I lived in an old inn whose balconied stories rode the heaving surf of the hillside like a tall ship with many masts, square-rigged, riding at anchor above the valley floor. Old-fashioned windows hinged like wings you could shove open to the winking moonlight. Gables gave portholes to the ragged roofline, and there was something in the way the bow breached the air over the hill that made the old home seem to hove to and rock in the wind. Hundred year old Washington Palms rattled their dry skirts and slid their slim gray hips from side to side like old hula dancers who never forgot their moves. A pair of white owls flew up out of the dark, perched on the top balcony’s high rigging, then sailed off, their twin faces holding the moon. In those days, I often kept the dawn watch, that still, dark hour when the cool mountain breeze flowed downhill and rocked the great ship in its arms, before the sun struck my windowpane with its hammer blows of gold.
Art returned today slipped in while I wasn’t looking. One moment the canvas seemed a fine white cottonwood with colbalt shadows that must fall just so.
The next moment, a yellow square unbidden – and a sheer purple glaze blending space to unify a pale skeletal snag, roaring smoke, fire and sky.
This is new art and I ask myself once again- where does art come from? I look under my skin; I look at the memories of artists past. I ask my sisters, my brothers, my mother, and I ask my friends. Where does art come from?
This is what happens in the dead of winter in the Pacific Northwest. The gray, the rain and the moss finally drive artists to total distraction and we find a way to escape to some warm, strange new land. In search of new experiences, Cheryl and Tom launch thier canoe into the previously unexplored lake of the Smoking Orange Volcanos.
I am a student of Michael Harner, the famous teacher of shamanic journeying. During my first successful journey to the underworld I met my totem animal. This duck is unlike any I have ever seen with my binoculars. He remains in my consciousness after 15 years. I never fail to pause and watch ducks and I always remember that I have a special connection with them. They have something to tell me – usually to remind me that I am not separate from nature. A short 3 mile hike through a local wetland can reveal not only ducks but flickers, sapsuckers, redwinged blackbirds, herons, egrets, bald eagles and much more.
12/28/08 Crazy Larimer Eyeglasses, a hermit for over 20 years, holed up in a cabin in Estes Park. Known to be a brilliant but mad professor, he finally broke his solitude to have a chance to eat, drink and talk with the reknown Shakespearean scholar, Peter Jensen. Rumors that Larimer might do harm to visitors proved to be false when professor Jensen was found unharmed drinking a latte and eating croissants while sketching in his journal at an Estes Park coffee shop.
