Today, I visited Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, New Mexico - best known as the location where Georgia O'Keeffe spent her summers for the last fifty years of her life, and where many of her most famous paintings were completed. I had long wanted to visit, O'Keeffe being a link to my grandmother, from which my own fixation on the artist has grown.
But, first: what portion of my love for the Southwest is attributable, respectively, to O'Keeffe, my grandmother, or neither? I wish I could say. Unfortunately, I have trained myself to be highly skeptical of each of two very different narratives, each its own epistemological archetype, so to speak:
1) The one that says that one of these was some magical seed that grew into substantially all of my fixation, as if after some critical event, nothing could have prevented it.
2) The opposite one, which says that "it was a buncha stuff" simply because, I suppose, my life has involved so many events, well, how could it have just been one or two things?
No, the truth is probably more complicated - it usually is. I actually think my grandmother - along with the family vacations I took, and the time I spent with her at the Grand Canyon - planted something like the metaphorical seed, which mostly remained dormant for a very long time. Then, two things happened: I started traveling to the Southwest to hike - but, really to explore; and, I rediscovered O'Keeffe not just as something identifiable from my grandmother's wall, but as a compelling artist.
I thought a fair bit about these things at Ghost Ranch. I thought a lot more about what my grandmother would have been thinking, and feeling, had she been there with me. In doing so, I remembered nuances of her personality better than I had in a long time - perhaps better than I had ever remembered them - her sense of humor, her curiosity and love of learning and love of teaching and love of nature and of discovering the world, as it is. Yes, more than a love of nature, I think she taught me a broader lesson about reconciling your own idealism to the reality of the world. To do so is to find joy in real things. To fail to do so is to live in a bubble, and by doing so, to predispose yourself to suffering.
But, I digress.
A number of O'Keeffe's paintings that I was already familiar with struck me more profoundly in this setting, aided as many were by the very landscapes from which they were derived, and the stories surrounding their creation. To see Pedernal in person left me in awe; to see Ladder To The Moon at the same time choked me up. It's been moments just like that one that taught me how important it is to put forth the effort to find some connection, to actively try to understand what others have sought to express.
Ghost Ranch was much, much bigger than I thought. And, the history of Ghost Ranch is quite a bit bigger than O'Keeffe. That's fine. It was interesting. But not all of the history combined could match the small details about O'Keeffe, such as the admission that she would climb up on her neighbor's roof at night when they were gone (she had her own roof onto which she could climb...) - that insight into someone's personality is rare, and it is utter gold. I heard it, and I laughed, and I knew her better at once - I was sure of it.
I sat in the shade and read an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story collection from the library which I have been thoroughly impressed by. I thought about work a little bit - there was just enough reception for me to get random work messages and emails at awkward intervals. I thought about the bottle list at Casey Brewing, which I will visit Thursday.
Why did I go to New Mexico? A combination of reasons, so I say, but Ghost Ranch was the seed that told me that I needed to visit, and was the one thing I was certain I needed to do while I was there. Looked at that way, the time off work and travel expenses made for one pricey visit to Ghost Ranch! And yet I am not disappointed. The people at Ghost Ranch were friendly, and the place was welcoming - you could wander as you wished, and there were hiking trails and small exhibits and plenty of places to relax, in company or solitude. The lunch that was served was wholesome and satiating and communal. And yet, it was not the place with which I connected - it was the mythology of O'Keeffe and her paintings, and through this, my grandmother.
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