The Anti- Buddha

I have been here at Playa Residency in Summer Lake, Oregon for one week now. It is yet another landscape that is strange and foreign to me. Most of the times I have no idea what I am looking at and have to ask someone. On my drive here as I approached Summer Lake, it looked like there was a low lying brownish yellow fog that gradually transitioned to a white fog and then to the clouds above. There was also a billowy large cloud that began high in the sky and then dove down and because of my distance from it, looked like it nearly met the ground. 

After two days straight of rain and whipping wind, the weather cleared and I went on a short evening walk. One side of the residency is bordered by low lying hills that were scorched by a forest fire. The black and burned toothpick remains of trees are interspersed with brightly colored yellow bushes. The other side of the residency is bordered by a pond and a two mile long lake, Summer Lake. I have been given mixed accounts to explain why it is completely drained in the summer months. One person told me this was a natural annual occurrence while someone else explained it was drained each year for irrigating surrounding farms. The drained lake bed is called the playa. You can walk on it and some of the residents who arrived before me said they walked two miles out in the muddy expanse. I tried to venture onto the playa today but it was too muddy from days of rain, so instead I walked through the fields of yellow grass. There were these long, translucent strands, maybe two feet long, floating through the air. I got one stuck on me and thought I had walked into a cobweb. I imagine it might be a plant's way of dispersing seeds. This is another question I will have to ask someone.

The pic above is the house I share with a filmmaker. Supposedly this is the favored house of field mice. If you read my WY mouse post, you would know that this was not welcomed news. On my second night I returned to my room to find a mouse in my bathroom. We were both surprised and froze in our tracks. The mouse flinched first and ran off. I trapped it in my bathroom, duct taped the crack underneath the door and the next day retrieved mouse traps. I lathered so much peanut butter on them that when one accidentally fired, it jettisoned a wad of peanut butter across the room. In one day, my housemate and I caught (and beheaded one) three mice. I also killed, I kid you not, at least forty flies in the past two days. I imagine that on some karmic level my place in the universe has been lowered by my anti- Buddhist behavior. Field mice and flies of Oregon, go tell your friends that I am not messing around. 

Joking aside, the facilities are great. The main commons was once a bed and breakfast. It has an all wood interior and on cold days someone lights the two wood stoves. I am feeling settled in my studio. My only complaint is that I only have windows up high and can't look outside.  I'm a creature of the sun and it's tough not to see the sunlight during the day. That said, I am thankful though to have a studio and a place to live. 

I am going to leave you with one random photo that a WY friend gave me. It is a sign a "unique" WY man made for his front lawn. She also had a great story about another Sheridan resident, "Dirty Shirley" who lives in a sprawling complex of run down trailers that are scattered up a hill. I drove by this and wondered what it was. There was so much garbage strewn across the property that I assumed it was abandoned. Later I was told that Dirty Shirley lived there. Some of the trailers had holes and were exposed to the elements. The town gave her multiple warnings and eventually spent some ten thousand dollars to clean up her property. In response, Dirty Shirley spray painted obscenities addressed to the town on her trailers. She also spray painted messages to her neighbors who she thought were too loud. 

Yellowstone Photos Part 2

Yellowstone.

Created by hotspring.

Hotspring. 

During my second day in Yellowstone, I talked to a man from Vermont who drives to Yellowstone every year for several weeks because "this place grabs a hold of you". Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons took my breath away from the strange variety of hot springs, thermal vents, and mudholes to the wildlife to the constantly shifting landscape. At the higher altitudes, it had snowed the night before - the evergreens were covered in snow and there were multiple mini-snowmen built along the roadside. As I watched Old Faithful erupt, the air was filled with swirling snowflakes and the smell of sulfur.

Injured male elk on side of road.

You've seen Old Faithful, so here's a picture of everyone with cameras
watching Old Faithful.

My animal count for day two included a lone, lanky wolf crossing the road, a black bear and its two cubs, an injured elk, countless bison, and zero grizzlies.The morning I left Yellowstone, I cheated and went to Grizzly and Wolf World, a non-profit zoo that houses injured or unruly wolves and bears (this sounds an awful lot like the reform school I worked at the year after I graduated college).  I went above and beyond trying to find a grizzly in the wild but to no avail. I tried to think of the words of the wise Mick Jagger: "sometimes you don't get what you want but you get what you need". I was able to take over a hundred photos of the bears in their enclosed space - good reference photos for the studio. The large grizzly is over a thousand pounds and its hump is five feet tall!

Thousand pound bear.

Heading West

Leaving the residency at Ucross was difficult, but I was ready to go. All but one of the people I had gotten to know were leaving on the same day and I didn't want to go through another change of residents. It is a special place and I highly recommend it if you are a writer, musician, or artist and you don't mind the side effect of uncontrollable gas at inappropriate and embarrassing moments (this becomes less embarrassing once you establish it is happening to almost everyone). I have this week free so I am spending a few days at Yellowstone and Grand Tetons and then will head to Reno where my parents live and then hopefully to Oakland where my sister and her family live.

Jackson Lake and the Teton mountain range.                                                                                                                                                               

Taken by a woman with her iphone and binoculars. She was kind enough
to send me a copy!

My drive across Wyoming was out of a dream. I drove through mountains, canyons and red rock landscapes. I had the voices of my Ucross friends in my head. For instance, whenever something Wyoming-Amazing happened, my friend Amanda would throw her hands up in the air and exclaim "Where are we?!! What is going on?!!" I also thought of Jeff's story about the Indian chief who said that some things are for your memories and not meant to be photographed. I don't think I could possibly recall all of the things I have seen over the past two days, but at the very least, I hope to remember the pure joy I have felt over this past month. Sometimes the drives make me feel lonely and I wish I had someone to explore these parks with, but mostly I feel so lucky to have this opportunity.

The Grand Tetons are AMAZING. I cannot find the words to describe the mountains but I included a couple of pictures. Aside from using this trip to think about how to incorporate landscape into my work, I definitely have other agendas . Ever since moving to New England fifteen years ago, I have been trying to spot a moose. This wish has led me on many adventures and misadventures including damaging my pickup truck, going on countless hikes through New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, and even hiking for a week along a stretch of the Appalachian Mountain Trail where I saw a massive amount of moose shit but no moose. I am happy to report that I saw my first two moose today. While feeling dejected because I had only seen birds and chipmunks all day, I saw a group of cars gathered at the side of the road. People are like the animal paparazzi in national parks. There are crowds of people carrying cameras with huge lenses and cars swerving to the side of the road. Needless to say, I joined the frenzy, pulled my car over and ran towards the moose like they were Brangelina.  I was immediately confused and maybe a little disappointed when I saw the first moose because it looked a lot smaller than I imagined it would be. I quickly learned that it was a calf and its much larger sized mother soon appeared from behind some trees. A friendly woman sent me her moose pictures which she had taken with an iphone attached to a telescope.    

On the other hand, finding a grizzly bear has been another story. I have seen a handful of brown bears and black bears in the past, but I love grizzlies. I grow optimistic every time I see a "Be Bear Aware" sign, but still no bear. I am in Yellowstone now and am armed with a map that has symbols of different animals where they are most commonly seen. I felt like the park ranger had handed me a treasure map. I have marked all of the grizzly hot spots. I celebrated my moose sighting by having lunch in Jackson, WY, where the streets smell like burgers and icecream and where women wearing leggings and Ugg boots roam free. It was the first time I have eaten out in a restaurant in over a month. After lunch I spent a few hours today driving through Yellowstone. I don't know if animal sighting pictures are interesting to anyone other than the person who took the photo, but here are some of my animal paparazzi photos:

Elk!

Bison road block.

Solo bison going for stroll.

And one more photo of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The setting sun gave everything a tinge of pink.

It's difficult to capture a sense of scale. This is GRAND.

Thanks for reading... Thinking of all of you on my journeys.

xo s

At a loss for words, final snapshots.

Full moon. Iphone makes it suspiciously look
like UFO.

My feral friends.

My dear Ruth.

My buddy Luc. Love his smile in this picture.

Ruth, Amanda and Luc walking back from teepee circles.

Mexican food night. BEST. STEAK. EVER.

And for dessert, upside down apple cake.

Wildness (Rocks and Shit)

My collection of skulls.

It seemed to rain for days. The stars disappeared. It even snowed at one point, large, fluffy snowflakes falling rapidly from the sky. At night, the moon was reduced to a smudge of light obscured by the clouds. When the rain and clouds parted, it was as if the stage curtains had been lifted presenting a perfectly curated autumn scene. The moths and wasps have disappeared. In the distance, the mountains that were once blue, purple and grey are now covered with crisp white snow. Today the wind is so loud and strong that it sounds like the low roll of thunder.

I realized this week that the high altitude and dry air made me retain water like a camel riding an airplane. I mistakenly thought I had gained a massive amount of weight due to the bottomless cookie jar and midnight icecream kitchen raids. I even went to town to buy a more comfortable pair of pants that I have affectionately dubbed my "cookie pants". They are black and cropped with lots of buttons, maybe what one of the Von Trapp kids would wear in a singing performance. As I enter my final week here, somehow my body stopped clinging onto any liquid I put into it and I can comfortably fit into my usual clothes again.

Sadly, as my body has finally acclimated to Wyoming, my time here is coming to a close. I am going to miss this place and the people. I will miss my bike that sounds like a creaky swingset, the family style meals every night, and all of the stories I have been told. I could listen to animal encounter stories all day. The chef was telling me about the time her dog raced up a tree to chase raccoons and another time when her dog was being swept down a creek with a raccoon firmly affixed to its back. Another person who works here was driving at night when she came upon a mountain lion with its paw poised to swipe a porcupine. Both animals froze in her headlights, looked at her, and then scurried off in opposite directions. The man who gave us a ranch tour told us that he saw 15 rattlesnakes over the course of two days in the fields where the cows graze. His father in law was reaching for something on the ground when he was bit by one. He pulled his hand away and the teeth anchored into his skin like, as the rancher said, "some fishhook action".

The moon! Luc set up the telescope and
 we took pictures with our iphones! 

I am trying to make the most of my remaining time here which I have decided not only means working in the studio but also exploring the area and connecting with other people. The other day it was clear and bright outside. I went on a hike with two of the residents who recently arrived. Ruth is a writer from San Francisco who is publishing her first book next year and Amanda is a sculptor, who coincidentally grew up in a neighboring town from mine. We somehow figured out that we had both worked at the same little ice cream store when we were in high school. The three of us headed to a nearby hiking trail. This sounds like the beginning of a joke: "two artists and a writer go on a hike..."

Ruth, Amanda and me wearing red and orange, ready
for our hike.

The staff here had given us ample warnings about hunting season. We could have probably been spotted a mile away because of the orange reflective vests and bright clothes we were wearing. Amanda even had this bright neon orange knit hat (not shown in picture). We went in search of a group of teepee circles that were in a grassy field nearby. Both Ruth and Amanda are easy to talk to and quick to laugh. We had a great time walking through the rolling, grassy hills. At the top of one ridge, we were rewarded with a view of the Bighorn Mountains. I had imagined that the teepee circles would be very visible circles of dark rocks drawn on the yellow grass, but instead the rocks were camouflaged. It was a fun process to trace out the circles one rock at a time. We imagined the Indians who once lived here over 200 years ago. It is a great vantage point from where you can see miles out in every direction: the mountains, the creek weaving through the hills, the black cows grazing in the fields. There was also as much shit as there were rocks. Amanda said she wished she could use "rocks and shit" as a title to a book.

Rocks, no shit.

I have only a few days left here. In my studio I have abandoned carving wood entirely and  am trying my best to stay in this uncertain unknown territory. I'm not sure if I'm making a lot of progress but I hope that somewhere amongst all of these things I've generated is a gem, a seed of an idea I can push further. Since my first day here, I haven't lost my sense of awe. I truly couldn't have hoped for a better experience than I have had. This year was a tough one for me for various reasons and being here has helped me return to a point of feeling grateful and content.

My beloved studio, Rock 4.