Wednesday was a relatively quiet day. I had the interim executive director interview, which went pretty well. We will see if I get called back for a second interview with the board. It was a sunny but cold day, I got out for a couple of walks on the grounds, including doing the labyrinth twice, one at sunset, which was gorgeous. I also was able to get out to the supermarket by walking the half mile down the driveway to hitch a ride with one of the service corps members. It was good to stock up on food in case we get more snow.
Yesterday was a really good day. It was not as cold as it has been so I felt warmer than usual doing my morning labyrinth walk and the sunrise was stunning. I just started listening to Lovely One the audiobook by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I can tell she has a theater background as she is a fantastic narrator. I’m so glad I get to hear the book in her own voice.
I was in a creative mood and ended up doing some nature art based on a book that I’m reading as part of a group I joined this year called Wild Soul Woman. I had a lot of fun gathering grasses, and other fallen bits of nature much of which I had already scavenged over the time I’ve been here. I’ve got several little collections in my space, which is something I do at home as well. I have a large bowl filled with stones and shells and twigs and other natural things I found on my travels as well as little collections of acorns and different things in my bedroom at home. I don’t know why I’ve always just loved bringing natural materials inside. Anyway I worked on creating a ‘Desert Woman’ in the snow. Being in the high desert now it seems very appropriate and that’s actually the part of the book that we’re going through (there are five different nature women archetypes highlighted in the book).
I was supposed to take a class at the local art center on Wednesday night but the snow was still too deep on the driveway for the car that I’m using to get out. It is definitely not a car to drive on snowy roads. Even though the city has put sand down on the roads, they are still pretty icy and I just don’t feel comfortable driving in it. Luckily the class is part of a series and I just transferred my registration to next week. I found out that they were making notebooks out of reused materials so I decided I would use what I had available and do the same. It was a ton of fun! I’m actually not surprised since I really love reusing and repurposing things. I have seen notebooks made from all different sort of repurposed materials, I just had never done it myself. I had some coffee filters that I had been drying and saving because I loved the patterns that the coffee grounds and coffee made on the filters. I also had some small paper bags that I tore open and laid flat and the tissue papers that were in the truffle box that I bought. I opened up and flattened the truffle box itself to use as the cover for my notebook, found a couple of metal skewers in the kitchen drawer and used those to poke holes in the layers of my book, then took the red raffia that had been tied around the truffle box and used that to bind the book. It was long enough that I was able to wrap it all the way around and tie it to close the book. I added an inside out coffee sleeve, and which was a good spot to hang my pen. When I laid the notebook on the table my eyes spied a twig of dried sage that I had picked up so I put that in as well. I am very pleased with the result! In the class they were using the notebook for daily Zen doodling, another thing that I have heard about, but I’ve never done so I decided to try the same with mine. Zen doodling is when you draw a simple shape and then just start filling in parts at a time with lines, circles and simple shapes. It’s a way of doodling that can create amazing art even if you have no drawing skills, which I definitely do not. It was relaxing and fun and I think I’m going to do one every day and see what comes of it. Such a fun experience to spontaneously make art and do it using only what I had around.
I spent the rest of the morning working on a variety of projects for my friend Isabel‘s nonprofit. It’s stuff that to me is very easy and doesn’t take much time, but because she hasn’t had experience with it she gets overwhelmed by. When I sent her the finished work, she was shocked at how quickly I was able to get it done. It’s been great to be able to use my skills to help her out and earn a little bit of money in the process. After that, I went over to Rebekah‘s place and joined in the weekly lunch that she has with Amy, her assistant at the retreat center, watching the Great British Baking Show. Again something I had heard of but had never watched, and I became completely engrossed in the amazing projects that these amateur bakers have to do. They’re a fantastic group of people and it’s been awe inspiring to see what they create under such pressure. And of course it always makes me hungry! It was very cozy as there was a fire going in the fireplace. After that, Rebekah and I spent some time working on a job description for a retreat site manager position they’re looking to fill as well as some marketing ideas for reaching out to companies and other organizations in the local area. Again, it was so much fun to be able to help out a small nonprofit that didn’t have any experience in those areas and do something that could really make a difference for them.
I got out for a wander around the property. Some areas where there has been a lot of foot, ski, and sled traffic are much easier to walk in, but I really wanted to see if I could find the path going up to the top of the hill. I had very mixed success with this endeavor!The powdery snow was very deep since no one had walked on it yet, and in some places it was impossible to tell where the trail was. But I enjoyed floundering around, the fact that the snow is so dry meant I didn’t get very cold and if I slipped it never hurt. I was rewarded on my journey with seeing the group of deer who are often on site. They were hanging out near one of the fences just watching me and when they decided I wasn’t a threat, they proceeded on their way down the driveway. It’s so much fun to see them hopping and trotting.
In the evening, Rebekah and I went to a showing of the Mountain Film festival being held in the historic Cody theater, a very old-school movie theater that is used for stage productions by the local high school and community theater group mainly during the summertime. We were happily surprised to see the theater was almost completely full. The audience definitely skewed towards the younger side. It was a fantastic collection of six different short films, all having to do with environment and people and community. Except for the last film, which was very ‘bro’- oriented and really not in keeping with the other movies, I enjoyed them all. One I had actually seen before, Planetwalker, about Dr. John Francis from Point Reyes Station, who has walked around the world. For 17 years he did not use any kind of motorized transport and for 22 years he had a vow of silence, earning bachelors masters in PhD’s during this time! I talk more about the film in an earlier post after I had seen the film and got to hear from the directors and Dr. Francis himself at the Q&A afterwards. The other films were about a huge variety of topics from a culture slowly losing its way of life in the Amazon rainforest, a woman who is absolutely obsessed with mushrooms (I had no idea the incredible variety of fungi there are in the world!), a couple that staffed the last manual weather station in Sweden – learning about their incredible life doing that as well as banding birds for over 40 years while raising a family, and finally a group of young women from Afghanistan who fled in 2021 when the country was falling apart and were relocated to the United States. They were part of an organization called Ascend that taught young Afghan women about participating in different sports, etc. They were given the opportunity to go rock climbing in Yosemite with some incredible women guides. Wow! It was a fantastic evening. I also met James, one of the service corps folks who is from Marin. We both commented on how cool it was to see areas we recognized in the Planetwalker movie. He also went to UC Santa Barbara, many many years after I did! But we got into the usual discussion of ‘Where did you live in IV?’ It’s so funny how that always comes up when you meet a fellow Gaucho, identifying people by the streets that they lived on. I’ve met very few people who said that they lived on DP (Del Playa), the street right on the cliff above the beach. It was one of the more expensive and definitely the big party area of Isla Vista.
It was strange being in town since I’ve only been as far as the very edge where the Albertsons is and to see all of the snow piled up in the middle of the roads and the sidewalks, it looked completely different from the last time I was in town less than a week ago. We’re spoiled up at the retreat center where everything that we see is still beautiful pristine white snow. We’re in for another four or 5 inches today, so it could be a few days before I get out again. Luckily I have plenty of food and things to keep me busy.
I’m sitting at the big picture window in my living room looking out over the snow and trees and bushes. I can tell the snow is starting soon as it’s getting lighter outside and the lights in the distance are growing fainter and in some areas I can’t see them at all. It’s fun to be up in a hidden world like this, especially when I don’t have any obligations that I need to be at. I already feel like I want to come back to TAC in the fall for another month to see what it’s like at that time of the year. I’m not sure I want to be here during the summer when everything‘s busy, though when I left the last time it was mid-June and the cacti were just starting to bloom – I would love to see that. I suppose if I came and just stayed up at the retreat center, and didn’t have to not deal with all the tourist craziness in town it wouldn’t be so bad. I may have to see about doing that!
