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| remembering the storm ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil & mixed media on panel ~ 6″ x 6″ ~ copyright dawn chandler 2013 |
After a week in New England, I’m returning home to Santa Fe today — a home soggy with late-season record-breaking monsoonal rains. I’m thrilled to wake up this morning in Albuquerque to socked in grey skies. I feel as though I’m back on the coast of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. If I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, maybe the crows will turn to gulls, the drip of rain from pinon into the flap of a sailboat’s halyard; the distant highway into the low drone of fishing boats….
I miss my New England, where my roots — and my parents — are deeply buried. I miss the clapboard and brick-sided houses and field stone walls; the green green green of the woods and the light of the birch trees and perfume of wet pine needles. The panes of the windows and white trim of the architecture and the briny smell of the Atlantic. And the history. The history of my family whose presence in these parts is evident in the crumbling cemeteries of centuries. And the early history of our nation, whose stories and characters very nearly strayed me from a career path of art to that of a historian and teacher.
And yet..
And yet..
And yet, the smell of New Mexico sage may be even better than the smell of New England brine.
May be.