I had in mind sharing something different today. But the response from so many of you to my post “we can only hold so much” was so great, so compassionate, so heartfelt, that I wanted to acknowledge your tremendous big-heartedness. Thank you. So many of us are now at...
musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
journey
we can only hold so much
I'd been on the verge of tears all day. I didn't know why, for the day before I'd felt fine. But then, later, at the grocery store checkout, my bag of bulk lentils snagged on my shopping cart and exploded in a shower on the floor. I lost it. Not there — no; I...
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...
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...
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...
how vermont trees lead back to new mexico sky
When I set out last year to walk across Vermont, one of my plans was to create a body of paintings based on my hike. They would be in the style of my “textual landscapes’ where I combine language (text) with semi-abstract landscape elements. The text might come from...
falling, gratitude & why i want to return to the trail
It’s been two months now since I came off Vermont's Long Trail. I can finally descend the stairs in my own home without holding my breath and having to ease my legs down step by step. The golf-ball sized swelling over my left clavicle has abated. I can almost kneel...
where a walk across vermont ends
Where does a walk across Vermont end? I can’t tell you. But what I can tell you is where it does not end. It does not end on the first day in the first hour or two or three or four with gnats spinning dully in your eyes and ears during the greatest September heatwave...
where a walk across vermont begins
A northbound walk across Vermont begins with the first footstep upon the trail in Massachusetts. Well… No... really….that’s not quite right. Really, it begins a few moments earlier with you and your first friend in life—your friend of 49 years—embracing, choking down...
my walk across vermont
On September 9 of this year I set out to walk across Vermont. My passageway was The Long Trail, the oldest established long-distance hiking trail in the United States. Begun in 1910—two decades before the Appalachian Trail—it courses for 273 miles along the spine of...