Making a clearing

Now is an in-between season for me. I decided a couple months ago, thanks to this prompting, to slowly go through every closet. Every nook of my living space - both physical and spiritual - and to work on a gentler approach to my life. Less of the things I don't need and more of what is essential.

A couple days after I turned in my dissertation in mid-August, Matt and I were in San Francisco and we were exhausted. At breakfast, we met a man - a chatty British expat with black and green hair who flew in from western Australia where he lived to spend a week creating sculptures in a warehouse in Oakland before going to Burning Man. He told us the dust in the desert is corrosive so you have to wear goggles all week to keep your eyes from burning. He went every year.

Without a doubt, he was the kind of person who struck up conversations with anyone his path. I am the kind of person who listens to every person who strikes up a conversation with me. Luckily, he was a good conversationalist so over coffee and toast, we talked about art, travel, culture, and politics.

The second day at breakfast, our new friend was having a conversation with another couple who was headed home that afternoon. The five of us conversed, and we came to learn that the husband had a PhD in engineering. I told him I'd just turned in my paper before arriving in San Francisco for a vacation. He told me confidently that it would take me a full year to "spin down" from six years of graduate school. He'd taught PhD students for many years and he said he'd seen it again and again. It will take a full year.

He also mentioned that he and his wife had adopted children, and after some thought, I gently brought up our stretch of infertility. I guessed that they might have lived that stress too, and they had. I recognized immediately the grace of crossing paths with someone at exactly the right moment who got how tired I was and who told me: it will take time.

And to cross paths with a wild man who built giant works of art in a foreign country and then burned shit in the desert just for fun. There was a lesson in that chance meeting too.

After this past weekend of Thanksgiving, Matt and I took our dog on a walk in a small bit of woods over the border in Canada. After we got back, the word 'retreat' kept popping up for me throughout the week.
When I finished college and before I got married, I had the incredible fortune to spend time at a Quaker retreat center for four months. I was desperate for time away from home since I never studied abroad or interned in D.C. during college like I felt I should have. A professor was encouraging me to get a PhD then, yet after college, all I wanted was a break to learn how to not work for awhile. Though I had some chores at the retreat center, like mopping floors after dinner and preparing egg salad for weekenders, I spent many nights in the art studio at the potter's wheel. I made so many bowls and plates I couldn't pay the studio back for the clay at the end of my time there. Some of those pieces have broken. Others we still have.

On the cusp of adulthood, I somehow figured out that I needed to learn how to slay back the overachieving forces within me. They are strong. Having new letters behind my name now comes with new pressures, and after six years of too much work and a couple bitter doses of heartbreak, I find myself wrestling against ambition again.

I am fully rooted in adult life though. That's the difference between then and now. Hitting the pause button and retreating for months...well, it's not going to happen.

What I can do is make a clearing. With that open space, I can weave retreat back into my daily life. I can find more moments for leaves to crunch underfoot, for my hands to be full of clay or paint or clothe, and for time to just be. Time to take photos again and to find words to write in this space.

Thirteen years after that long retreat, I still have a sense memory, though distant, of what it feels like to slow down.

I am giving myself a year to relearn how to spin down.

Unbound

One of the best weekends I had last year was camping with a group of friends on Lake Michigan. Despite growing up in Michigan, I had never heard of Nordhouse Dunes before the trip. It's a wonderful place to spend time. Our first night, we walked down to the beach in the darkness, then laid down in the sand to look up at the starriest sky. A few of us swam under the stars. It was early September and very cold so I was sick the next day, but it was worth it. The morning we left, I stole down to the beach for a few photos and a few moments to myself.

This winter I became bound up in a lot of stress that I'm still working to unwind. I've been taking an art class and a mindfulness meditation class, and reconnecting with photography, painting and collage. I've slowly been working on finding more time to be outside, particularly out side of the city. These are the things that help me feel whole.

Tonight, I found the artist Rebecca Shapiro while looking for encaustic artists online. She produced a series for TedX Portland and in her talk, she discusses our desire for freedom and using creative expression to work through the "beliefs and behaviors that keep us bound and from enjoying movement and momentum in our lives."

I like her expression "enjoying movement and momentum in our lives." These photographs remind me of a moment when I was unbound, so I'm thinking a lot about how to create more of those moments in the weeks and months to come.

The View this Fall

This fall, my creative time is pretty much reduced to taking pictures on my android photo and editing them in Instagram (@wandercraft). It provides about 5 minutes of creative time a day, which is better than nothing. Right now, I'm appreciate it both for the limited editing choices and for a chance to think a bit more about composition in my photos. I also like saving up little snippets of life, that I plan to get printed up into a book at the end of the year. It's become a way to feel like I'm scrapbooking, without the clutter or the time commitment.

Most importantly, it gives me a chance to stop a little here and there to take note, whether I'm out seeing something new or close to home seeing the things I see every day, but just a little bit differently.

The canned food rainbow display is by Detroit artist and activist Kate Draughdrill, exhibited at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (not be to confused with the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit).

Yesterday I had a morning out with my dad, thanks to Heavner Canoe and Kayak rental.

Despite the chilly and drizzly weather this fall, it's been nice to slow down here and there and enjoy some time at home, which you could read more about in this awesome book a neighbor of mine designed and edited (if you're so inclined).

Eight Vancouver Views

During most of the time we were in Vancouver last week, Matt handled the "real" camera. I was happy with my Instax (I'll post the instants once I washi them into my little trip journal). When I did take over the manual  camera for awhile, this is what I saw.

I'll be back soon with a few more details. It was a pretty laid back week but we did some worthwhile tourist-ing.

A very pink walk in the park

Sunday morning it was my turn to walk the dog. I grabbed the camera because the park has been this magical spring dreamland the last couple weeks.  The park is particularly dreamy before the city gets around to cutting the grass. It reminds me of my favorite books as a child where bunnies frolicked with little girls in fields filled with dandelions and long grass. As I was looking through the lens, the bleeding hearts and the pink dripping from the trees and covering the sidewalks like a wedding procession was so sugary sweet that it is almost too much. Mother nature has her bold way of announcing the renewal of life with each trip we take around the sun.

While I shot photos, across the expressway in Greektown a church full of people celebrated Orthodox Easter, singing hymns about Jesus rising from the dead while the trees and flowers did the same.

There are quite a few days living in the city that I bemoan how I never feel like driving out to go to a nature area, even though hiking in the woods is about my favorite thing to do. But on other days I just look up and down and around and it's enough.

Winter Walk

I've been missing winter. I was telling a Southerner last week that it didn't feel right to me as a Northerner to go through winter without experiencing a proper, bone chilling deep freeze. Then I told him about the winter when they shut down the university for a couple weeks and the roads were like snow tunnels, and the winter when a dog in Matt's town ran over the frozen Straits of Mackinac and was found on the Island. 

Blizzards of years past raced through my mind and I remembered them with fondness.

I didn't even tell him about the annual Kalamazoo or Boston blizzards when we stocked up on supplies and didn't leave the house for days (gladly), or the winter overnight hiking trip I took up to Carter Notch in New Hampshire and helped carry buckets of water from the frozen lake up to the cabin for dinner, or the winter trip we took to Quebec City and saw snow piled so high we couldn't see 2-story houses as we drove by. That was the trip where we drove out to visit some sled dogs, and then through a turn of events, we adopted this girl a few months later.

This weekend, we all drove North. Matt went to play in a hockey tournament on a frozen lake. The weather hasn't been cold enough for the Straits to freeze over this year, which is where they have held the event in years past. I took the dog and retreated for a couple days to wrap my head around a heap of dissertation data I need to present on and write about soon.

Saturday we woke up to 5 fresh inches. The dog spent as much time as possible wriggling in snow piles and we took long walks on the frozen lake. We shared the lake with ice fishermen, snowmobiles, and pickup trucks. I think we were the only ladies around. Out on that lake, I thought about everyone I know who is escaping to palm trees right now or wanting to escape. I get it. That January week we spent in Puerto Rico several years ago is a fond memory too. I thought about how harsh winter can be and even lonely, but on quiet weekends when the snow and ice is sparkling, the muted landscape and cold air slows me just enough that I take a deep breath and realize I am still very much alive.

Inside/Outside November

I spent the afternoon playing around with TTV. For my first try, I got blurry photos but I think maybe I like it that way.

Warriors of Winter

Would you hate me if I said I didn't want winter to go? That I want more of it. That I love sunlit reflections on ice. Paws and fur on snow. Sparkles under my feet. I want more time for skiing in forests. More time for skating on ponds.

After the week of the big snowfall, I wanted more of this magic. Friday afternoon, in a rather spur of the moment decision that I too often do not get to make as an adult, I headed north. I've made this trip many times before, traveling dark roads on a Friday night to spend the weekend with someone who knows me to the core. Years ago I drove this direction many times to see the young guy who would become my husband. A five hour drive was easy when I had someone worthwhile waiting for me on the other end of the trip.  Haven't made the drive by myself in much longer than I can remember. Ten years? Fifteen years? It felt like a homecoming keep my own company while making this journey. In the winter, a stillness overcomes me as I drive north. It's a meditation.

I listened to Joni Mitchell on the way, and my ear tuned in while she sang:

Now the warriors of winter they give a cold triumphant shout

And all that stays is dying, all that lives is getting out

See the geese in chevron flight

Flappin' and a-racin' on before the snow

They got the urge for going and they've got the wings so they can go

Most creatures try to escape this cold season, but with every passing year, I look forward to it more and don't want it to end. 

The draw north this weekend was time with an old friend, a lot more paws on the snow, and a warm fire in the lodge afterward.

Late that Friday night, I met her at a little spot on a black river where one summer I flipped out of a canoe and for a moment thought I might not make it back to the surface. She was a teenager with super human strength and pulled me out of that river. I remember the moment vividly when the canoe lifted off the surface of the water, and she was standing there to save me, arms lifted high with a canoe over her head. 

Today she still has super human strength. Fearless, with the determination to do what most people do not consider doing. No sled for her. She set her feet into skis and strapped her waist to a couple of long legged dogs barely out of puppyhood who wanted nothing more than to run fast into the woods. Those two dogs and the power of her own will and strength pulled her forward. 

A few miles later, and a minute ahead of the competition, these three crossed the finish line.

They ran the course Saturday and Sunday mornings, and placed first both times. It was their first competitive run. It's exhilarating, this snow and fur and strength of will.

The weekend drew to a close so I headed south. I stopped on the way to strap some skis on my own feet and propel myself through the woods for a bit. The snow was falling between the pines. As I stopped a few times to catch my breath, I took in the wonder of it all. 

I made it back home to my husband and my dog before sunset. We immediately went to the park to tromp and pull through the snow once more.