dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
11 September 2015 — Day 3Solo backpacking the length of Vermont on the Long Trail Set my alarm for 5:45 (got up to pee only once — it was raining, but not too hard). Got up well before Justin, but he got up by the time I was finishing my breakfast. Hit the trail with...
Vermont's Long Trail: It was grueling. It was anxiety-riddled. It was way, way, way harder than I ever imagined. I'd give anything to go back and do it again. My goal was to solo backpack the 273 miles of Vermont's Long Trail. Though over the years I've shared some of...
This is a 'creepy' forest tale that happened to me late June 2019. And it might have repeated itself this year of 2020, had I not learned my lesson! (More about that soon....) My 'Tuesday Revelers' may recognize this tale, as I shared a version of it last year in...
There's something you need to see — it has your name all over it." — so My Good Man informed me when I arrived at his house late afternoon of the solstice. Whatever it was, he'd discovered it on his trail run that morning over on The East Side — the wooded slopes of...
As a child I always loved the summer solstice, because it meant the days were now getting longer. Think about that for a moment.If you are a human being with any awareness at all of our planet, and you were paying attention to that first statement, then you're...
Tell me what else I should have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me what it is you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life? These words of Mary Oliver's have been swimming around in my mind and on my tongue of late. So much so that they've...
The lilac are blooming. And they're taking me back again to a May morning some thirteen years ago when a light went out in my life and the long shadow of sorrow moved in. It was the Thursday before Mother’s Day, 2007. As the first of the sun's rays broke over the...
A few weeks ago, before most of us were aware that our world was going to shift on its axis, I began a new occasional series of "warm up" paintings. I intended these paintings for my eyes only, with no plan of sharing them. In the past few days I've changed my mind...
From the Goya Foods, Inc. Collection National Museum of American History, Archives Center I just returned from the grocery store, to buy a jar of tomato sauce and some rice. The grocery store was out of rice. And toilet paper. And countless other items. I've never...
{ part 2 ~ why my new year began the last monday of january } So what do you do after standing in a Museum before the altar of a magnificent Monet and you are just bursting with desire to be outside, be in the land, be bathed in color, be one with paintbrush and...