Squam Highlights, September 2010

Girly road trip to kick things off

Lunch at Z restaurant and a perfect welcome from owner/chef Tom Puskarich

Arriving at SAW with friends (Kate and Jen)

Christopher Frost’s Sticks and Stones class

Lazing on the dock, watching the sunset

Afternoon swimming in the lake

Skinny dipping under cover of darkness

Meeting up with former Squammie and friend, Danielle, at Saturday’s art fair

Making new friends

Sweet potato chips and soup at The Common Man in Ashland

Inspiration from Flora Bowley (even though I didn’t get to take her class)

Clothes shopping at Wholly Tara

Making clay vases in the woods and discovering, next day, that nature had filled them with water in the night

Great Squam food (as always)

Returning

Squam friends: Lisa, Aleece, Kate and Jen.



This is my third trip to Squam. What is it that keeps me coming back? That makes the long journey, the crossing of an ocean worthwhile?

Simply put, it’s the people. The women who gather there.

Yes, the landscape is breathtakingly beautiful and the sense of peace as deep as the lake we gaze on. Yes, the classes can be fun or valuable learning. And, yes, the food is great!

But it’s the collective energy of the women who surround me there…their courage, their style, their talent, their generosity, their kinship. It’s the sense of possibility and excitement that arises from watching their journeys - as artists, as people. It’s the mutual support and the warmth we generate together. It’s feeling like I’ve come home. It’s knowing I’ve found my tribe - even if I’ve yet to find my place within it.

We’re travelling home now. Yesterday, we were arm-in-arm and bent double with laughter. This morning we hugged and waved goodbye. Soon we’ll be flung across the globe.

But our minds are still in the same place. Our hearts are still joined together. Our spirits soar in the same direction. Our souls are one.

Sticks and Stones

Today was spent in the woods, making art from found materials.  The class was Sticks and Stones.  The tutor, Christopher Frost.

No expensive materials to buy.  No preparation.  No clearing up.  Just  a simple collaboration between artist and nature, resulting in temporary structures, ephemeral creations.

This was art to decorate the forest, to cheer passers-by, to be chanced upon in unexpected places.  Art to be changed by the weather, to crumble with the seasons.

We worked with sticks and clay, with sand and water, with leaves and berries, with flowers and bark.  We got hot and dirty; walked miles along woodland paths.  And we loved every last minute of it.

EDIT ONE WEEK LATER: Internet connection was dodgy at Squam.  Couldn't upload all the photos I wanted to when I created the collage above.  So here are the photos I'd like to have shown you....

Squamward Bound

I’m on my way back to New Hampshire. Journeying to another Squam Art Retreat.

This time tomorrow, I’ll be back in the forest; back by the lake; back among friends.

I’ll spend my days making art in the woods; my evenings making conversation before the fire.

I’ll wake to thin mist on the water. I’ll fall asleep to the cry of the loon.

I can barely wait.

Cobweb Days

Is it that spiders go into spinning overdrive at this time of year? Or are we always surrounded by a zillion invisible cobwebs, that only become apparent when softly painted by the early morning mists of autumn?

Several times this week, Joss and I have wandered up the lane and found hundreds upon hundreds of cobwebs lacing the blackberries and bracken.

And not a single spider in sight.