Desert Girl Memories

After a hellish first week of school while still working full-time, I heard some happy and familiar sounds today on the radio...

BirdNote Podcast - Bird Sounds Transport Us Back

I first heard the sound of the Mourning Dove at the end of the broadcast.  I used to wake up to that sound when I lived in Richland, Washington.  How peaceful.  Then I heard the whole podcast and heard the sound of the California Quail.  Not only did we have those in Richland but we also had them at my grandma's house in the desert in California.  Once again I was transported back...

Apple Valley, California

After living near us in Sunland, California for a while, my grandma decided to build a house and move to Apple Valley, California in the middle of the desert.  My sister Jennie and I had magical times up there as we would often go for weeks at a time.  We woke up late and made breakfast with my grandma. She would let us scramble the eggs and always made sure to butter the toast to the very edge of the bread.  And then we would play outside the whole day.  We ran barefoot in the sand and enjoyed her backyard that had been left in its natural state.  It was beautiful.


I started school this week embarking on a journey into horticulture.  I love it.  It's so awesome to encounter a subject that I feel so in-tune with again... much like music was.  Yesterday in my introduction to landscape design class, our teacher read an excerpt from a book where the author discussed how we as adults miss the little things in landscape.  As D.H. Lawrence said, "what the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist."  So true.  I'm learning to identify broadleaf evergreen plants at the moment and it's amazing how the neighborhood you've walked in all these years comes alive as each new plant you long to know even more than before and you constantly guess at plant names.  The landscape is now more than a bunch of colors and shapes, it is becoming more individualized with each plant.  As adults, I feel like we walk around all the time and don't stop to see the little things, smell the roses. There's so much to see if we just open our eyes.

Taking a moment to go back to a happy place in the midst of all this new stress, it was wonderful to think about my grandma's desert.  There were funny stinkbugs we would see.  At night, the sand was a different temperature than the air and felt neat on your feet.  Sunsets over the valley that we had a view of from her back porch.  Jennie and I had a special call to each other that we would sing over the wind.  And best of all, we spent time with a lady that still inspires me to be the best I can be even though she's no longer physically with us.  What beauty, what wonder.  A nice mental break and a "place" I must remember to visit as life gets more challenging.

A breath...

I have the privilege of singing in the Seattle Women's Chorus.  Aside from the fact that the community of women that gathers is inspiring, it is also amazing to be able to regularly sing in a choir.  So many of us sing as kids but don't take the initiative to find choirs as adults and frankly, life gets in the way.  Beyond the ordinary great things that happen in a choral setting, there are the moments - those musical instance where things click, are spell-binding and usually render you speechless.  We in the music community live for these moments.

As a former conducting student, I'm always amazed at how a slight flick of your hand can make a whole choir breathe or cut off on a note.  Wow.  Or the times when a choir takes the time to get all 150 + voices to sing the exact same vowel and tone so you come as close to one-voice-nirvana as possible.  That's amazing. Last night I was struck by one of these moments.

Breathing, it seems so simple, right?  Out of all the things breathing means, the things I like the most are the peace that pause brings and the anticipation of something that is coming.  That is especially true for breathing within a song.  There's the break from sound and then the anticipation of what sounds, words and harmonies will come next.  Well, last night there was a moment in a song where we all had to stop and breathe together (not always the case in choral music).  (Insert collective sigh.)  To hear that many women and feel those feelings in one instant just renders a girl speechless.  I can live on that moment for a long time.