musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
my walk across vermont
My desire in walking 270+ miles across Vermont was to unplug from the mechanized world; to withdraw from the crazed speed of 21st-century life and slow down to a 19th-century kind of pace. I wanted to experience the woods again—the forests of my childhood, filled with eastern hardwoods. I wanted to see, smell and walk among red and sugar maples, beech and birch, hickory and oak trees….
I wanted to see green again—the vivid, verdant real green of ferns and moss and deciduous leaves. And I wanted to see those leaves fall, in blazing festoons of shimmering red and orange, gold and bronze.
I wanted to commune with the spirit of my parents. For it was they who taught me to walk, taught me to hike, 
taught me to love forested trails and mountains. And I just knew they would be there, in the coral glow of peeled paper birches, in the tender shoots of fiddleheads and clover, in the gold-brown sawtoothed edges of crackling beech leaves. I wanted to feel my parents close, and knew the New England hardwoods would bring them to me. And I to them.
And maybe most of all, I wanted to find myself there. I wanted to test my mettle. See if I could do it. See if I was still the skilled woodswoman I once used to be.
For back in my teens and early college years, I was quite the backpacker, having taught backpacking skills for many summers. But those days were long ago. And the truth is, I’d never been backpacking alone. Despite all of my experience hiking trails, I’d never spent a night alone in the woods.
Some months before my trip, one of my brothers asked me if I was going to do an overnight test hike.
No.
I did not want to get out there and find I didn’t like being alone in the woods. I’d rather leap into this big thing full on, and, if I found I didn’t like being alone in the woods, then just buck up, deal with it, and walk my way through it. I didn’t want to take a chance of backing out before even trying.
My dream for this journey came to me the summer of 1991. Entering my second year of grad school at the University of Pennsylvania, I spent that summer living with my aunt on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where I worked in an art gallery. There I met artist Rebecca Cuming. She, like me, had a passion for the outdoors. But her passion was exceptional: Sometime in the 1980s she had hiked the Appalachian Trail. The whole thing. Solo.
I was (and remain) in awe of that achievement. I wondered if I could hike the AT…. 2000+ miles and six months? Wow. That’s a h e l l of a commitment. Barely conceivable. I expressed my wonder… and my doubts.
Hike the Long Trail, she offered. You can do it in a month.
I’d never even heard of the Long Trail—didn’t know it overlaps with the Appalachian Trail for 100 miles through southern Vermont, before the AT branches eastward to New Hampshire and Maine.
Intrigued, I went out and bought a small, green-covered publication, Guide Book of the Long Trail.
I don’t know if I ever even opened the book, but it traveled with me as I moved my life across the country from Philadelphia to New Mexico and carved a living for myself in the dusty mesas of the Southwest. Over the years the book moved in my library from a place of honor at eye-level to a bottom shelf to eventually being shoved
to the back, a fur of dust and cobwebs growing over it.
Then six or seven years ago as I purged possessions in preparing to move from Taos to Santa Fe, I found it again, and realized it was now more than two decades out-of-date.
I flipped through it, scanning the pages.
So much for that dream.
I tossed it in the wood stove, and the dream turned to ash.
A couple more years dissolved away, and one winter morning I found myself in a cafe in Taos, pondering tea leaves and the fact that my 40s were slipping by with the crest of a half-century of life burning like a question-mark on my calendar and psyche. I wanted to do something—something big—to mark my 50th year. Burning in me, too, along with that calendar mark was the memory of a wistful comment my father made sometime in the last years of his life:
None of you kids is into backpacking anymore. I find that a little sad.
And I remembered my ashen dream of hiking The Long Trail.
Read the next installments about my journey:
Installment o2: where a walk across vermont begins
Installment 03: where a walk across vermont ends
Installment 04: falling, gratitude, and why I want to return to the trail
an aspen sanctuary
A couple days ago I rose before daybreak and drove up into the high mountains above Santa Fe. I’ve been doing this every few days lately, to escape the blistering heat wave that’s enveloped town, but also to exercise My Pup and me. With two backpacking trips coming up, it’s critical that I build up my stamina, strength and endurance.
But I’m also going up there to paint en plein air. And maybe most important of all, I’m going for church time in the cathedral of aspens and evergreen.
Last autumn I discovered a little meadow along a mountain stream just a 15 minute hike from the parking lot. I’ve been to the meadow half a dozen times and only once have I seen other hikers. Likely that’s because I’m up there so early — always I’m one of the first in the parking lot — but it could be, too, that the very steep and rocky trail down to the meadow — and therefore very steep and rocky uphill back to the car — discourages a lot of people.
What I’ve been doing on my outings is weighing my pack with more paint and accoutrements than I really need (paint is heavy), and then hiking down the trail the 15 minutes to the meadow, and then continuing further down another 15 minutes. Then I turn around to return to the meadow, to paint.
santa fe forest clearing ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel (en plein air) ~ 8″ x 10″
This morning though I decided to go a little farther down the trail before turning around. I could use the added fitness. But I’d also never been past the 30 minute mark and was curious to see if maybe another inviting meadow awaited me farther down. If so, we’d stop there to paint; if nothing after 15 minutes, we’d turn around.
And so we hiked down down down down 15 minutes more….
And.
No meadow.
Oh, but I really wanted to find one.
The trail thus far was lovely, ambling along the stream through aspen and spruce and fir. But it was narrow, wedged in between the stream on the left and the steeply sloped forest on the right — a little too crowded if someone were to come down the trail while I was painting.
Hmmm… what to do. The truth is I didn’t have all day to hike.
Five more minutes. Then, if the trail didn’t open up, I’d turn around and return to the higher, familiar spot.
And wouldn’t you know it on the dot of five minutes later the trail leveled out and, though no meadow presented itself, a gorgeous grove of widely-spaced aspen beckoned from the far side of the stream.
Home for the next hour or two.
The long grasses were deep green and dotted with dew. We made our way to a fallen tree and set up our temporary home. I lay down The Pup’s blanket (she’s short-haired and skinny, and starts to shiver waiting for me to finish up painting, especially if I take her pack off; the blanket helps keep her warm on the wet earth) while she munched on grass. I then set about making tea, having brought my wee little backpacking stove and kettle. I pulled out my paint box, lined up my brushes, looked around at the dazzling beauty and pinched myself, overcome with good-fortune. Just as I started to paint The Pup walked in front of me to the foot of my painting view and…… barfed.
~~ sigh ~~
So much for painting paradise.
A few choice expletives muttered, then — regaining focus — I continued with my painting. Usually the panels upon which I paint have a bit of a texture or “tooth” to them. But I accidentally bought smooth panels and have been using them these last couple of times. At first I didn’t like the smoothness at all — it’s a bit like trying to paint on a greased cookie sheet. The paint smears really easily; it’s hard to get solid opaque paint on them. But the more I use them the more I’m kind of digging the way these smooth panels make the paint kind of streaky.
aspen sanctuary ~ by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel (en plein air) ~ 8″ x 10″
Pleased with my painting, I finished the last few sips of tea and packed up.
We headed back up the trail and saw no one else. That is, until we passed through the high meadow and entered the steep woods again. Then, coming down the trail was a procession of about 20 people. We stepped aside to let them pass and I noted several people were quite elderly, being escorted by the arm down the rocky trail. One person being led appeared to be blind. Only a few people had packs.
A couple was bringing up the rear and stopped to admire and pet The Pup. Noting our packs, they assumed we’d been out for the night. I explained that no, I’m merely an artist carrying around a heavy paintbox, and that we went down past the meadow. The man asked what it’s like past the meadow, for he’d never been beyond it. I described the grove of aspen, and encouraged him to hike down there.
But what is this group you’re hiking with, I asked.
It’s a memorial service for someone who died: we’re going to the meadow to scatter their ashes. Otherwise you never see this many people on this trail.
We wished each other well and continued on.
As I hiked upward, after a few minutes something pink on the ground caught my eye.
I hiked on and there was another one…. and another….
and more….
A couple more people passed me.
And it occurred to me that the rose petals must have been a trail for the friends of the deceased: “Go to the juncture where two trails meet, then follow the rose petals — they lead to a meadow. You’ll find us there.”
Go a little further past the meadow and you’ll find me there, in the aspen grove.
[ Note to my subscribers: Apologies if you’ve received a couple variations of this post; been having some issues with WordPress]
celebration & honoring
This past weekend marked some significant events in my life:
June 19
= the 61st anniversary of my dear late parents’ wedding (1954)
June 21
= the 83rd anniversary of my sainted mother’s birth (1932)
= the first day of summer (always a glorious day)
= Father’s Day (yet another day to think of and celebrate my favorite patriarch)
And what better way to celebrate and honor these all than by rising before sun-up, loading my pack and good pup in the car, journeying to the high mountains hours before the crowds, ambling down a clear gushing mountain stream, settling in among the aspen, and, with a full and happy heart, painting the scene before me?
No. Better Way!
plein air painting among the high mountain aspen above santa fe. look carefully to spy my studio mascot.
summer solstice aspens – santa fe, oil on panel (en plein air), 8″ x 10″, by dawn chandler
to journal or not to journal, part 2: transforming pain
Looking back through all of my journals, I’m particularly taken by the long and slender volume of 2006.
That year was a tough one for me.
Some intense relationship challenges and persistent and unhelpful compulsive mind-speak churned extreme feelings of self doubt. In the midst of all that, I found myself waking each morning to a feeling of dread and unease.
Fortunately — and quite accidentally — I stumbled into the counsel of a friend who just happened to be a newly minted “life coach.” He offered to help me work through my anxieties as long as I would commit to doing “the work.”
Our sessions were brutal.
He challenged me to question everything I had thought or assumed or took for granted about myself and my outlook. He relentlessly called me on my bullshit, and dared me to go deeper in examining my life and my behaviors. He called in to question my reactions, my insecurities, my fears.
The Work ripped me raw.
The difference in the months between who I was before that Work and who I became after was, as another close friend put it, “like night and day.”
Like that certain stillness that comes after a storm, I was — and remain — calmer. Less anxious. More forgiving. More Balanced.
That isn’t to say there isn’t more work to do — there always is. But a transformation occurred that summer and autumn that lead me to a deep self-examination and resulted in my realization that, to a very large degree, the antics of our minds create our own suffering. This made for a massive shift in how I live and view my life.
Anyhow….
Back to my journal.
A lot of the Work I did that year was through writing, and the pages of my journal from that year are filled with torment.
However, by the dawning of the New Year an extreme shift in my awareness had taken place. As I perused my journal pages that New Year’s Eve, I was overcome with a desire to take those earlier pages of darkness and transform them into something bright. Re-imagine them, just as, in a very real way, I had come to re-imagine my life.
So I pulled out my paints and, with a bit of color here and there, re-birthed those pages.
Did I make great or art on those pages? Not likely. But the act of transformation — the process of sifting through those painful 
memories and letting go of their old form and metamorphose into something new was powerful.
Which brings me nine years forward to this year. As I wrote in my previous post, I was a bit aghast to discover as I read through last year’s journal what I whiner I can be, and how, ultimately, all that time spent whining is unproductive and leads to a vicious circle of egoic obsession.
So I’m taking a lesson from my 2006 self, and reinventing last year’s journal. With paint and ink and whatever else I feel like, I’m creating a workbook of painting experiments. Playful. Experimental. Bold and gentle, dark and light.
Who would have thought transforming negative into positive could be so much fun?
to journal or not to journal, part 1
Always I carry with me a blank book; a journal. It’s my Everything Book. Part diary, part sketchbook, part notebook, my journal is my brain center. It’s where I jot down things I want to remember–quotes, addresses, book titles, appointments, songs, directions. It’s where I document my travels and where, when I have a few extra moments, I sometimes draw. And, more than all of that, my journals are where I write what’s on my mind.
For thirty years I’ve been confiding in and prattling on to these pages, pouring out my heart and chronicling, dreaming. Venting. Usually in the morning, first thing, with my tea, before doing much of anything else. Julia Cameron would be proud of me, for she suggests we all spend time each morning writing our “morning pages”: three pages of putting down whatever is on our mind, getting it OFF our minds so that we can get on with our work, our Art.
And I’ve been doing that.
But you know, it’s funny: I hardly ever read back through what I write. The notations, yes; the quotes, yes; but rarely the “journaling.”
Then sometime late last fall I read somewhere an article that was about setting and achieving goals. The writer keeps a yearly journal—or at least a working notebook of his goals—and at the end of each year, he reads back through the year’s pages to remind himself of his goals and achievements, and see what remains undone and what he might carry forward into the new year.
That struck me as an interesting idea, and so shortly into the new year I decided to do just that.
And here’s what I discovered:
What a whiner I am!
Jeez-Louise! If for every time that I started my day with 20 – 30 minutes of venting about “not having enough time to paint” and instead I had simply PAINTED, I would have done A LOT MORE PAINTING.
Me Me Me Me Me! My journal writing just seemed so……. Self. Centered. So….. EGOIC. So filled with whining drivel.
Rather than release my anxieties and frustrations, it almost seemed to harbor them; to fester them. I couldn’t help but feel like rather than serving to help me let go of my anxieties, these pages were inviting me to keep them alive.
When every thought absorbs your attention completely,
when you are so identified with the voice in your head and the emotions
that accompany it that you lose yourself in every thought and every emotion,
then you are totally….in the grip of the ego.
— Eckhart Tolle
This was one of those sledge-hammer-to-the-head wake-up-call-moments.
I decided: No. More Journaling!
Or at least, no more sitting down and writing to C O M P L A I N.
No more starting my day with bitching to myself and whining about this or that.
Instead, start the day painting.
And if I want to write down my thoughts with pen and paper, write a letter to a friend instead. Reach out and use that writing time to nurture meaningful and thoughtful connections with others; enough with writing to My Self!
That was three months ago.
Wouldn’t you know it but my painting time has increased hugely this year.
And so has my letter-writing.
