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For once, there are too many things to be said instead of too few. Things happening inside me, things I want, things I need, things I hate. The flowers that I picked at Green Bluff, which were so beautiful and full of life last night, are drooping sadly this morning; but in their death, they smell sweeter than ever, and I am adrift. My mother will be coming to town soon, a small package I owe to someone I don’t even know but who has blessed my life, and this week there is the beginning of another round of physical therapy and a trip to the anesthesiologist to see if there is anything, anything at all, that medical science can do to return me to a normal life, and I am afraid that it will fail. And I am keenly aware that there is, at most, perhaps 5 people out there who will even read this, but still… Wait for me.
Ever since the move-that-did-not-happen, there has been very little art in my life. Photography, yes, but that lovely do-it-yourself down-and-dirty painting/making/creating kind of art, no. I unpacked a few art supplies to make Christmas cards and ornaments last year, but I have been so disheartened by the prospect of unpacking/repacking and in the end, never actually moving, that the majority of my supplies are still gathering dust in boxes. A year and a half now, and my artistic spirit is getting ever more desperate while the rest of me remains stubbornly unmotivated.Obviously, I need a good kick in the fanny, and the Spill It! Online Workshop sounds just so lovely and inspiring and loads of fun, which is all something I need so desperately. And lovely Carmen is giving away free tuition to one lucky person, so hurry on over and join the fun!
And since I can’t for the life of me get the video to embed properly, please click here to find out all about it!
Sometimes, your day will go like this: it takes 45 minutes longer than usual just to get out of town. All of the beaches along the Colombia river are either already occupied, inaccessible from the road, or the water is too low to swim in. When you finally find the perfect beach at an isolated campground, three cars pull up right when you are thinking about changing (in other words, getting completely naked) behind a tree. The house you were planning to photograph has been demolished quite thoroughly in the past week. You miss a turn and end up at a backwoods border crossing into Canada, and since you weren’t planning to leave the country, your only ID is your driver’s license. You walk half of the way from the highway to the winery by the river because your leg hurts too much to sit in the car anymore despite the muscle relaxants and pain killers, and then discover that while you were walking there, the winery has closed for the evening. You have a killer charlie horse in your big toe, of all places, and your husband gets a killer toothache.
Sometimes, your day will go like this: you finally get to photograph Two Rivers in decent lighting. You watch a flock of wild turkey cross the road a few feet ahead of the car. You put in a CD that you haven’t listened to in years, and right there in the first song is your heart. By the time the second song is half through, you are content and at peace. You find a miraculously empty beach and go swimming at sunset. You watch the mountains fade to royal purple with the last rays of sunlight casting a white-gold haze over their peaks. You eat dinner to the sound of crickets and the lapping of water on the rocky shore. You name a trout Beauford, because he’s a sly one indeed–always jumping out of the water just when you’re not looking. You watch the stars come out over the river until you can find the Big Dipper, Pisces, Delphinus, Cassiopeia. You find the Milky Way stretched across the night sky like a faint cloud of light.
Sometimes, they are the same day, and when you balance everything out, there is more light than dark.
January 2010 will mark the 7-year anniversary of my life in Spokane, my life away from the Texas hill country where I grew up. It has been a struggle coming to terms with the Inland Northwest. I have written poems bemoaning the harsh, snowy winters and poems about transplanting bluebonnets into this deeper, colder soil. I have pined for Austin and dreamed of moving back, sometimes to the point of obsession. When I went down for my mother’s surgery in 2006, I cried all the way from her house to the airport simply because the bluebonnets were in bloom, and they were the first Texas wildflowers I had seen in four years. A large part of my heart will always belong there, always yearn for those warm, green hills. And yet for once, I am dreaming of Washington.
We spent Labor Day weekend traveling from one end of Eastern WA to the next: to Colville, and then even further north, almost to Canada; southeast to the edge of the Idaho Palouse; just outside of town to the farms at Green Bluff. And I never wanted it to end, never wanted to return to Spokane. Or anywhere else, for that matter. The landscape of my heart is changing, taking on the golden tint of the Palouse hills, the dark beauty of the northern mountains, the vibrant shades of harvest in an apple orchard looking toward Mt. Spokane.
It is strangely like the way I fell in love with my husband: slowly, over many years, without realizing it. I think this began in 2007, when in the midst of deep depression I set out with my camera for the first time with the sole intent of proving to myself that there was something beautiful in the world to enjoy. And I have kept doing that, through PCOS-induced emotional meltdowns, fits of loneliness and homesickness, and more than a fair bit of physical pain. I loved it immediately, this exploration of my new home, and I loved seeing its unexpected beauty. But until recently–until I spent some real quality time at the property where my husband grew up in Colville–I had not truly begun to love the Inland Northwest for itself. And I am still struggling a bit: it is barely autumn, and already I am dreading the winter here. I am not head-over-heels, breathlessly wide-eyed, utterly besotted yet. But give me a little more time: one morning I will wake up deeply, inextricably bound to this land.
