Arriving at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico Photo by Laurie Doctor — Arriving at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico | Photo by Laurie Doctor

I arrived early for our class at Ghost Ranch, and so I wrote this before I knew that our class would be cancelled the next day, due to the first person ever at Ghost Ranch to test positive for Covid. There I was without a car, with all the boxes of paper and supplies for the students that I could not keep at Ghost Ranch, and the office closed down until the following week. And out there, all the students, and Barbara, the co-teacher, setting out…

So I begin with an apology to all the courageous students who have been walking with me through these unpredictable times, and to all of you readers to whom I promised to bring images of their work.

This quote comes to mind:

Every journey has secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. — Martin Buber

But this is what I wrote, having arrived at Ghost Ranch in the dark of the moon, before I knew our class would be cancelled, and getting ready for class to begin:

I woke up this first morning at Ghost Ranch to the dream voice proclaiming: Take stock in invisibility. Take stock? One of the definitions of stock is repertoire. A repertoire with invisibility. I feel the power of darkness in the desert; there is nothing but starlight up here on the mesa. The imperative of trusting what I cannot see. Waiting for what wants to come. Taking stock in the unknown.

Here in New Mexico in the dark of the moon, the desert sky is dripping with stars. Just standing beneath such vastness brings back an immensity, a gap, a pause. A shooting star. A recognition of something you have always known.

There is an ancient notion of collaborating with the stars — a collaboration with destiny. Ancient peoples understood that “creation” is not something that happened “out there,” once upon a time, but is continuously happening by our choosing to participate. That your destiny is not something fixed in stone, but is woven with your vision, and what you have been given. You enter this pattern each time you set about making something in your sacred space. Your intention, this moment of pausing and choosing to point yourself in a certain direction, matters. Stand still and listen to the stars the dream voice says. Give yourself over to gazing.

My pocket sketchbook I take out with me | L Doctor

Ghost Ranch, New Mexico in October | Pencil & watercolor in pocket sketchbook | L Doctor

In the silence of the desert before dawn The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper, Orion, and Little Bear are all brilliant. I feel I have been given everything. Just last night the most glorious full resplendent rainbow arching all the way across the horizon, through an indigo sky, from one butte to another. An echo of the twin rainbow that greeted me upon arrival. I receive and I believe in a receiver. This place recognizes me. I will write out here in the dark until sunrise, and the darkness here is deep. The Milky Way stretches above my head. There is a pause, an active waiting in the silence just before dawn. Even the animals and birds are quiet. We are all waiting. Listen, there is something you need to hear.

Sketching in the desert: Townsend’s Solitaire, Prickly Pear and Four Winged Salt Bush | L Doctor

Being alone beneath the cathedral of stars, feeling I belong in this blanket of darkness, reminds me of stories from our ancestors, the stories some of you will know, of the San people in the Kalahari desert:

The San people could hear the stars singing. It took Laurens van der Post a long time to locate them out in the Kalahari Desert in the early 1900’s. It took even longer for them to trust him with their stories. There was no electricity within a hundred miles, so the darkness was thick, a palpable thing. When they were out one night under the African sky, the San were alarmed to discover that Laurens could not hear the stars singing. They did not believe him. They took him away from the crackling fire, took him by the shoulders, placing him at different points in the desert. They examined his face, alarmed at his misfortune, wondering what illness could keep him from hearing? They persisted in moving him around: Now can you hear them? they asked. In that vast desert, there was nothing between the San people and the stars — the sky was their screen. Even the word hour has its origin in astronomy, and was not then a fixed period of time, but time that changed with the seasons, the length of daylight and the movement of constellations.

The San’s only possessions were what they carried around their waist — a spear point for hunting, a pouch for water, some pigment for paint. Their home was wherever they slept under the stars. How did they know when someone was coming from over a hundred miles away? How did they find water where no one else could? And how were their ears tuned to the music of the stars?

The San stories were full of stars and wisdom. They told of remembering what it is so easy to forget: we can call on trees and stones and stars. We can call on the invisible force that brought us here, and will take us away. We can call on these presences to help us bring in the light. Knowing that we live in collaboration with this earth, with the trees and stones and stars, changes our sense of possibility. Imagine that invisible force we call gravity, holding us in place. Without this help, we would all spin off into space. There is a profound feeling of being held that arises in waiting, in releasing the push to become something else. A pervasive sense felt over millions and trillions of miles and galaxies, of other forces at work. An awareness of our ancestors who have left us footprints in the sand.

Take stock in invisibility. Being here on 21,000 acres of high wild desert brings me back to the guidance in dreams, to what is calling, to listening, and welcoming whatever comes.

That is what I wrote before, and here is the poem that came after getting the news that the class was cancelled:

CESSURA

The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent,
it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power
to elevate a consideration of human life. — Barry Lopez

What yielding brings — an opening you didn’t know
was there, beckoning you, just now along the open road

where you are suddenly stopped, the way ahead blocked
not by truck or accident or herd of buffalo

but by the impossible lightening luminosity
of a rainbow that reaches out in front of you

all the way across the horizon gleaming
gold and rubies with pink and peach between

in an indigo sky perched on infinity —

You are the hawk hanging overhead

with a view of the entire landscape
and the spectral sense of coherence

in the face of the fleeting — an unaccountable
understanding comes with the gravity

that holds steady all that is spinning
in this, the same moment your class is cancelled

with you already here, your suitcase already
unpacked and your supplies for students all ready —

students that are also halted along their routes
prepared for something else, now tossed into yielding

to the desert in the dark of the moon —

Pausing to look up, you count seven
shooting stars to the left of the Milky Way

embraced by a beckoning, changed now from teacher
to student, to an apprentice of what is calling.

Developing a repertoire for courting the invisible is an essential secret ingredient for being a maker — this is our job, to give our allegiance to courting the invisible.

Where have you been stopped along the road? What is in your repertoire? I’d love to hear from you.

New dates for Ghost Ranch class: Jan 29 - Feb 4, 2022

There are a few spaces open. Learn more and register here.