twister | Instagram: @bythebrush
interlude | oil study https://instagram.com/bythebrush/
reflection | weekend oil painting
on the studio floor |
It’s freeing to let go — even just slightly — of the confining need to know what will happen next in life. Approach the horizon filled with wonder, not worry… there’s a reason we can only see a little at a time.
Lauraepritchett.com
a couple little river hideaways I’ve photographed by kayak this winter.
an elk I saw on yellowhead hwy. | oil
four iPhone photos, four seasons, one wild cherry tree.
I’m glad there are still places on earth that a GPS can’t find.
Last week, I set out to visit my great aunt’s little solar powered house in a remote desert in Arizona. As she likes to say, she “broke up with the internet years ago,” so if I want to communicate with her, I’d better put pen to paper and buy more stamps. She sent me a letter explaining where the last mile-marker off the main highway is and how far to go between each winding turn and cattle guard after that. A few days later, a Postcard with a lizard printed on the front followed up with something to the effect of ”P.S. I forgot to tell you that all the roads are dirt and you’ll have to cross a riverbed, which should be dry this time of year.” I was on my way.
Her directions were excellent and I managed to arrive on her back step in the pitch dark hardly passing another soul or artificial light source for about the last third of my journey from the airport in Nevada.
I woke up the next day before sunrise and watched a pastel sky slowly reveal the miles of mountains that stretch out in all directions from the rock I sat on in her garden. It didn’t take long to understand why she chose to make this her home.
At the age of 84, my great aunt speeds up and down steep mountain trails in her little pickup truck and a billow of red dust. She can just barely see above the dashboard with help from an extra cushion to give her a bit more height in the driver’s seat. As classical music spills from the speakers, she drapes her hand through the steering wheel and points out boulders that resemble animals and characters the way that someone would usually identify shapes in the clouds.
Twelve years ago, she fell in love with this place and decided to move off-the-grid to live alone in the Arizona desert. She learned the plants, the land, and the unmarked roads. She named the ravens that visit every morning and the mouse that scurries across her floor at six p.m. every night. Cowboys trade eggs for her prickly pear preserves and donate their worn out Wranglers to her ongoing endeavor to sew a quilt made entirely of recycled jeans.
I’m inspired by her tenacity, her creativity, and I admire her appreciation for nature, but most of all, I love her for choosing to live a life all her own, well off the beaten path. She's living her dream.