tree trunk in the maritime forest

It’s Monday back in the real world.  I’m attempting to pretend I’m all here, but I still have one foot on an island.  Yesterday’s sunrise, which seems a continent away and a month behind me, was a battle between blackened hovering clouds and peach colored light thrown at the edges of billowing cloud formations.  It came and went, shifting back and forth.  I sat in the sand and tried to paint a seized moment here and an arrested cloud there.  Sand blew low and hard, needle-pricking me.  It completely filled my paintbox and scattered itself on my page.  My brush, new and sharp-pointed- became frayed and full of sand particles.  My hair blew so hard across my face I couldn’t see.  The waves tossed spray high above the horizon line.  A heron flew overhead.  Then a peregrin falcon.  It was altogether a spectacular and peculiar sunrise.

The night before, at dusk, we had traveled to a roosting site, hidden away from the public, to watch perhaps one hundred or more egrets and ibises rocking up and down on tree limbs suspended over a perfect mirror of a pond.  The mosquitoes lit on our faces and arms and drew blood in spite of toxic doses of bug spray we’d bathed in.

Part of that day had been spent in the maritime forest, learning about plant species.  The woods were scattered with deadwood more extreme than any sculpture.  We were irresistably drawn to touch it and photograph it from every angle.  Yesterday morning we took a walk in the marsh and sat long enough on an ancient dune, now covered with cabbage palms and live oaks  ( called a hammock), to observe the behavior of fiddler crabs.  I had time enough to do a lightning fast sketch of the underbrush on the hammock.  I learned new words for the plants  and creatures that fill the marshes– spartina, sea lavendar, periwinkle snails.  Mike picked up a glass lizard, the only legless lizard I have ever seen.  Empowered by my previous night’s experience of petting the belly of a California King Snake I attempted to do the same to the glass lizard, who struck at me.  No harm done beyond the embarrassment  of my own reaction–  abject bone-rattling fear, which greatly amused my fellow adventurers.

There was butterfly catching, seining, lots of drawing to record what I saw.  I was swimming in a soup of sensation.  It made me delirious and carried me out of myself and back into union with the earth.  It is with reluctance that I bring myself back to electric lights and cars, billboards and cellphones.  I looked back at my journal from last September’s trip to this island.  In it I said that I’d had the revelation while there that the secret to living this second part of my life was to live it like a poem.  “order it and edit it and take time to live it consciously”.  This year I plan to remind myself everyday that I am in the midst of a poem.

the loud creek

Last weekend I camped beside a loud stream near Asheville.  All night I got to hear the stream rush by– my favorite way to sleep.  The canopy was dense so I could only catch small bits of the mountain starlight.  My alarm clock was a loud crow who would arch through the trees, cutting his handsome black silhouette against the green patterned canopy and insisting I get up.  On Saturday, in spite of the the crow,  I slept two hours later than my definition of sleeping in because it was so delicious.

For entertainment I started by visiting the Faculty Show at UNC-Asheville (www.unca.edu).  I was particularly intrigued by the work of Mark Koven there.  The sculptures he was showing were small in scale, and kinetic.  My favorite was a tower with a small generator that was powered by a turbine.  (I was reminded that Leonardo invented the turbine.) The turbine required the breath of more than one observer to turn it enough to power the dragonfly wings mounted at the top of the piece, which in turn evoked, for me, the flying machine drawings of Leonardo.  I also was captivated by the drawings of  Tamie Beldue, which were skillful and voluptuous, in graphite and watercolor, and floating under a layer of wax which gave them an extra aura of delicacy and intimacy.

My son Stewart and I had fun going to the Asheville Art Museum (www.ashevilleart.org)  which has its own special style– Very Asheville.  It’s in a glamorous Italian Renaissance style building in downtown that was the former home of the town library.  Now it houses a wonderful collection.  Lucky for me the work I’d seen there in April had all been replaced with other work so I got a larger notion of the museum’s holdings.  There are always plenty of surprises there, but the piece that sticks best in my mind is an abstract Maud Gatewood rendering of a tunnel (also very Asheville).  One sees the view framed by the tunnel.  Snow is falling and creates a pattern over the framed vista.  

I paid a quick visit to the Blue Spiral (www.bluespiral1.com), ate some great food, watched a guy dressed in a nun’s habit complete with a black miniskirt pedaling up Biltmore at a 45 degree angle on a red bicycle that had to be 10 feet tall (employing the same Attitude as the Wicked Witch of the West).  I heard the drum circle in the park.  Saw lovely bits of blacksmithing here and mosaic-making there… bits of random wall painting, and the basic urge of many creative souls to express themselves.  My refrigerator is now full of mountain apples from the Farmers’ Market.  And my head is full of  nature, color, and snapshots of focused energy made material .  Thanks Asheville.