bison love

generally being one who is eager and impulsive, i’ve learned that sometimes feeling the need to make the most of every moment can completely blind my ability to do so.  the 3 days before i arrived in j-tree were some of the most amazing in my entire life.   (the “in my entire life” is becoming a very regular phrase these days).   part of it was because i didn't have the time to think through or plan what i was experiencing.  i covered 1300 miles, 10 national forests, two absolutely incredible national parks (arches and zion), the most magical drives i've ever done, and tiny gems of adventure towns in the west.   upon every arrival, i wasn’t sure where i'd stay, what i'd cook, how i'd choose to spend my measly 13 hours in a place one could spend a lifetime exploring, and how to get at least enough sleep to push me through 8 hours of driving to another destination, so that i still felt energized enough to do it all again when i got there.   turns out when you’re driving through country like that, you could get no sleep at all and still be amped up enough to drive clear through into the pacific ocean.  at least that’s what i felt like…

not to say that planning ahead isn’t entirely necessary in many situations.  i’m learning that thoroughly with steve.  but part of what makes traveling an unrivaled high for me is letting go, and watching the purity of the experience unfold.

in 11 days i took the little prius from cape cod to boston, to new york city on september 11, to state college PA, through ohio and indiana to chicago, into madison and cheesy wisconsin, all through the dakota badlands, across eastern wyoming down into denver and boulder, up into the rockies to frisco and breckenridge, south to durango, then silverton and ouray, west past telluride to moab utah, then zion national park, knicked the corner of arizona, came down through vegas, pit stopped at whole foods for a heaping supply of fresh kale (yup, a gal’s gotta have kale, even in the desert!), and across the mojave for the twinkling last stretch into joshua tree california.

some highlights:

-        madison, wisconsin.  blustery blue sky walk along the enormous lake.

-         roadside trailer cooking bbq at a tiny truck stop in sandusky, selling fresh grilled ohio corn on the cob and 1 lb bags of homemade beef jerky.

-        a cape cod beach on the north coast near dennis MA.  endless panorama of tidal flats and salt marsh.  not a soul around.  tide pool skinny dipping at sunset (still categorizing this as a highlight, even though it’s still unclear whether 6 inches of water made this an amazing thing or an awful thing). 

-        super 8 motel in mitchell, south dakota.  counted 37 4WD trucks, 15 eighteen-wheelers and 1 prius in the parking lot.  room came with free “European Bathing Gel for the Entire body & hair”.   mitchell is the location of the world’s only “corn palace”.  saw it, but still not sure what it is.

-        a handful o sunset roadside slacklining sessions.

-        seeing my family outside chicago.  diner booth omelets and homemade pickles (the first pickles i have EVER liked, this was VIMOG… very important moment of growth) and games of pitch and the best homemade bread i have ever had (ardie, if you’re reading this, i’m officially attempting to publicly guilt you into giving me the recipe) and more love than one could ever ask for.  ps. MITCH SHOUT OUT. 

-        waiting for the bus to kindergarten at 8am, holding hands with my 6-year old twin cousins, after one of them gave me a lesson on frog throat-sacks.

-        my grandmother.  mary lee, granny, treater.  the coolest woman i have ever known. 

-        the badlands.  probably my favorite place in the US so far.  something about the vastness of the land that is endlessly lonely and unforgiving, yet caked deep with eras upon eras of life.  primitive dinosaur fossils, rattlesnakes, bison herds, big horn sheep, coyotes, rock spires, mountains, horizons of eroded canyons, and infinite prairie.  i drove for at least 30 miles without seeing a single human.

-        the night in the badlands.  i camped out in the middle of the north unit, and accidentally was surrounded all night by a herd of over 100 wild bison!!  360 degrees around my tent i could hear breathing, grass ripping, huffing, even literally the muscles twitching… three feet from my face.  so much for the signs everywhere warning not to go within 100 yards of a bison!  terrifying and exhilarating and found poop everywhere when i finally emerged after sunrise.  

-        a bag of aussie style red licorice (with the $1.99 TJ MAXX price tag) that was given to me as i left and stayed absurdly delicious as i rationed it for 11 days.

-        seeing my badass nurse sister in denver, eating frosted flake banana pancakes, and watching bluegrass at a local brewery as the sky erupted in pouring rain colorado-style. 

-        wilderness sports consignment in silverthorne CO.  go there.  (and buy my old patagonia rain jacket!)

-        durango, CO.  cooked stir fry, rode bikes in flip flops, and visited my friend ashley’s brand new charter school, mountain middle.

-        the drive from durango to silverton to ouray.  truly one of THE most incredible drives ever. 

 

-        a lamb gyro (pronounced euro) in ouray (pronounced euray) that blew my mind. 

-        ice lake.  8 mile hike up to turquoise mountain lake in the snowy wildflower belly of the san juan peaks.  trailhead is just outside silverton, colorado off south mineral road. 

-        camping under an open starry sky, along the colorado river where it carves through the red rock walls of arches national park.  

-        pre-dawn and sunrise in arches.  this one doesn’t get words. 

-        zion national park.  biblical hike to a narrow mountain spire aptly named “angel’s landing”.  includes a final 0.5 mile ascent where you haul yourself hand-over-hand up a chain along the cliff’s edge.  i got to the top just as the sun was setting.  camped out under silhouette of stars and soaring canyon walls.  was so excited for j-tree at this point i didn’t sleep a wink.  re-read almost an entire book of my favorite poems.  peed 6… yes six… times.  

 -       arriving at my cabin just before sunset, collapsing on my bed (quilt is just a giant piece of leather), praying that feeling would last forever. 

 

i'm here!!

well hello there!  welcome to my little world!  

i just arrived in joshua tree, california two days ago.  i'm recently 28, i have eaten almost an entire jar of peanut butter in the past 10 days, i have two bunyons (a gnarly one on the right foot), and i have never felt this happy in my entire life.

right now i'm sitting at a small rawhide table, van morrison playing through the old stereo receiver, staring at a high desert canyon and the mountains beyond, framed in the backdrop of two incredible steel and stone sculptures.

most of you reading this are close family or friends and know why i’m out here… but yes, upon finishing my phd in breast cancer pathology, i decided to move into my car and drive out to j-tree, where i’ll be apprenticing with steve rieman… a large-scale geo-kinetic metal sculptor who lives out in the high desert with his wife ruth. 

what in the hell, you ask?

well, there are a number of reasons, and perhaps through writing this blog i’ll be able to partially convey why this was the single decision i have questioned least in my life.

for one thing, there is no living artist whom i admire more. 

while steve and ruth have very intentionally chosen to live a simple and humble existence (partially off the grid energy-wise and artworld-wise), anyone who has ever seen a rieman sculpture or met steve, let alone visited his studio and listened to him talk about his work, has been convinced of the man’s utter genius and artistic brilliance.  steve is tall and sinewy, desert-tanned, and wears flip-flops as he walks amidst the enormous pieces of steel, lifetime’s worth of machinery, and self-engineered pulley systems that populate his quonset hut studio.  he is an industrial designer, brilliant engineer, and was an incredibly successful, but radical, watercolorist before he moved on to metals.  ruth has a bright child-like ponytail of gray hair, a quick wit, and an unending knowledge of desert ecosystems and land resource politics, which has brought her intimately involved with a number of local preservation and energy activism groups.

together, they are sight to behold.  at the age of 70, they still can’t get enough of each other, even elbowing whilst washing dishes. 

and man, do they make a badass margarita.

the history is that they purchased land along the pipes canyon wash 34 years ago, built an initial homestead on it’s edge (now their guest cabin… i.e. my temporary home!), and subsequently created what is now their house, studio, office and outdoor spaces.  the two of them envisioned, designed, and built by hand absolutely everything.  i mean, literally every planter, every door handle, every electrical socket and piece of furniture.  even the bathroom sink basin was hand-thrown on ruth’s pottery wheel, and the window glass designed, cut and installed by steve.  long before the concept of sustainable architecture became popular, they conceived of an open floor-plan and passive solar heating (including a trombe wall, which steve has now installed for friends all over the desert).  they call their design nature’s modern, which is quite an accurate way to summarize its instinctive beauty, and they came up with four main principles that would guide them (and i’m quoting them):

1)     sweat equity.  we would fully participate in the building process.

2)     low maintenance.  we would finish to the degree we were willing to maintain.

3)     use materials honestly.  let function play the heavy role in the design, the nuts and bolts would show if it served no purpose to cover them.

4)     age gracefully.  surfaces and spaces should get better with time.

they live by a philosophy once preached by steve’s old instructor, “a good designer can design anything,” and they nonchalantly refer to this approach as “Projects Unlimited”.  it’s hard to comprehend how two people alone could create a compound with such simple, functional beauty in just 3 decades, let alone be such prolific artists and citizens full-time. 

they also happen to be two unbelievably humble, open and welcoming humans.  after all, having met me just once two years ago for a few hours, they agreed to let me live in their “cabin” for the 3-ish (we haven’t even set formal guidelines or an end-date) months i’ll be apprenticing with steve.  no questions asked.  everything provided.  they even installed a new low-flush toilet for me (the old toilet we are going to smash and add to the “gravel” walkway along the south side of their house, which already is filled with hundreds of pieces of broken handmade ceramics and apparently a friend’s old toilet as well).

i must say, however, i was fortunate to have perhaps the most ideal referral one could get. my best friend from growing up, lily stockman, who is an incredible artist herself and keeps a real blog (10,000 times more interesting and inspiring than this will ever be… check her out, www.bigbangstudio.blogspot.com), lived out here for a year with her husband pete, discovered steve, won him over, told me i had to meet him immediately, and provided the magical introduction to him, as well as to this talented and welcoming community of artists and her joshua tree friends (you’ll meet some of them if you keep following along).

sometimes in life, every one of your senses is aware, in the very moment, that what you are experiencing is absolutely epic.  the adrenaline rush, the excitement, the possibilities are so overwhelming that you truly have to remember to feel your bones, to take a sip of breath.  

i'm still working to comprehend that what lies in front of me right now is real! 

but i’m trying to ignore my consciousness of it all, and to allow in my instincts, content just slowly absorbing things piece by piece.   

as much as anything, i want this experience to be about stepping back and separating from all we assume about our life, the elusive rush we get caught up in, and the habits and things we are dependent on.  although this is about creative growth for both sides of my brain, it’s equally about being here, letting the gears in my head turn on their own, and paying attention to them so much more.

so thank you for following along with any part of this adventure, and for supporting that process. 

a while back i was reading a book called the writing life, by annie dillard, and came across an image that seemed to really strike a chord, and it has stuck in my mind ever since.

"... the art must enter the body, too.  a painter cannot use paint like glue or screws to fasten down the world. the tubes of paint are like fingers; they work only if, inside the painter, the neural pathways are wide and clear to the brain. cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, part of the brain changes physical shape to accommodate and fit paint.

you adapt yourself, paul klee said, to the contents of the paintbox. adapting yourself to the contents of the paintbox, he said, is more important than nature and its study. the painter, in other words, does not fit the paints to the world. he most certainly does not fit the world to himself. he fits himself to the paint. the self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents..."

that concept partially inspired the title to this blog… though i have no idea where it will go from here.  although i promise they will not be this long!!

i am so damn excited to be able to share these experiences with you all!   i'll include an update and pics from my roadtrip out here as well, as soon as i learn how to work this blog and get access to some wifi!

much love,

alley