In 1993 I got into a car in Birmingham, Alabama and got out in Skamania County, Washington state. It’s a good story, how that came to happen, but a long story; I’ll say here only that it involves a woman, a dog, and a skunk.
I was 31 years old, imagining myself as a writer. I had been teaching English in Alabama for several years, and was trying to write about my time teaching in China. I had loved that time. But my writing was slow and painful, to read as well as to write, I fear, and I wasn’t at all sure it was any good.
I was struggling with other things, too, having a hard time (“In the middle of that road we call our life/ I found myself in a dark wood, with no clear path through….”).
I had always loved to draw and wanted to learn to paint, but had always thought, “some other day….” In Stevenson that fall I started attending a life-drawing group. It was a revelation. I felt I was discovering something important each time I held a pencil or piece of charcoal in my hand and looked closely at someone’s face. And I felt my life welling up in me again. I knew this was important for me.
Drawing led to painting. I felt I needed to give myself a year to explore what I had glimpsed. One thing led to another. Twenty-five years have passed. I’m still exploring. I know I’ve hardly begun.