Wandering
All photos by Sandora Hedrich
In my earlier years as an artist, I worked in a funky studio in Santa Monica, near Los Angeles, then in an industrial space in Chicago, then a much larger studio in Capitol Hill in Seattle. It was a big open space, and I used to rollerblade or ride my bicycle through it when I wasn’t creating art. When I worked in my city studios, I would sometimes create a circle around me, using blue painter’s tape. It symbolized that nothing—negativity, demons, banal distractions—outside of my realm, the space beyond the tape could interfere with my process of creating of art. Only positive thoughts and love were permitted within the space. This made me feel empowered, as if I existed in my own eden, my own garden…where anything is possible.
Now that I live on the remote island of Orcas in the Pacific Northwest, I have created an oasis for myself and the circle of blue painter’s tape is no longer needed. My art studio is a fifteen minute walk, down a serpentine driveway from my house — a labyrinthian path through my land, a private forest reserve that is sacred to me.
The pathway to the studio is an immersion into nature that I may make several times a day, numerous times per week, yet I have no sense of time when I do so. This walk to the studio is transitional, transformational, it’s a portal for me.
The path takes me down my steep, switchback mountain driveway, with deep fall-offs. A road that can be treacherous in the snow, and sometimes traps us in from the rest of the world. The overstory is filled with the canopies of Cedar, Douglas Fir, Madrone, Hemlock, Wild Cherry, Big Leaf Maple, Ocean Spray, and Wild Rose, with a lush understory of moss, salal and fern. As I pass through dense forest, I might pass woodpeckers, bird nests with chirping chicks, different owl species even during the day (including a great horned and barred owls), ravens, squirrels, eagles, mice…
Every now and then, I stop to escort a slug or worm out of my path, pause to examine a dew drop on a spider web, study the intricacies of nature…
Hummingbird nests on tree limbs.
This path is a daily reminder that my partner, Sandora, and I live in harmony with the world around us. Before COVID, families of deer would greet me on the pathway to my studio, but they suffered their own pandemic at the same time we did. Their disappearance was a reminder of the ephemeral nature of beauty and life, and how precious it can be.
The poem below is by Sandora and it captures the spirit of the land we live on and with.
Because
by Sandora Hedrich
Because it is so alive, it breathes life into me.
Because the steep serpentine driveway slinks under hovering arched branches.
Because blue-grey granite rock-faces rise high on the side, with huge, age-old roots wending their way through crannies and cracks.
Because it is hard to tell where the rough-barked root stops — and the rock is just rock.
Because the stories-tall trees with stories to tell rise above it all and lean and feed and fall.
Because the small green frog, slippery salamander, rough-skinned newt sneak under rocks, leaf litter, damp glistening moss and layer upon layers of frilly fern fronds.
Because this lucky horseshoe-shaped island is circled by Humpback, Gray, Orcas and Minke whales — plus all manner of dolphins and porpoises too.
Because the rocks at the beach are covered with starfish every color of the rainbow.
Because the fur and hooves of black-tail deer carve trails and tunnels through wooded bramble of blackberry, hardhack, ocean spray, wild rose and salal.
Because the understory has its own story of small Douglas squirrels not much bigger than a chipmunk and twice as feisty, the Western Gray squirrel who is really red to blend into all the red-barked towering Red Cedar, Red Alder and Douglas Fir, plus shrew, vole, mole and deer mouse scampering to hide.
Because the big bumpy Big-Leaf Maples really do have really big leavesand in spring their sap turns the squirrels silly, giddy as drunk.
Because every strata of the forest and clearing is filled with the cacophony of calls echoing Western Tanager, Varied Thrush, Spotted Towhees, Pileated Woodpecker (the inspiration for Woody Woodpecker), Bald Eagles, Barred Owl, Leucistic (all-white) Red-tailed Hawk, Evening Grosbeak, Flicker, Nuthatch, Goldfinch.
All and more making their home in our tree, trunk or shrub.
Because every year generations of Rufous Hummingbirds return from thousands of miles of flight to light on our branches, make their nests, mate and name this space their summer getaway place.
Because all these call this home
So do I.
