Greetings friends! It’s been a wild summer already, and it isn’t even halfway finished yet. I am recently back from the first of two trips: the first one was a road trip that went through the DFW area, up to Wichita Falls, into the Panhandle via Caprock Canyon and Palo Duro, then on to Colorado and New Mexico. It was a doozie, just about two weeks, with 8 nights of camping in 3 locations plus a couple nights with friends and a couple nights in motels. I’ve been mostly hunkered down trying to regroup before the next one since we got home.
If anything can augment the joy of travel and exploration, for me it’s returning with a treasure trove of new work. I did my best to keep my mind in the moment, so that my writing and photography could reflect the experiences at hand. What you see in the above photo is the combo of writing materials I brought along. It took me several days to realize how color coordinated it was; that wasn’t planned, but it made me even happier.
To that end, although it pained me I wouldn’t let myself read more than a page or two of the wonderful poetry book I found at a shop near Palo Duro Canyon. It’s by an Amarillo writer and it’s INCREDIBLE so you definitely need to pick yourself up a copy. The words are so evocative that I couldn’t read them in the mountains: they picked me up like a tornado and carried me straight back to the panhandle (and I needed to be in the mountains). I’m relishing the book now that I’m home again.
Check out this link for more info on the author. Also here’s his Instagram.
We had a LOT OF RAIN in Colorado. An astonishing amount. And slushy hail / sleet that coated the mountain and temporarily collapsed our kitchen tent. We bought the last two pieces of adult-sized rain gear that Walmart had in stock. And thanks to that rain gear, the weather didn’t stop us. Here’s me looking 9 months along with a camera bag protected under the size XL rain jacket.
In Ft Worth, I found a nice copy of Carl Sandburg’s Complete Poems, and I somehow managed to get it home without getting damaged in the chaos of the truck cab. I’ve started perusing it in the last couple of days and it’s amazing to me how it’s the perfect thing for me to read to get my creative mind in gear for the next adventure (which will spend some time, synchronicity-like, in North Carolina where he apparently had a home you can visit now). I’m very much appreciating how he seems to have taken up Whitman’s torch. Y’all might have noticed I love me some Whitman.
While I was away, I ran a whole series of poems on my Medium account. I wrote them (to the tune of a ton of research) in 2020 and I was very pleased with them; I put a ton of effort into making cyanotypes to accompany them and get them all formatted and scheduled to run while I was out of town. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at how they all fell pretty much flat and were received barely even blandly: isn’t it so typical for the things we love most as artists to be most passed over with hardly a glance by the world? Well, I stand by them. And if you want to take a look at my Astronomical Mythological series, I would be grateful for your input.
One last photo of some of the herd at Caprock Canyon before I go:
It’s a little wonky but it’s tough getting my phone to make a decent “scan” of polaroids.
Happy summer to you all! I hope it’s been fruitful for you so far, and full of joy.
The Poetry Patio 