musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
of walking meditation
As I said, my thoughts these past four weeks have been largely hijacked by popular culture and news stories, such that my walk across Vermont seems a lifetime ago.
It seems fantasy. Not real.
But when I unplug my devices, and withdraw from the unnerving drone of the news, I find all it really takes is a moment’s stillness and a single deep breath to take me back to the quiet of the trail.
Do it now.
Take a deep breath.
Now look at this photo.
You have come a long way today.
You are tired, but content.
You are fed, and you are warm, bundled as you are in an old wool sweater, a little cap on your head, a red bandana around your neck.
In your hand, a steaming mug of tea.
You are alone — blissfully alone … except for the couple of crows who glide in and out of sight … not another sound but their wings, an occasional caw….
You’ll have this night to yourself.
In this welcoming shelter.
… with this little table at which to write.
It will be the first night you have spent alone — completely alone — in the woods. Ever.
You will sleep well and deep.
And come morning, you will rise to a beautiful day.
You will hike in solitude, for hours, through expansive hardwood forests, where,
from the shadows of beech trees, the cheerful ghosts from your childhood will whisper and sing to you.
This day…
and the next…
and the next after that
will be among your most cherished.
For you will have been present. Fully. Present. With each. Footfall.
For you will have heeded Thich Nhat Hanh — whose book Long Road Turns to Joy,
you’ve been carrying with you :
Breathe in and take one step, and focus all your attention…. there is Buddha nature in you.
Buddha nature is the capacity of being aware of what is going on.
Buddha nature is what allows you to recognize what you are doing in the present moment
and to say to yourself: I am alive; I am taking a step.
Anyone can do this.
There is a Buddha in every one of us,
and we should allow the Buddha to walk.
Come, let us walk.
lost and found in the [un]real world
Last year when I came crippled off my backpacking journey, I left the trail two weeks earlier than planned. 
The frugal thing to do would have been to change my travel plans and return promptly home to New Mexico.
Fourteen days earlier and just five days into my Long Trail thru-hike, when my knees first started arguing with me, I feared I would have to abandon my walk. Sick with anxiety and the question of what to do, a fellow hiker urged me: Don’t give up. Change your plans if you have to. So you make it a section hike rather than a thru hike? Go take a zero day. Rest and ice those knees. Then come back to the trail. Maybe just for a day hike. Check it out. See how it feels. Then another day hike. Maybe you only make it this time to Killington. But you go back and you try again. You’ve done all this work to get here, you’ve put aside all of this time to be here in Vermont. Then be here.
Be here.
That’s what I wanted to do, even after leaving the trail: Keep myself immersed in Vermont — in New England. Now. But in a different way. Let my journey continue, but maybe from wheels rather than feet. Maybe along back roads rather than forest trails. Maybe staring out to distant mountains from the swaddled warmth of a woven blanket and a white rocking chair on a maple leaf garlanded porch while my knees rested….Or from the northern Vermont acreage of an old tree farm and a mowed pathway through autumn fields with a new canine friend as companion….
Thanks to the touching generosity of my ever-expanding Vermont tribe, I was able to reshape my journey in a deeply healing way. Part of the gift My Tribe gave me was that of solitude: Time to reflect on my path. I spent the last days of my sojourn alone in a beautiful home with no real connection to the outside world. No computer. No cell phone. Just me. And quiet.
Somewhere in there I purchased an inexpensive set of watercolors, brush and paper. For, though I could be without news and music for days on end, I couldn’t be without Art. And so in those silent days of healing I wrote. I read. I thought. And I painted.
A year later…and I’ve now finished my journey.
This year within 24 hours of hiking past the final white blaze of my 274-mile walk, my senses were accosted by the jeers of a media carnival. The world exploded into my solace.
Now with each unfolding media drama, the connection to my walking peace seems ever more tenuous, as though access to that tranquility were a fairy tale magic doorway that’s accessible only for a precious short time before evaporating in a cloud of faerie dust. My focus since returning to the [un]real world has shriveled, as each headline fights for my attention; my usual early bedtime protracts later and later while my head spits and spins with the mental vomit of media-fed thoughts.
No.
I can’t do this.
I won’t do this.
This morning before sunup I lock away my laptop and phone in the cabinet.
I enter my studio.
Deep breath.
I spread my Long Trail map on my table.
I dig out my journal from last year’s hike and — what’s this?
…out spill those little watercolor studies I’ve not seen in a year.
I trace my finger across the painted contour of a maple leaf.
My mind is peaceful again.
returning to autumn in new mexico
I love Vermont and I miss it.
Though not a physical resident, in the last couple of years I’ve become a resident of the soul of Vermont.
I’ve so much more to reflect on and share about my long walk through the Green Mountain forests.
The Long Trail heading north from Bear Wallow to Rte 9. Vermont.
But I am a physical and soul resident of New Mexico.
And I’ve returned home in the midst of this land’s richest enchantment.
Autumn: that blessed time of year when dry arroyos and woodland floors fill with the gold coins of cottonwood and aspen leaves. New England is renown the world over for its brilliant autumn color. But autumn in New Mexico dazzles no less. Though we may lack the Northeast’s scarlet seas of red maple, our gilded specie is spun with that quintessentially New Mexico fragrance of roasting chiles and pinon wood smoke. And Blue. Sky. Clear and sharp as a jewel.
October, deep in the Santa Fe National Forest.
Oops.
finishing unfinished business : hiking the last 100 miles of vermont’s long trail
The stuff of The Long Trail, including my late parents’ red bandanas….
Journal Entry ~ 8 September 2016 ~ evening ~ Day One
Returning to a personally sacred landscape after a long hiatus is an extraordinary experience.
In a way, it’s as though you never left.
If you’re lucky and your sacred place has not been altered by development, then it’s all so familiar — the terrain, the moss, the breeze and sound of leaves turning, the smell of birch bark and balsam and pine…. It’s as though the year(s) since you left never existed. You were here then, and you’re here now.
And that’s all that matters.
Today I returned to the Long Trail after limping off in tears nearly a year ago.
My knees had had it. My quadriceps had had it. And the pain of these things meant that mentally I had had it.
I came off the trail with 100 daunting miles ahead of me.
Today I am back to finish those last 100 miles.
It has been a good day.
I am not without my fears.
I have no idea if my knees — my body — will hold up.
I don’t know if the weather will cooperate.
I don’t know if the terrain will cooperate.
There’s so much I don’t know.
But one thing I do know:
I had to come back.
I have to walk 100 more miles.
I’m ready.
What’s funny is I wasn’t going to return this year.
I’d decided this past winter that I would wait until next year. For planning my 2015 journey was so completely consuming in the months leading up to it last year that I just felt it would be wise to give my life a break from that kind of intensity. My body could use a long rest, too, from that kind of endurance.
And my art career needed a long injection of focus after months of being largely distracted by the minutia of preparing for a thru-hike adventure.
So No. Not this year.
I would wait until 2017.
I was determined to wait until 2017 — it was the responsible thing to do — and told myself this again and again and…
Then….on a warm summer Saturday Santa Fe afternoon in June when my thoughts were once again hijacked by an intense yearning for The Trail, a voice in my head suddenly announced, Screw it. I’m going back THIS year.
Which is why
I found myself
on September 11th 2016 summitting Vermont’s highest peak….
September 11, 2016 — pausing atop Mount Mansfield. Photo by LT Sole Sister Sylvie “Charger” Vidrine.
and why
two weeks after that
I found myself
finally at my Journey’s End….
DONE. And feeling — dare I say? — just a wee bit proud at the Northern Terminus of the Long Trail. Note my parents’ red bandanas around my neck; they carried me the whole way.
Moments after reaching Journey’s End, walking to the border of Vermont and Canada, having finally finished hiking the last 100 miles of Vermont’s Long Trail. Look carefully in the distant shadowed mountain forest, and you’ll see the extraordinary long line of “The Slash” — the border between the US and Canada.
After a brisk (and steep) morning ascent, the view from the summit of Jay Peak — the last major peak of my Long Trail Journey. Finally got my “trail legs” the second-to-last day of my journey. Figures.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
More on Dawn’s journey hiking Vermont’s Long Trail:
where a walk across vermont begins
where a walk across vermont ends
falling, gratitude and why I want to return to the trail
painting among lovebirds, enemies & johnny depp
santa fe, new mexico morning ~ 17 august 2016 ~ photo by dawn chandler
A week ago my pup and I hiked up to one of our favorite spots high in the forest above Santa Fe.
Take one of the major thoroughfares, then turn off onto a well-used ‘unofficial’ trail; after a ways cross a meadow; make your way through the far evergreen grove and eventually you’ll find another, hidden, meadow. Cross that to the rise on the far side and you’ll find our favorite perch. There’s a decent view there of the surrounding ridge-lines peeking over the treetops, and on some days if we sit just right we can see the plains of the high desert reaching from the outskirts of Santa Fe to the distant blue outline of the Ortiz Mountains.
About this same time last year when we were perched up here painting….
above ravens ridge trail ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 8″ x 10″ ~ en plein air
We were just packing up when we heard voices. It’s kind of fun because our perch is really only a few dozen yards from the trail, so we frequently hear hikers, though they are unaware that they have accidental eavesdroppers. In this case it was a man and a woman who seemed to be making there way across the first meadow.
Suddenly I panicked, speculating that they might be searching for a sunny spot for a romantic tryst, soon to be interrupted by my pup and me.
Moments later, after their voices and language became more distinct, did I realize a romantic tryst was definitely not on their agenda. Rather, now I was worried that they might kill each other, with me bearing witness. For they were yelling and calling each other the most unspeakable obscenities all the while hunting for mushrooms. The vitriol shouted back and forth through the forest was enough to discolor my painting. So much for solitude.
I let out a piercing whistle.
Silence.
I whistled again, even louder.
Then the woman’s voice, a tone of questioning worry, called out, “Hello?”
“Just letting you know you’re not alone up here!”
“Oh….Okay.”
All was quiet….for less than two minutes, when the battery of shouting insults and expletives reignited.
My Pup and I cut a wide swath around the yelling so as not to encounter them, though their shouts carried through the forest a good ways.
Soon a pair of Australian Shepherd-ish mutts ran up to us and moments later their green-eyed owner appeared — Johnny Depp’s twin brother, I feel sure. Clothed in a way that said gypsy, he was armed with two Trader Joe’s sacks plump with foraged mushrooms.
“Are you with the Love Birds?” I asked, their obscenities reverberating off the trees.
“God, NO.”
“Unbelievable, eh? Well here’s hoping they shut-up soon, and you’re able to enjoy some solitude and peace up here.”
“No kidding. Thanks! Peace to you, too.”
—————————————
A year has rolled on since our encounter with the Angry Couple, and mushroom season is upon us again. I expected—hoped—to see some when we returned to our perch a week ago.
But there were none that I could see.
Then Sunday — just a couple days ago — on a different trail, I almost tripped on autumn.
Back to our perch this morning, where I’d hoped to find—now a week later—our small meadow dotted with the spangled red domes of Amanitas as it was last year. But no red appeared, save a swag of paintbrush here and there.
We settled onto our perch. Last week we sat in the sun, with me facing the eastern ridge-line and sunshine. After a few minutes The Pup was panting in the heat, I had to rig a sun shelter for her with my pack and rain jacket.
This time, we sat in shade — easier on The Pup, as well as my eyes as I try to decipher color. After a few minutes of sitting still though, The Pup got up to move into the sun, and I noted with some surprise a definite autumnal chill to the breeze. I pulled my wool sweater out of my pack, the first time all season.
Amanita muscaria, also known as fly egaric or fly amanita ~ photo by Onderwijsgek at nl.wikipedia
An hour later with clouds building we made our way back down our path, stopping briefly to converse with frustrated mushroom hunters:
“The rains have come late this season. Maybe that’s why there are none.”
“Maybe they’re just delayed, as the rains were. ‘Hope so, anyway…”
Later, back home and on toward dinner time, I turned on my phone after several hours of being ‘unplugged.’ It buzzed — a text from a friend who works near the plaza; he’d sent it 45 minutes earlier: Look up on the peak!
I couldn’t image that whatever he’d seen — maybe a rainbow? a unique cloud formation? — was still there. But it was time for our late afternoon walk, so we’d scope it out from the park.
There, peeking up over the city was….
SNOW!
On Santa Fe Baldy!
16 August 2016.
I never imagined when I felt in the high forest a chill breeze this morning, that it was not autumn in the wind, but rather winter.
I hope the mushrooms don’t mind.
the view from our perch ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 8″ x 10″ ~ en plein air
illuminated by morning light ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 8″ x 10″ ~ en plein air
