Your Custom Text Here
I wonder if you ever,like me, look back, remember your treatment of someone else many years before, and cringe.
I find that turning an uncomfortable memory into a story softens the cringe and surprises me with new lessons learned.
For instance:
Read more
Black-faced sheep watch us search for old friends in Seanadh Chaola in Joyce Country in Connamara.
Writing Prompt 6: A walk on the edge between brown fields and green fields.
I spend much of my time in two drought-ridden states, California and New Mexico. Rains have been rare in both areas, mountains are bare of winter snow, and water rationing is a way of life. Ten years ago, when I walked through a field in New Mexico, the green grass tops brushed my waist. Now, in that same field, small dots of green leap by, an invasion of grasshoppers, their voracious jaws chewing away at the dry, crunchy, inch-high remains of grass.
Read more
I don’t know about you, but sometimes, when I hear over and over how “beautiful” or “life-changing” or “spectacular” a location is, I don’t want to go. "Can’t be that good." "I’ll just be disappointed." "Too many tourists." "Everyone lone else is writing about it, what new could I bring?"
Do you ever do that, let your mind talk you out of an adventure, so you don’t do what you have always wanted to do? I have, and I know there is a lot I’ve missed out on in life just because of that negative mind.
Read more
Ollantaytombo Fortress, the Sacred Valley, Peru In March I was very lucky. I traveled to Peru and explored the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu. I like to bring travel momentos back to people I love. I couldn’t bring you a vicuna (see photo below) or a 30 ton Inca boulder, but I can share with you, fellow writer, the traditional Inca greeting. I hope it helps you to stay on the writing path as much as it is helping me.
Read more
Long-billed Curlew, Yolo Bypass, November 2013
Contentment.
I'm thinking about contentment today, as, finally, rain falls gently in Sacramento, washing the leaves of the Sycamores up and down my street, cleaning the air of the dust motes and grime that have dulled the sky for two months.
Read more 
Ross and Laura Lewallen
"I am an artist on a walkabout, an adventure in the landscape of my imagination."
Our good friend and creative mentor Ross Lewallen died last week and his family and friends are left with a large hole of sadness. We are also left with the rich gift of the memory of a man who lived life fully and creatively. When Ross blended colors, called the spirits of the power animals, the crow, the hawk, the wolf, the turtle and their friends; when he sailed a boat in the high desert of New Mexico, he was a teacher and a healer, inviting us to paint and live outside the lines.
The physical body of Ross lived almost eight decades. Ross led this body to northern New Mexico in the 1960’s to study art with the great teachers at New Mexico Highlands University, Elmer Schooley, Harry Leippe, Paul Volkening, and Ray Drew. Ross painted, sculpted, created jewelery, talked late into the night, stirred the thinking pot and made us see the world through a different lens.
Ross and his daughter Laura ran LewAllen and LewAllen Jewlers on the Plaza in Santa Fe for almost forty years. He traveled to Africa and Austrailia. He became a shaman. In the past few years he drove (“boondocked” as he would say) around the continent dragging his little camper trailer, Shasta, behind him. He sat up shop in front of Shasta in camp grounds, painted and sold his mystical watercolors to other campers.
Ross swam with kindred spirits in Florida, sailed in the Florida Keys with his wife Hanne Moller. Hanne is a violinist. Among Ross’s many videos on Youtube is one of Hanne serenading five tortoises.
Ross was a gifted teacher. In two of my favorite videos, Boondocking on the Rio Castillo and Painting from Impulse, he shares his creative technique. Painting is a metaphor for how Ross lived and his lessons invite us to change our perspective on life, if only for a brief moment, to start coloring, living outside the lines just as he did, to wake up and go on walk-about.
Ross and Hanne 2008 
We all loved dancing with Ross.
