With mountain ranges all along the periphery, it’s as though the entire San Luis valley in southern Colorado exists just to hold the huge mass of air that has slid down the slopes of the various mountain ranges that comprise its edges. Add to that big bowl of oxygen chunks of people’s lives, with a few lost and realized dreams sprinkled on top, and there you have it - a real life place swirling with heartfelt stories. I recently added a few of my own to the mix.
My Houston friend and colleague, Sharon Fabriz, and I decide
d to create a day’s writing experience for each other during my valley visit in early July. In the mid 90s we led reflective journaling workshops together for Houston teachers, and since that time we have each continued to expand upon reflective writing experiences for teachers in Houston and Denver. Sharon and her life-partner, Pat, have built a cabin about 30 minutes from Graceland (our trailer and land), so we decided to spend a full day writing at each of our places.Like much of Colorado and New Mexico this year, the San Luis Valley is lush with wildflowers and running streams. Most afternoons a storm blows in, filling the vast skies with occasional rains while flippant winds toss dusky clouds above the valley’s bowl. All the while we continued to write, slipping into warmer jackets when the sun dipped behind clouds, and reading to each other over tasty picnic spreads.
One of our writing activities was
to compose a timeline of our lives. We discussed landmarks to note as we surveyed our years lived, stopped to write or tell stories that helped us both remember experiences and envision our futures. Like the quote from a book I just read (Sonata for Miriam), “Good or bad, our past is the reference we need to enable the future.” I figure I need all the help I can get, especially after taking a close look at this timeline of where I’ve been in the past 57 years.We took old continuous feed computer paper and began stretching out our lives, year by year. After the years were marked down on paper, we discovered it wasn’t necessarily a line
ar activity, for memories unexpectedly popped up here and there in revealing though haphazard ways. It was more like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without having a picture on the box to guide us. Stories surfaced while we wrote and took intermittent hikes, even churning in dreams during sleep, prompting sketchy recollections that often turned into vivid details.It was as if I were taking the building stones of my life and organically placing them over a lifespan where they each belonged, resulting in a long picture of where I’ve been, what I’ve done and learned, with occasional glimpses of how and why I’ve become who I am.
Several days later another close friend, Nancy Fisher, drove over from Durango and we drove south to Taos to visit former A
ustin friends/soccer and college colleagues, Mary Humphrey and Connie Ode. Here were three remarkable women whom I’ve known for over 30 years. After a day of hiking, Mary dug up an old slide projector and we watched slides of a backpacking trip we took in September of 1974, all of us with our long blonde hair, thick wool socks, and huge heavy packs. Never was there a hat on our heads to protect our sunburned faces, though we had zinc oxide slathered on our noses in several slides. We looked so very young, and surprisingly strong. Twenty-two years old and traipsing across Colorado wilderness with confidence and curiosity, dreams of the future piling up in front of us, but not a water lawyer, ICU nurse or p
ublic school teacher yet among us. My timeline was pretty short at this point in life, and little did I know that I would be noting this trip on one 35 years later. We remarked that we most likely wouldn’t be watching the digital pictures of that day’s mountain stream hike either in another 35 years. Possible, but not likely, with the time stretching before us offering a much shorter span of life than what now lies behind us.But future there is, don’t get me wrong, and stopping and taking a close look at the past seems to help me create a vision for the unknown time that lies ahead. I turn 57 this week, and I feel damn lucky considering a few of the observations from constructing my timeline. Maybe you’ll consider a bit of your life’s journey and share with me or others some of your own discoveries. After all, if you are reading this, it looks like we’r
e in for some part of this unrehearsed adventure together.1. I’ve lived in 36 homes in 3 countries and 4 states
2. Lived in rural areas as a child for 10.5 years, and as an adult for 9 years
3. Traveled to 11 countries
4. Have had 13 transformative travel experiences: 3 in France, 2 in Mexico, 1 in Canada, and 7 in the Southwest
5. Had 11 dogs
6. Gone to 11 schools (K-university)
7. Learned 3 languages and still speak 2
8. Had at least 36 jobs from ages 13-present
9. Worked as a camp counselor at 5 children’s camps before directing an adult fitness camp, for a total of 10 summers
10. Have learned to do 8 outdoor activities well, though I’ve continued to do barely half of them
11. Taught at 8 schools with a total of 13 principals
12. 4 hospitalizations
13. Known Bill 28 years, married for 15 and counting
14. Knew Steve (1st husband) 13 years and married for 3
15. 10 so called “serious” relationships, but now only in touch with Bill
16. About 20 friend relationships, sprinkled from age 13 on, that at this point I believe I’ll know the rest of my life (including a stepson and his wife)
17. lost 2 friends to suicide, 1 murdered, 1 with AIDS, 1 to cancer, 1 to heartache
18. Came into my teens in the mid-60s right after JFK’s assassination, with RFK & MLK following within years just before graduating from HS at 17 yo
19. I was 9 when my first sister graduated from HS and 14 with the second
20. I lived alone with my parents for almost 4 years after my sisters left
21. Spent HS & college watching and listening to Viet Nam and my 50s with the turmoil of Iraq
22. Apparently the southwest is powerful for me, having found times and places for solitary and/or empowering retreats here more than any place else I’ve been. Guess this is why it’s home.
