L A N D S C A P E // B O D Y

By Orianna Pavlik

Cebolla Canyon

September 2, 2015

dry clay

hot sand

rough bark

skin

exploring the landscape

with my body

naked

and vulnerable

sharp brush

scraping against my legs

the sky

like a mirror

exposing me

nude

the air flowing around

my body

to the wind

curled up

contorted

imprisoned by insecurity

but

a moment of freedom

between me

and the landscape

I'm Sorry

By Erin Fussell
Cebolla Canyon
September 5, 2015

Red ants rule the ground in Cebolla Canyon, New Mexico. Their giant hills sit at the center of cleared circles of dirt about 6 feet in diameter with each colony spaced far apart from each other. The hills were covered in tiny pieces of twigs so in my good intention to work with them, I added some more twigs. But, after I did that and watched them, I saw that they were working together to remove the twigs that I had "helped out" with. So, then I began to help remove the twigs, too. 

I'm sorry, ants. I know better now. 

Layers of Time

By Paula D. Barteau

Cebolla Canyon

September 5, 2015

You can see the layers of time here. There are fossils in the rocks, potshards and petroglyphs, collapsing cabins from the homestead era, and the sounds of ATVs and gunfire up and down the road at night. It’s funny what those layers of time tempt you to imagine. People have been talking about their dreams here more than the other sites, talking about the energy, the magic. I felt it too, something about the night air that feels conscious and alive.  I’ve attributed the possible creepiness to all the men with guns driving around looking to shoot some animals, but it’s interesting to think of some other kind of presence here and the different ways it might be perceived.

This place reminds me of home. The landscape, the plants, grasshoppers the size of small toads dressed in brilliant motifs. Teri, our guest artist, lead us in a deep listening exercise the second day of camp. I was surprised to find that when I closed my eyes and listened to the landscape I knew almost all the sounds I heard. I was struck the most by the wind, I used to hate the windy season when I was growing up, but I recognized the sound of the wind in the mountains like something very specific from my childhood. It sounded like the voice of home. It's nice to think that home is sentient, that it would be aware of me if I came back.

Before we left, I decided that I wanted to focus on the relationship between anthropomorphism and dehumanization as tools to project values and thoughts onto things outside ourselves while dismissing their actual existence. The idea of a place having some inherent consciousness spoke to this train of thought and I tried to imagine how it would manifest to other people. We think in terms of the things we’re familiar with and the cultural associations that go with them, but there’s so much that no one knows.  I tend to think in terms psychology, priming, the physiology of emotional response to external stimuli, suggestibility in groups of people. Others might think in terms of history, or spiritual energy. I talked with a friend once about how chemistry was magic, that magic was not in any way effortless but one of the most tedious subjects to understand. I have another friend who says the same thing about math, that the moment of comprehension of what is actually going on mathematically can be extremely ineffable and personal. I like the idea that magic doesn't depart with mystery, but only starts to reveal itself with incremental understanding. 

There are so many things that no one knows, at least no one present; so many things out of the reach of falsification, only accessible through subjective conjecture. I like not knowing. I think a lot of people decide to believe in their subjective conjectures, to feel like they know, people who believe in science and spirits alike. It’s interesting how that happens, what we decide to believe in, and how we cope with dissonance. My favorite coping mechanism is not knowing.

The absence of Water

By Harriet Fawcett
Cebolla Canyon

September 2, 2015

Driving up to where we intended on camping at Cebolla Canyon I couldn’t help questioning ‘This is the greenest desert I have ever seen but there is no water anywhere’ I was later told that there has been the most rainfall in 15 years which obviously explains the greenness. It was a strange feeling to be in a place with no water, being so accustomed to it back in England to see the Arroyo dried up and realizing the only water around was in my water bottle was quite a sad thought. I did a lot of hiking while I was at Cebolla Canyon; there was a lot of history to be immersed in with the historic homesteads, the petroglyphs and the earthworks to explore. A group of us went to explore the Earthwork created by Bill Zeedyk. It was designed to try and restore a natural flow of water in the arroyo, hoping to bring life back to the land and undo the damage humans have done by overgrazing. Spending some time there I got the sense that this was not an immediate fix, if a fix at all. The effects of the work won’t be apparent for many years, but it’s a wholesome feeling that this once neglected land is now being tendered to once again.

A memorable day

By Eleanora Jaroszynska

Cebolla Canyon

September 4, 2015

The night before I had made the decision to climb the hill behind to the ridge where there were ancient ruins that were amazingly intact with many pottery shards. Joanna came also and we met Paula who joined us too. We made our way up to the top of the ridge by following a dry streambed like a sandy pathway, which led us all the way up. I was ahead; and I came around a bend and saw in the middle of the dry stream embedded half in the sand, a large boulder with a very large fossil. I had never found a fossil that large! We were all very excited about it and gathered around it for quite a while. I loved it so much I decided to carry it with me. I placed it in my backpack and it was so heavy that I could not lift it with one hand. I was very tired by the time we reached the top and they helped me come to the decision that it was time to leave the boulder.

The clouds were low and there was a light drizzle and some fairly strong wind so we moved on quite soon after a quick lunch. We walked along the ridge and soon came to the ruins. I came across only a few pottery shards but Paula, who was in front, kept coming back quite a few amazing ones. I didn’t know where she was finding them!

I hadn’t been long up in the ruins when I came across a little dwelling that had been constructed from three large boulders. I took shelter in the entrance from the wind and rain. And there I found some lovely pottery shards: red ones with black designs, white with black design and some with a ribbed texture. I was sitting with Paula looking at these shards and arranging them into different patterns, when my hand chanced on an almost perfectly formed arrowhead of a blue/green stone. We were very excited by this find and added it to the mosaic. Something else had caught my eye in the corner of the shelter just at arm’s reach from me. In my mind I had a conversation with whatever it was – “will I reach out and see what it is?” After a while I decided to investigate. It looked like a rounded whitish stone with an indent on the top. I brushed the sand from it and pulled it out of the sand. It kept coming and coming! It was about the length of my hand and much more that a whitish stone! I couldn’t believe that the object that I had found in the sand was the top half of an almost a thousand year old ceramic flute. The indent was the mouth hole and there were two finger holes. It was absolutely beautiful. My mind was racing; I just could not believe what I was holding! To think of the last person who played the flute and the music that they had played. The energy in the place was very intense and I could hardly wrap my head around it all and yet it all felt so close and real.

sitting in a horse trough: thoughts of water

By CB Bryan

Cebolla Canyon

September 5, 2015

Spending the day in a horse trough -- feeling supported and surrounded. I take the time to study the way the rust builds up on the sides and how the metal bottom has filled with gravel. A few plants grow here and there but for the most part this is an oasis from the prickly “ouchie” plants that pop up all around the enclosure.

Yellow-grey skies and slight drizzle offer relief. Raindrops land on my watercolor painting and create speckled indents in the rusty browns and terra cottas I’m using to grasp the edge of this solid cylinder.

I am constantly thinking of water. The drizzle could fill this vessel and soak my belongings -- but it won’t. The arroyo could flood and wash away the performance that I did with friends the night before. But it won’t. We brought 26 five-gallon jugs of water and that was a lot. Kacie writes, “only 8 jugs left” on the board in the kitchen urging us to be conscious of our usage -- we still have three days to go. I think about this sitting in the trough, where I feel focused finally. I have sat here for two hours and in that time paid close attention to the smaller things around me -- the variations in color of both the rusted side and the sandy bottom. All the colors that come together to create “tan” or “brown.” I think of all that water and how it could come together to fill me in this shallow basin.

Ghosts of all the layers of settlement filter in and out during this two-hour period. They occupy the trickle of water nearby, where there are shards of pottery and glass -- all the years blending into one broken vessel scattered and left across acres of grassy valley, no longer able to support the trickle of water coming down to meet me at the edge of my rusted horse trough.