolutely treasure are its springs that form lush biodiversity strongholds. These springs could be depleted or contaminated by a renewed interest in uranium mining. Two weeks ago I joined more than 100 Flagstaff residents at a public meeting to learn about the proposed withdrawal of 1,010,776 acres of public lands around Grand Canyon National Park from mining for the next 20 years. I hoped to hear an in-depth discussion of the alternatives on the table: full withdrawal, protection...
read moreVisited by song; Nurturing the muse among friends
If you have ever wanted to write your own song and sing it to someone, it is good to know that you are not alone in this crazy undertaking. On a recent Monday evening I joined a group of people who congregate monthly on the second floor mezzanine at the Hotel Weatherford for this very reason. This truly inspired location—180 degrees of windows that consume the lower half of the wall and overlook the intersection of Leroux and Aspen Street—is a refuge where we aspire to make melodies and match them with words. These brave souls are finding...
read moreExploring a big world; The enhanced perspective of travel
I spent my last day on a month-long trip to Southeast Asia in Bangkok’s Chinatown. I floated on a river through narrow alleyways in an urban wilderness of determined shoppers. About half of the food items for sale I would not regard as edible: dried squids, brains, livers and pig’s hooves. As I observed this spectacle of commerce, I considered the ephemeral nature of traveling. You have the luxury to exist in a thousand distinct moments, in palettes of color so vivid, with smells and sounds so distinctly different from your home that you...
read moreA Christmas memory; The making of traditions
My husband Dan and I have a holiday tradition that came about somewhat unintentionally and has now become known as the Misfit Thanksgiving. It began when we moved to Flagstaff 15 years ago and shared a house with several over-wintering river guides. The Misfit Thanksgiving offers anyone away from family a place to go to share a meal and celebrate our collective good fortune. The guest list grows by word of mouth, resulting in a hodgepodge of friends, friends of friends and the occasional visiting sister or foreign exchange student making us...
read morePassion and loss; Living where worlds collide
Oct. 30th 2007 was like any other day for Eric York, a wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park. He rose in the late autumn darkness, gathered his field gear and negotiated the rugged Kaibab limestone cliffs to check his snares and look for fresh mountain lion kill sites. That morning he received a mortality signal indicating that P13 (the 13th puma in the study) had not moved for 24 hours. He located her limp body in an alcove just below the rim. She had a bloody nose and no obvious signs of trauma. Eric was driven to understand the...
read moreGrand Canyon skies; The comforting simplicity of existence
“Above all he learned from the river how to listen, to listen with a still heart with a waiting, open soul, without passion without desire, without judgment.” –Herman Hesse I’m lying in my silk sheet sack under the big spread of stars on a beautiful sandy beach in the Grand Canyon. The moon is new and the sky is as black as can be. The Milky Way is a dazzling silver brushstroke through the glittering darkness. The stars are bright enough to light the night like a marquee for a show that I want to see again and again. Music is...
read moreKaibab Plateau summer campp; A season of transience
“And what of the light this and every August, different from other months, no way to explain the precision of its shadows, the warmth of its brightly lit edges, the need to show what summer has come to before it ends.” –Wyn Cooper There have been late summer nights that I spent on the North Rim when the air is crisp and damp with the memory of rain and the hint of autumn. A half moon is wedged between the slender trunk of a pine and my tiny trailer. It hangs there impossibly in the darkest sky you can imagine. I am gathered with...
read moreGrand Canyon Ghosts; Clouds of memory
There are some houses that just feel like home, and the trail crew bunkhouse at the Grand Canyon was like that. It was a dilapidated old place that the government wanted to tear down because it created an eyesore on an otherwise historic street. As the renowned flophouse for seasonal trail workers, it resembled a cowboy fraternity house. But housing was scarce, so it endured. I have since moved on from seasonal work with unlikely characters who form temporary families of varying degrees of functionality. On a recent visit to the South Rim, I...
read moreDigging in; Responsibility to place
Ten summers ago I worked as a gardener for the Arboretum at Flagstaff. I dug in deep, learning the names of native plants and how to cultivate them. I weeded to the sound of the summer breeze and the racket of hummingbirds sparring over penstemon blossoms. The San Francisco Peaks rose like an indigo ship from the distant horizon. I helped build a water conservation garden, a collection of stacked rocks and soil with plants growing in the crevices. The design emulated the forest and used drip irrigation to limit water use. We salvaged the...
read moreLooking lower; Exploring the secret lives of plants
“It is certain in any case that life is quite disarmed by the gift to live so entirely in the present, to treasure with such eager care every flower by the wayside and the light that plays on every passing moment.” –Hermann Hesse Nothing grounds me in the moment or in a place more effectively than when I am immersed deeply in the world of botany. It started when I worked on the Grand Canyon trail crew and grew curious about the plants that prospered in such a rugged and inhospitable place. I laid down my trail shovel and embarked on a...
read moreTransforming thought; Living between abundance and scarcity
Spring has finally arrived in Flagstaff, and as the heavy blanket of winter snow thaws I experience a sense of abundance. The Rio de Flag offers the rare and shimmering promise of water as it twists and turns through our neighborhood on its way to join Diablo Creek and the Little Colorado River as they flow into the mother Colorado. The water coaxes great blue herons and crowds of chattering red winged blackbirds to its edge. Hundreds of ducks and geese paddle about on its sparkling surface as a pair of bald eagles teach their young how to...
read moreLandscapes of redemption; A commitment to place
The Grand Canyon swallowed me whole. It was as if one day I descended beneath the rim and emerged more myself. Being outside for me has always been like buying back the unhappy moments in my life, minute by minute. As a child I sought refuge exploring the wilderness of my Vermont back yard. Today even the smallest escape to the forest or canyons can restore my sense of faith in the world. There is something about rock and rushing water, intense sun and bitter cold that feels like redemption. Like a confession, I am released. I am granted...
read moreThe certainty of change; A clean slate in 2010
On this long, bright eve of a new year, the blue moonlight casts a neon glow on the snow and I am restless for a new beginning. The media’s incessant cataloging of the triumphs and misfortunes of not just the past year but the entire decade has sparked me to reference my own. But I cannot summon the thoughts hiding in the shadows of my mind to become words on the blank page of my notebook. So I look into my old journals and see fragments of my life before me in random, descriptive scrawlings that sum a cathartic snapshot of my life in the...
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