Join me at Confluence in Moab, October 20-25 or at my first annual Writing Adventure workshop on an island in the Sea of Cortez, Baja Calfornia, December 27-January 2nd for writing workshops that will explore your path, restore your spirit, and rejuvenate your writing.
Jupiter, the planet associated with pushing boundaries and exploring unknowns, is high and bright in the night sky this month. The giant planet’s passage is often seen as reminder to think about where your life is going and whether you are pursuing the path of your heart and spirit. Join me for upcoming writing workshops that will give you the tools to look within and see what you want from life, and nudge you to along toward your dreams.
October 20-25, I’ll be joining slow food authors from around the West, including Ann Vileisis, author of Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost the Knowledge of Where Food Comes From, local-food advocate and cookbook author Deborah Madison, plus ethnobotanist and author Gary Paul Nabhan, peach farmer and writer David “Mas” Masumoto, and “New Mexico Treasure” Jack Loeffler, an aural historian, radio producer, and writer, for Confluence: Eating the West in the spectacular redrock country of Moab, Utah. We’ll explore our relationship to food, the politics of food production in the West, modern agriculture and ranching, and celebrate (and eat!) sustainable, local and traditional foods. We’ll write, talk, watch indie films about food from Telluride’s MountainFilm Festival, listen, hike, read, sign books, and above all eat! Looking at food–what we eat, how we grow it, and what food means to us in the West as a whole and in our personal lives–cuts to the heart of who we are. We quite literally are what we eat, since the molecules in our food form the building blocks of our cells. Join us to write, think, and learn what it means to eat–and live–in the West.
December 27-January 2, I’ll be leading the first annual Writing Adventure workshop on Isla Espiritu Santo off Baja California Sur, in the blue waters of the Sea of Cortez. Here’s your chance to begin 2010 with renewed creativity and restored spirit. This six-day creative writing workshop will help you explore and understand your writing voice and so much more. You’ll reconnect to what matters in life as you immerse in the spectacular edge where the rust-red cliffs of the Sonoran Desert meet the fertile waters of the Sea of Cortez. We’ll work intensively on writing and seeing our lives and our deepest truths through the lens of words for half the day, and then spend the other half kayaking, snorkeling, hiking, or simply lying on the beach. Welcome the New Year with this week of writing and recharging, and return home with new purpose, new understanding, and new energy.
Jupiter is rising over the eastern horizon as I write these words, and the Summer Triangle of stars is high overhead, spanning the Milky Way. Looking at the night sky reminds me of my place in life, as I wrote in my memoir, Walking Nature Home:
I’ve looked to the heavens to orient myself my whole life, both literally and metaphorically. Whenever I go outdoors after dark, I turn my gaze upward, checking the view of the stars to gauge the weather, and to remind myself of where I am in the year, since the apparent movements of the stars and planets chart the passing of the seasons, and where I am in physical space, since the view is different from different parts of the globe. Looking at the heavens places me in time and space — and beyond them. Gazing at the stars, I look through heaven’s wrinkle: the light I see now represents their past, having traveled many years across space to reach my eyes here on Earth; the light they are emitting now will only be visible in some future, years away….
The stars remind me of where I come from and who I am.