My path today went mostly between the house and studio as I packed pots to take to Penland, North Carolina where I'll be teaching for the next two weeks. When we first moved to our property I wanted to leave as much of our land as wild as possible. I had a dream of a gentle form of beautiful creative chaos. So we mowed minimally and had a curved trail that led to the pond and another that followed the edge of the water and one that traversed the hill. We let the birds drop seeds and the trees so seeded grew up. But vines also took over and so in recent years we have been mowing more to beat back the poison ivy, bittersweet, grapevine, and honeysuckle. In the early years, every few seasons we would change where we mowed our trail. We were amused that our dog at the time still took the path that was mowed when she was a puppy. The last couple of weeks with all our focus on firing and home exhibit we were behind on upkeep so at the beginning of the week Warren did a complete mowing. On my walk today I felt as if I could invent any interpretation of my landscape as my new path in life.
"A path is a prior interpretation of the best way to traverse a landscape."
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
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