RETURNING TO MY ROOTS

In mid November I left the salt air elixir of the Northern Oregon coast. Although a coveted destination for many, I gleefully shortened my intended year long sabbatical there to three months. My soul gratefully sighed as the cold, grey and damp ocean receded behind me in favor of arid, golden hills with snow capped distant mountains. I am desert born, and sunlight infused land is more the stuff that fills my cup.

I stopped briefly in my beloved Methow Valley, then headed further east into the rising sun to rekindle the bonds with my mothers side of the family; toward Colorado, toward the front range foothills, and beyond toward the wide open prairie fanning out below the Rockies. The prairie of my mothers birth, and also the wind blown landscape where she came to rest – far too young. I feel the thread of that life, one half of who I am, held loosely and tentatively in hand. I feel as though I am reeling it in, a bit bewildered as to how it will coil back to me, and yet I’ve felt compelled to return here for ever it seems, the pulse of it all a steady background heartbeat, patient and insistent: The past. That which you are. Family.

 So I have returned to the Colorado of my mothers roots, the dust bowl land where she road her ponies, to gather the lost pieces of myself. IMG_0252

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