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”...
musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
hiking
when a journey goes horribly wrong…. and reveals a forgotten forest along the way
As I look out my window just now, I see nothing but a dark tangle of black lines, crisscrossing and knotting up with each other, their shapes carved out by the softest shade of morning, of first light. First this light was pale grey. Now at the base where earth turns...
back to the high meadows of new mexico . . . .
We had been camped on the far edge of the high south meadow. The evening before we were lead up a west slope trail, where, just beyond the ridge in the blaze of sun sinking quickly before us, we stood at a fence line, and watched color radiate from a point just beyond...
of walking meditation
Has it really been a month since I hiked off the trail? 'Seems impossible that one month ago today I was lying in a tent on a frosty morning deep in the northern Vermont woods 5 miles from Canada.... As I said, my thoughts these past four weeks...
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...
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. But I am a physical and...
finishing unfinished business : hiking the last 100 miles of vermont’s long trail
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...
painting among lovebirds, enemies & johnny depp
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...
amulets of the trail
“SPLAT” pause “SPLAT” pause “SPLAT” pause “SPLAT” ...was the sound as I emptied my PO box this afternoon, depositing most of its contents into the waste bin of recycled trees. Of the 4-inch stack of mail in my little locked cubbie-hole, the only thing worth saving was...
painting morning light on albuquerque’s la luz trail
When My Good Man revealed this weekend that he is on the “waiting list” for this year’s La Luz Trail Run, and that he wanted to do a training run up there this weekend, my painter’s mind started scheming. My last plein air painting excursion was in early April. After...