Story/Nature/Spirit Writing

Posted on January 28, 2011 by admin

Story/Nature/Spirit Writing
Tuesday, February 1, 2011, from 7 – 9 pm.

Next Tuesday, Randi Chaikind and I will host the first evening Story/Nature/Spirit writing group. This is a special opportunity for you who are already living along the paths of Deep Ecology and Earth-based spirituality, and who are looking for community around literary ecology, whether you are an eco-poet, eco-fiction writer, nature essayist, or any writer who wants to deepen your engagement with place. This is not a workshop but it is definitely about writing on these themes. Randi and I will prepare place, ritual, and materials as well as ensure a safe, sacred space for free-flowing creativity. We’ll also plan connected ritual and writing experiences at the beginning of the evening to inspire and enhance our story/nature/spirit creative journey.

You are all experienced writers who have been in lots of writers’ groups, I’m sure, and I’m delighted you’re willing to evolve this way of participating in the core crisis of our times: our wounded Mother Earth. Randi will begin each gathering with an earth-based ritual to explore and perceive the myriad voices of nature. I will offer a writing prompt that crosses the bridge from ritual to words. I will be evolving my prompts from intriguing new work I’ve read on Skills of Ecological Perception and Biophilic Values. Then of course we can share our work as desired and eventually bring other work that has been inspired by a story/nature/spirit evening. This is not a critique and editing gathering so you may ask for any kind of feedback you want…or none.

I have a big comfortable space for us (directions below). We’re not quite sure whether we should meet every week or every two weeks. We can discuss your preferences and needs on Tuesday but I’ll be here every week for those who want weekly continuity. Others may come twice a month but we would really appreciate a 2-month commitment for evoloving this unique writers’ community. Our hope is that it will become an ongoing writers’ group and that in finer weather we can take our Story/Nature/Spirit practice into the wild.

The group will begin on Tuesday, February 1, 2011, from 7 – 9 pm. Please RSVP this weekend. I have a notebook and tea for each of you :-) Giive me a call and we’ll see how many have RSVP’d so far. I’d like to keep it small but welcoming to writers interested in the Story/Nature/Spirit perspective.

With respect and peace,
Cinny and Randi
699-4747

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2011 Dispatch from Isla Mujers

Posted on January 1, 2011 by admin

Last night this small island on the Carribean Sea celebrated the birth of a new year with a joyous raucous latino endless baccanal that continues as I write this Noticia al Norte at 8 am, January 1, 2011. All night fireworks careened from the sky, gourmands consumed, imbibers guzzled, dancers moved every limb and more, sex players sexed, and revelers reveled. The muscians still play salsa on the zocalo with a cosmic beat, louder and deeper for the lovers returning from the beaches…It may just be my sleepless synapses in an altered reality but no part of the island is spared the frantic rhythms of this 21st century collective trance ritual…and Ixchel, the Isla de Mujeres goddess of lust, love, fertility, is smacking her full lips underneath her ruined temple. A hundred babies or more will surely be born in September.

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Box Canyon #4 Ellie Lowenburg

Posted on November 29, 2010 by admin

Percussion of
my feet on the trail
turn bend
a stream
gurgles
adds harmony
———

Cricket hops from the path
nothing left but tread prints
————-

How not to anthropomorphize
faces and statuesque
bodies in the cliffs.
So confident
self certain in their powers
Oh, the stories they could tell

Solo tree
way up
growing out of cliff rock
branches stretched wide and up
“Heneini”
“here I am”
I say
As I too am the tree
here and there

Ah ha
that is how
not to anthropomorphise
the rock
rock-o-morphise me
I am the tree
and yet
the tree is the tree
it too senses me.

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Link to a radio interview with Cinny

Posted on November 28, 2010 by admin

http://www.tellurideinside.com/2010/07/cinny-green-of-trail-writers-guide-talks-at-telluride-library-68.html

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Box Canyon #3: Kristen Barendsen

Posted on November 14, 2010 by admin

At Ghost Ranch

Fallen leaves claw their own shadows in the sand.
A many-fingered cactus gropes for drops of water.
A cluster of beetles throws a party at my feet,
humping each other in an orgiastic wake
before the coming snow.
Against a sunburnt cliff,
with its sentinel figures carved in rock,
its mute faces watching,
a vulture spirals black.
Was that a gunshot?
Certainly it wasn’t thunder on this staring, unblinking blue eye of day.
Maybe a slab of rock shearing off,
careening to rejoin the flat part of earth,
an avalanche of one.
It’s really quite hot for November.
But I will choose to enjoy the warmth,
because what else can I do?
What else besides savoring the last long days before the darker time,
the last rushings of the stream that cannot anymore fill its own bed,
that will be shut off by human hands for the winter?
And now, just listening to the stream, to what it wants to tell me:
words with no meaning in particular,
erasing the need for meaning in my mind.

Kristin Barendsen
(11/6/2010)

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Box Canyon #2: Pam Kirkpatrick

Posted on November 9, 2010 by admin

WHO OWNS NATURE?

Gun shots reverberate off cream and sand colored spires
Metal plaques with dead people’s names embedded in large boulders
Graffiti rock incised by those who passed by
Numbered tin cans on poles mark the trail
Rusty barbed wire fencing as boundary
Shoe marks coming and going in soft red sand
Rock bridges placed across the stream
Knotted rope stapled to the slanted rock, helping
Soft, stream mud sucking hiking boots

We try—

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Box Canyon #1: Karen Kerschen

Posted on November 9, 2010 by admin

The Santa Fe Women’s Hiking Group ventured up Box Canyon at Ghost Ranch Saturday November 6 for a Trail Writer’s Hike on the theme of Poems at Your Feet. I facilitated their engagement with the extraordinary red rolling hills and thrusting polished cliffs through Box Canyon. Here is the first submission by author Karen Kerschen.

Box Canyon

I made it!
Scrambling up boulders — one with a rope assist — to the stream’s origin.
From one wall of the horseshoe surround, water seeps from rock.
The slick stone wall striates olive brown
Washed with red iron oxide and swaths of umber.
Yellow clumps of straw clutch the verticality.

All sound echoes in this cylinder.
Even the flutter of leaves on this November day echoes
as the golden shapes fall to earth,
An undertone to the treble of the water flow,
Which is constant.
Occasionally a small bird twitters and is
Answered by one nearby.

Above the water line the sandstone angles up, in and across,
sculpting cleavage I wish I could read.
Instead, my eyes settle on sky blue with atmospheric wisps.
I get complacent examining the sunshine rock face,
But on turning to the shade I spot an abrupt fissure from rockfall.

We hear a gunshot.

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“To bear witness is not a passive act”

Posted on November 6, 2010 by admin

I just read an article by Terry Tempest Williams about the Gulf Coast in Orion. The disaster is not over. The devastation to humans and nonhumans is nearly apocalyptic. The heartbreak is beyond anything I have experienced, except in fiction like The Road. Her story exposes the flesh and bones of ordinary lives torn absolutely to shreds, and it reignites my desire to bear witness as a writer to this and the multiple other tragedies perpetrated for nothing more banal than greed. Please read this wrenching account and look for my future post about bringing together a Green Writers Talking Circle. Or contact me now. http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5931

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Exercise as writing practice

Posted on October 31, 2010 by admin

Last week I attended the first salon of the Albuquerque Writers Coop sponsored by Lisa Lenard Cook and Lynn Miller. The four panelists talked about their busy writing lives that include journal editorial work, columns, and personal writing–both fiction and non-fiction. It was the first time I ever heard writers (two of the four) volunteer that exercise was a part of their writing practice because it gave them both energy and clarity of mind. One walks and jogs; the other goes to the gym a few days a week.

For me, the third element in the exercise/writing continuum is how it inspires creativity, especially when connected to the wild. This is what The Trail
Writer’s Guide is all about. The best writers’ minds are “wild minds” says Gary Snyder. The wild mind “has landscapes and creatures within it that will surprise us. It can refresh us and scare us.”

Maybe it’s a stretch to say that a city jog or resistance training in the gym can do the same, but it certainly gets the oxygen flowing wildly. So when the creativity feels blocked and dull, take a word of advice from some pros. Take a walk. Bring on the surprising scary creatures!

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Two Nature Boys

Posted on October 20, 2010 by admin

Today I met Travis and Bowen, two lucky boys (+/- 10 years old) traveling around the country with their parents. They’re on there way to the Grand Canyon for a raft trip but, as Travis told me, “The Hoover Dam has blocked off the Colorado River, all the way across, and nearly killed it.”

The boys speak directly and look so self-possessed. They’ll be rafting down the river but not through rapids because, as Bowen says, “They think we’re too young.”

“You might get thrown out, right?”

“But they don’t take into account the environment we grew up in. My body is made for this.” Bowen pats his chest.

“What environment is that?”

“The forest, the country. Our whole lives.”

“I’m going backpacking in the Grand Canyon in March,” I proudly tell them.

“Oh,” says Bowen seriously, “while you’re hiking be sure to stop and look up at the landscape  but when you walk, look at your feet because it can be a very narrow path with steep sides.”

Travis adds, “And even if we did get thrown out of the raft, I know a special trick. It goes against what seems natural but you aim for a big rock and catch your legs up on it like this.” He raises his two legs in a rocking chair pose. “Then let the water push you up onto the rock and wait until someone comes to get you.”

“Be like a piece of driftwood,” agrees Bowen. “You know, like when you send a piece of wood down the water and it gets caught on a rock instead of going downstream.”

“It sounds like you know a lot about nature. Where are you from?”

“The Cascades. This kind of place is a very foreign to me except for that tree over there.” Bowen points to a beautiful cottonwood across from my house.

Feeling the need to defend my neighborhood and it’s trees, I say, “Well, that cottonwood is very talkative and has some interesting things to say. There are also a couple of ravens who drop by once in a while. You can have a chat with them. It’s been nice to meet you but I have to go to work now.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer. I write about nature and wild things.”

Bowen looks me directly in eyes and nods. “I can tell you’re a writer. Its the shape of your jaw and your eyes. You’re taking in all the details and that’s what writers do: take in the details.”

I smile. What a fine compliment to begin my day. “It’s been very nice to meet you both. Have a wonderful trip.”

We shake hands. I’ll surely think of Bowen and Travis next time I get discouraged about the future of our planet. They’re already carrying the torch.

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