musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
unphotographable* ~ a bosque blessing
We arrived an hour before sunrise. 14°. Too cold to simply park and wait. Usually we don’t have so much time to spare. Usually we go park by the Observation Deck where always other cars are parked. There we stand by water’s edge, our hands thrust deep in our pockets, our breath emitting small clouds of frosted of vapor as we wait the few minutes till the sun and geese rise across the water.
Instead this morning we slowly drive the Northern Loop.
Years ago, on our first visit to the Bosque to see the famous snow geese, we didn’t know where we were or what we were doing. All we knew was to be there at sunrise, when supposedly the geese rise up en mass. But that first morning we were clueless as to where to find the snow geese. We didn’t know the roads or the layout of the land. We arrived ridiculously early in the blackest hours of morning and drove around blindly, trying to figure out where to go. Realizing that no other cars seem to be where we were, we turned around to head back toward the entrance and look for cars of early morning birders, who surely knew more than we did.
We accelerated, backtracking down the dark dirt lane, only to have something in the distance catch our headlights:
Two enormous bull elks crossing the road.
In our scores of visits to the Bosque since, we’ve never again seen an elk. Snow geese and cranes and raptors and ducks and songbirds, turkeys, javelina, and deer, bobcats, and even — yes — even mountain lions, we have seen. But never again have we seen elk. We’ve spotted their tracks — we know several places they clearly frequent. But not since that first dark, dark morning a decade ago have we seen elk.
I was thinking of this as we made our way down the shadowed lane, passing the place of that one and only elk encounter ten years ago. “I wonder if we’ll ever see an elk again?“ The road narrowed into turns, as red willow and leafless trees drew in close. The road then curved west, and opened up as large fallow fields extended from either side of the lane. There, just ahead, in the north field on our right were several large four-legged beings.
Could it be?
My heart beat faster, as I grabbed my binoculars.
Deer.
Damnit, just deer.
Sighs of resignation.
We rolled on quietly, past a loosely gnarled line of trees and brush that cut midway through the north field, perpendicular to the road. Daylight was advancing softly, as the fields glowed with tawny tones of rust and bronze, copper and gold. The sky was a cloudless slab of palest rose marble.
Something moved off in the distance of the field – a large dark shape with an area of pale. Near it was another dark shape, and beside that, another.
Elk.
Five magnificent elk.
Four bulls and one cow.
Slowly, ever so slowly, we emerged from our car to lean against the side. The elk froze as they watched us. We held our breath, only breathing easily again as they returned to grazing.
In the field between the elk and us was a slightly elevated area — an old grassed-over road that cut through the field. As we watched the elk, something on the old road moved.
Coyote.
She was trotting toward us, away from the elk, when suddenly she stopped. Ears pointed upright, she stared at us. Then she darted east, her brindle coat blending and disappearing into the dried stalks of the field.
All was silent as we stood watching the elk. No tires on gravel. No voices or car doors opening and closing as we usually hear. Nothing but an occasional bird trill. A distant owl.
Then suddenly the hush sound of wind through tree leaves rustled overhead. Except there were no trees anywhere near us.
We looked up as a wave of ducks moved just a few feet over our heads — 20 or 30 of them in a wide vee formation. Not another sound came from them. Nothing but the soft wind sound from their wings. Barely open your lips and softly, slowly, exhale. That’s the sound, we heard overhead.
We watched their graceful line undulate over the elk and then disappear in the pale sky.
A minute later another whisper of ducks moved over our heads.
Then another.
And another.
Again, and again, and again and again.
Off in the distance from the woods at the far edge of the field we heard the sound of gurgling laughter.
Wild turkeys.
The hair on the backs of our necks tingled.
We beamed smiles at each other, grateful for arriving “too early.”
Grateful for this blessing of the Bosque.
* This post is inspired by the Maria Popova’s offering: “Sometimes, a painting in words is worth a thousand pictures. I think about this more and more, in our compulsively visual culture, which increasingly reduces what we think and feel and see — who and what we are — to what can be photographed. I think of Susan Sontag, who called it “aesthetic consumerism” half a century before Instagram. In a small act of resistance, I offer The Unphotographable….a lovely image in words drawn from centuries of literature: passages transcendent and transportive, depicting landscapes and experiences radiant with beauty and feeling beyond what a visual image could convey.”
~ Maria Popova, The Marginalian
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy my post from September 2022 A Benediction.
Thanks for finding your way here and for reading my musings. If you think others might appreciate them, feel free to share this post. And if you’d like to read more of my musings please consider subscribing to this, my blog.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website www.taosdawn.com. Shop my art via my Etsy shop. And please consider joining me for Tuesday Dawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity. Find other ways to keep tabs on me via my connect page.
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
Free from social media since 2020
my greatest joy today
You would have thought my greatest joy today was spending 3+ hours in my studio painting. Especially doing so while listening to a conversation with a wholly inspiring mastermind of creativity. Or signing my name, finally, to a painting I’ve been working on for weeks.
But no. My greatest joy today came this afternoon, when working on my computer and suddenly a flash of movement outside the window caught my eye.
It was a tiny wren — a Bewick’s Wren.
Wren to my mind, is one of the most beautiful words in the English language, and denotes one of Earth’s loveliest beings. Sadly wren is also one of the Lost Words like magpie and clover the Oxford Junior Dictionary removed in 2007 to clear way for words like voicemail, celebrity and MP3 player.* Of all the birds she fed and observed out our kitchen window, my mother’s face seemed to light up most when a wren appeared.
I am the same.
My mother’s mother fed birds, too, though she lacked the animal whisperer sense that coursed through my mother’s veins. I remember that Gram, too, enjoyed seeing wrens, but that she very definitely didn’t like bluejays. When I asked her why she said “because they kill other birds’ eggs.” Evidently she didn’t know that wrens do that, too; I’m not sure if my mother was even aware of the wren’s jay-like murderous instinct. I doubt that it would have mattered much to her if she had.
What charmed my mother about the wren, I think, is how chipper and cheerful their twitchy movements and melodious song seem to be.
Who knows if they even posses the capacity to be “cheerful”?
But certainly they make me so.
*I don’t know if the OJD has brought back wren and the other lost words in more recent editions, but I hope they have.
Thank you for reading my musings. If you think others might appreciate them, feel free to share this post. And if you’d like to read more of my musings please consider subscribing to this, my blog.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website www.taosdawn.com. Shop my art via my Etsy shop. And please consider joining me for Tuesday Dawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity. Find other ways to keep tabs on me via my connect page.
Thanks for finding your way here.
Stay safe. Be kind.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
Free from social media since 2020
history and mystery in the new mexico landscape
My friend was incredulous. You’ve never been to La Cieneguilla?
No, I replied. I’d never even heard of it.
I can’t believe you’ve never been there!
Two months later I had a similar exchange with another friend.
You’ve never been to La Cieneguilla?! Oh my God, DAWN! I can’t believe that!
My reputation of being an aware outdoorswoman made it inconceivable that La Cieneguilla wasn’t on my radar.
A few months ago when I finally did get there, my reaction was the same as my friends: I can’t believe I’ve never been here!
For, in the nearly three decades that I’ve lived in New Mexico, I’d driven by La Cieneguilla hundreds of times. Yet I was utterly oblivious to the trove of history and mystery hidden before me. That’s because from the distance and whiz of nearby roads, the area of La Cieneguilla seemed to me an inhospitable landscape: Barren, desolate mesa country, jagged with brown rock and sun-bleached grasses and juniper — like so many New Mexico hills. Remarkably unremarkable. Nothing about it beckoned to me or even hinted that there might be something extraordinary hiding there. Always I sped by on my way to somewhere else.
Oh, but what I’d missed all those years zooming by.
La Cieneguilla is part of a larger area known as the Caja — the Caja del Rio plateau, an area that stretches from La Bajada in the south, Santa Fe to the east, Bandelier to the west, and Pojoaque to the north — some 100,000+ acres between the Rio Grande and Santa Fe River. From I-25 it’s that area to the northwest of La Bajada Hill that to my naive eye always seemed uninteresting and void of life.
I was completely ignorant of the Truth of this land. That in reality not only is it an area exquisite in its ecological variety, but one which for centuries has been a critical thoroughfare for beings of all kinds. Peruse the rocks at La Cieneguilla and this becomes clear. For in the jumble of geology is story upon story of long ago humans and animals passing through the Caja. Their stories are etched in the most tremendous and vivid array of petroglyphs I think I’ve ever seen. My friends told me the carvings were incredible in their volume and variety, but I couldn’t grasp the awe in their telling until I saw the petroglyphs for myself. As I scrambled along the rocks, I was blown over by the sheer number of etched snakes, birds, fish and deer, handprints and human forms, masks and swirls and mysterious symbols that cover the rocks. Every turn in the trail reveals yet more carvings peering out from the shadows and sunlight. And all of this just a few minutes from my front door!
The ease of access to this storied land is an extraordinary and unique gift to those of us who live nearby. But it turns out it’s also a problem: Poaching, indiscriminate shooting, illegal dumping and vandalism are frequent abuses on the Caja. I was heartbroken upon my initial visit to see an assault of purple paint sprayed across a rock face like a violent wound — the result of a graffiti attack from earlier this year, when swastikas and other ugly symbols were found on the petroglyphs. I learned that this was the third defacement in 12 months. Currently care of the Caja is shared by the Santa Fe National Forest and BLM, yet they are too thinly stretched in resources to protect the area well.
I’m therefore relieved to learn that there’s a growing coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to securing better protection of the Caja. Among them county, city, tribal, cultural, environmental and community entities have passed resent resolutions in support of protecting the Caja. Hope now is that with their support the Caja will gain further federal protection and funding, perhaps through the America the Beautiful initiative.
My first visit to the Caja was in June when one of those friends who had been shocked by my ignorance of the Caja invited me to tag along on an Audubon tour of the petroglyphs. The group’s guide, Andrew Black, was such an eloquent, bright and powerful speaker, that I felt compelled to tell him afterward how much I valued his knowledge and how impressed I was by his public speaking skills. Only later did I learn that not only is he is a Santa Fe native and local pastor with a law degree, but he’s also the National Wildlife Federation’s public lands field director. No wonder he speaks well! Good thing, too, for the Caja needs as many eloquent, persuasive voices as it can get. In Black’s own words,
I have seen how our public lands not only drive our economy, bring diverse communities together, and provide critical wildlife habitat, but also how they ground our sacred traditions and lend depth and meaning to America’s rich cultural heritage…. As a spiritual leader, I have also seen how our public lands offer healing and transformation, and I recognize that we have a sacred duty to be good stewards of these lands for future generations.
I’m humbled to realize that this landscape that once seemed so unremarkable is now filled with allure for me. It makes me wonder how many other landscapes rich in history and mystery have I overlooked? Even one is too many. Yet from the first moment I looked up and saw a wall of beautiful centuries-old silent voices whispering from the rocks of the Caja, I knew that my perception of this land — and I along with it — had been forever transformed.
For more information explore these links:
Momentum Grows for Permanent Protections for Caja Del Rio — US News & World Report
Petroglyphs defaced outside of Santa Fe — Albuquerque Journal
Thank you for reading my musings. If you think others might appreciate them, feel free to share this post. And if you’d like to read more of my musings please consider subscribing to this, my blog.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website www.taosdawn.com. Shop my art via my Etsy shop. And please consider joining me for Tuesday Dawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity. Find other ways to keep tabs on me via my connect page.
Thanks for finding your way here.
Stay safe. Be kind.
Peace on Earth.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
Free from social media since 2020
a benediction
nature does not hurry,
yet everything is accomplished
~ Lao Tzu ~
I’d been feeling nervous about an upcoming backpacking trip. Though overall I’m in good shape (thank you Peloton), I hadn’t put in a whole lot of high-altitude hiking miles this season. My “hiking legs” weren’t well developed yet. Problem was that getting to my favorite hiking trails involves at least an hour round-trip drive, and I was short on time with a long “To Do” list weighing on me. But I also knew that early morning hiking nourishes my mental well-being as much as my physical health, and my head was begging for some woodland solace.
Which is why I decided on a whim one recent early morning to load my pack with weight, fill a thermos with tea, grab a snack and my sketchbook and head for the mountains before sunrise.
Forty minutes after changing out of my pajamas I was at the trailhead. Now the question was how far to push myself. The trail I chose is extremely steep the first half mile, when it levels out through a magical aspen forest and then courses up through a high meadow. At the far end of the meadow the trail enters deep forest and gets steep again.
From there it climbs up, up, up, eventually gaining altitude by way of eroded switchbacks, and then pops you out of the dense forest onto a clearing high above Santa Fe.
To hike that far would be a terrific workout, but it would also mean that this whole excursion would consume most of my morning. I could push myself further physically to train more for my backpacking trip….But…..Ohhhhh ….that would leave me no time for stillness.
This mental debate of how hard to push myself nagged at me as I hiked through the lower forest, across the meadow, and back into the woods. A few more minutes of climbing the slope and I began to scan the land in search of a level area. Just up ahead I spotted one on the south side of the trail. I turned off the path, brushing branches and leaves aside as I cut through the trees to where the ground leveled off. I then found a downed aspen and, with a long exhale, took a seat. “This is good enough. You can get in an intense workout another day,” I thought to myself, attempting to quell the guilt for not pushing myself more rigorously up the mountainside.
I pulled out my thermos, opened my sketchbook, and began to draw there in the flickering aspen light. All was silent.
I don’t know how long I sat there in stillness consumed with my drawing. But my sketch was nearly finished when I put down my pen and reached over absentmindedly to grab my thermos. Suddenly there was a thunderous eruption to my right. My eyes jolted up to see a deer just a few feet from me. In that instant she sprang up, twisted in midair and bounded away. Just as quickly as she’d jumped, she stopped and turned to look at me.
We stared at each other. Surely her heart was hammering as hard as mine.
After a few breaths, with eyes locked, I ever so slowly stood up, hoping for a better view of her.
To my surprise she permitted me this; I felt the flush of approval.
A few more breaths and the pounding in my chest subdued.
She turned her gaze and slowly, silently moved down-slope through the trees.
There, following behind her, was a yearling.
I lowered myself back down to my log and watched them weave gracefully through the aspens. Sunlight painted bright light across their sienna coats, amidst a mosaic of white tree trunks, lime-green leaves, dancing wildflowers and grasses.
I zoomed in my camera and — what’s that? — there was another deer — a young buck. He seemed to greet them, as though he’d been waiting for them. Had he strolled past me earlier, both of us unaware of each other in our silence?
A friend once told me about an encounter he’d had on a trail in the foothills high above Albuquerque. He was riding his mountain bike and just starting to descend when he spotted a trail runner coming up trail toward him. All of sudden a deer sprang out on the trail between them. Cyclist and biker stopped in the their tracks as the deer made its way across their path. The runner made a motion of rapidly scooping air with his hand and pulling it toward his face, inhaling deeply. “Deer energy. Breathe it in!”
My deer family grazed easily, unperturbed, till eventually they disappeared through shimmering stripes of aspen light.
I took a deep breath.
Benediction. That’s what a friend in Maine calls it whenever she has a chance encounter with wildlife.
A Benediction.
Feeling radiant, I packed up my things, and made my way back to the trail, grateful that I chose stillness over pushing myself this day.
Thank you for reading my musings. If you think others might appreciate them, feel free to share this post. And if you’d like to read more of my musings please consider subscribing to this, my blog.
Meanwhile, find more of my stories, insights and art here on my website www.taosdawn.com. Shop my art via my Etsy shop. And please consider joining me for Tuesday Dawnings, my weekly deep breath of uplift, insight, contemplation & creativity. Find other ways to keep tabs on me via my connect page.
Thanks for finding your way here.
Stay safe. Be kind.
Peace on Earth.
~ Dawn Chandler
Santa Fe , New Mexico
Free from social media since 2020
we all made it ~ painting auction fundraiser for philmont’s rayado women scholarship fund
I am so pleased to offer my painting We All Made It for auction to raise money for Philmont’s incredible Rayado Women program.
BOOM! We are LIVE! Find the auction here.
If you have the interest and the means, please bid to help raise funds for this great cause. If you aren’t able to bid, please then share the link with others who may be interested. Thank you!
Meanwhile, here are the details of We All Made It, the story behind the painting, and Philmont’s Rayado program. Thanks for your interest — and special thanks if you bid on the painting!
RAYADO
2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Women Rangers at Philmont. As part of that celebration I — a Ranger alumna — am auctioning my painting We All Made It to raise money for scholarships for Philmont’s Rayado Women program.
Rayado is Philmont’s equivalent of OutwardBound and NOLS. It’s an intense two-three week backpacking adventure for older teenagers, with the purpose of challenging and inspiring participants to push themselves beyond their perceived physical and mental boundaries. Both of my brothers had been Rayado Men as well as Rayado Rangers. Inspired by their experiences and example, I became a Rayado Woman in 1982 and was fortunate to be chosen to be a Rayado Ranger in 1984. Rayado remains one of the most challenging, positively transformative experiences of my and countless others’ lives.
100% of the proceeds from the auction will be donated to Philmont’s Rayado Women Scholarships. An anonymous donor will match the winning bid to further the money raised for future Rayado Women.
WE ALL MADE IT (PHILMONT) — THE PAINTING
The Scene
The first time I ever stepped foot on Philmont I was disappointed. The place was hot, dry and dusty, with hardly any color to the landscape beyond sun-baked drab greens and browns. I was also filled with nervousness, wondering what the coming two weeks of backpacking had in store for me. I wondered if I could make it — wondered if I even wanted to.
We all know how this story ends, because you, too, may have lived this same story:
After two weeks backpacking with my crew in Philmont’s backcountry, I’d become hopelessly besotted with the place. By our last day on the trail I was already dreaming of coming back. And my crew? We all made it.
Lucky me I got to work at Philmont for several summers, first as a Ranger, then in the Backcountry. Yet it wasn’t until some 35 years after that first trek that I returned to the trail as a “camper.” Again I was nervous — only this time it was wondering if my middle-aged body could handle carrying a heavy pack on those trails. But this time I knew the beauty and comradery that the backcountry held. And I knew for sure that I wanted to be there. This time I was returning to Philmont as part of the incredible “Sole Sisters” crew of former Philmont staff women. Included in our crew were several Philmont pioneers, among them some of Philmont’s first ever Women Rangers.
Our 5-day itinerary wove through the verdant south country. We hiked along lush musical streams (Rayado…Agua Fria….), across meadows spangled with wildflowers (Apache Springs…. Carson Meadows….) through cheerful aspen forests (near Beaubien…. Bonita….). We watched the sunset and sunrise over the Sangres, and sang along with the raucous campfires at Beaubien and Crater.
On our last morning the Tooth of Time was our constant companion as we hiked down through towering ponderosas, eventually to Lovers Leap, and from there to the turn-around.
This painting is based on a photo I took that last morning. There’s a bit of wistfulness knowing our journey together on these trails will soon end. But there’s also joy and deep, deep satisfaction at having backpacked together at Philmont.
That is, of course, the Tooth straight ahead. As soon as we got to the road, we hung a right, walked through through the gate and formed a pack-line under the scrub oak. There we waited for our bus to transport us back to hot showers and “real” food. We were grubby, we stank, and we were feeling not a few aches and pains. But we were positively radiant knowing We All Made It.
If you appreciate this painting and have the means, please bid on it! And if it’s beyond your means but you’d like to support future Rayado Women, please help spread the word and encourage others to bid.
Thank you!
The Details
Title: We All Made It (Philmont)
Artist: Dawn Chandler
Kind: Original, one of a kind painting
Medium: Oil on panel
Size: 11″ x 14″
Frame: Unframed*
Normal Painting Price: $725.00
Matching gift: The final selling price will be matched by an anonymous donor, to double the funds raised for Rayado Women scholarships.
Starting Bid: $0.99 cents with no reserve.
Shipping: Via insured UPS or USPS; signature required.
Start: Thursday 18 August 2022 at 8:00pm New Mexico/MT time.
Duration/Ends: 3 days, ending at 8:00pm MT/New Mexico time Sunday 21 August 2022.
*Note that the photos of the painting framed are digital mock-ups to give a sense of what the painting looks like framed; the painting is unframed.
ABOUT ARTIST DAWN CHANDLER
New Mexico artist Dawn Chandler first visited the Land of Enchantment as a teenager on a backpacking trek at Philmont Scout Ranch. She later returned to Philmont and New Mexico for many more summers to teach backpacking and camping skills to Scouts. She became a landscape painter in college, when her homesickness for New Mexico ached so badly it drove her to pick up her paintbrush and, through art, attempt to transport herself back to the Southwest.
Dawn has pursued painting ever since, and holds a BFA in painting from Miami University of Ohio and an MFA in painting from the University of Pennsylvania. A resident of New Mexico for 25+ years, Dawn supports herself as a full-time artist, striving to transport people to the Land of Enchantment through her traditional and abstract landscape paintings.
First-year Ranger Dawn Chandler atop the Tooth of Time, Philmont, New Mexico. c 1983