Arriving

Yesterday marked the beginning of my second week at my Jentel Residency in Banner, Wyoming. And, amazingly, it also marked the beginning of what feels like fall coming on here. Morning and evenings so cool I actually close the window to my bedroom. The residency is phenomenal. I feel incredibly thankful to be here.

The woman who runs things around here, L., is particularly wonderful. A real tall, beautiful Western woman with a great dog, Josie, horses and that ability to make you feel like there is nothing she can't handle. The place itself is spectacular, the bedrooms and bathrooms HUGE and full of color and antiques from around the world, the common room and kitchen large and full of light, and I get my own writing cabin (see picture) with woodstove, bookshelves and a recliner and blanket (where I've already taken one blissful nap).

There is a library, complete with ladder and computer, napping space under the main stairs (see picture of pillow insanity), mail area, laundry room, and a recreation room with so many movies it took the crew 30 minutes to pick one the other night. I heard The Scent of Green Papaya's lyric flute score wafting down into the kitchen as I made tea.

The crew consists of: J., a sculptor/painter from Baltimore who has an obsession with food consciousness, corporations, sculpy clay and optics (you peer into her little vial-contained clay-sculptures and discover a whole world), S., an abstract landscape printmaker and sculptor from Oakland who uses everything from ground up rocks and wild grasses outside her studio to pictures of rattlers devouring birds in her work, B., a fiction writer from Florida (who is originally from Alaska) whose work is bittersweet and incredibly funny, K., a painter from Oregon whose work is unbelievably visceral, is working entirely out of yellow and puts "bad" paintings in "time-out" at the edge of her studio, D., a landscape photographer originally from the Wisconsin, now in Louisiana, who specializes in disasters and has work of incredible precision and texture and me, the poet.

They are a wonderful, generous, gentle group of people who all pitch in to do the dishes and make dinner. After this first week we've gotten into a rhythm of knowing who stays up late working (me), who gets up super early (the fiction writer), who makes the best baked eggplant (S.) and who drinks the most wine (darn photographers). We've hiked together to the top of local peaks (see pictures) and spent time searching the bowels of local thrift stores for a pair of perfect cowgirl/boy boots (mine were $15). I am continually delighted to find myself paired with a group of artists who are so knowledgable, kind and darn fun to be around.

Yesterday after lunch we sat around and K. and S. compared stories from the 60s and 70s in New York, most of which are not fit for this blog!! S. told me about meeting Anais Nin at a friend's house, how she sat so proper and French and drank her tea with pinkie raised.

The days are spent working diligently on our projects (I've written about 20 new poems with at least 5-6 worth saving so far), walking the hills, biking on the ridiculous cruisers, wearing our orange vests when we leave the property or to make a cell call a mile up the road, and driving into Sheridan and the surrounding towns for a bit of local life. Sheridan is the closest town, with horse saddle makers, a good steak house (that we'll try out this weekend), a cute little coffee shop and a nice farmer's market, where the tomatoes are luscious and the cabbage bright.

Every morning I make my thermos of tea and work for several hours before emerging for my afternoon hike. Most of the artists take time for a swim in the creek or a nap or both. At night the sky fills itself with silver starlight and the smell of the alfalfa fields rises up all earthy and sweet bidding us to sleep well and dream wildly.