Becoming What You Are

Donkeys, witches, sparkling seas

I often talk to other women and students about how they spend their energy. Lately, I’ve felt even more drawn to depth than usual - to spending my time in the deeper work and deeper relationships that will sustain and occasionally transform my life.

Mostly, I’ve been head down on my book, which I’ve been wrestling with for ten years and am turning in edits for on June 1st. For me, this last stretch of a draft takes nearly everything, and generally, in my world of kids and jobs, I have to find a new gear to get myself over the finish line.

Ossabaw, Genesis Project grounds

But even in that extra gear I also leave time for wonder and creative practice. Ever since I visited Ossabaw Island six years ago with a group of artists, I’ve had a deep desire to make a short film about Sandy West and The Genesis Project - an interdisciplinary back-to-the-land colony Sandy hosted on the island in the 70s. When I got an email mentioning a reunion was happening, I booked a ticket.

This weekend I climbed aboard a boat and headed toward the barrier island with a million cameras, drones, batteries, cords. I felt immediate happiness. For much of the last decade I’ve been falling in love with Georgia’s coast as a guest of the non-profit 100 Miles. Cumberland, Ossabaw, Sapelo, Little St. Simons, St. Simons, Jekyll, St. Catherine’s - I love them all. And I love the life they host: sea turtles, right whales, wood storks.

100 Miles made an evangelist out of me years ago when they included me on a multi-day trip on a retrofitted shrimp boat. We spent several hot days learning about island ecology and socio-political histories. We spent several warm nights with scientists and artists like J. Drew Lanham and Marcus Kenney listening to Sade and throwing a casting net on a flat river - deep magic.

trailing my good friend, artist Marcus Kenney, out of dinner. A visual artist but the best storyteller I know.

As for Sandy West - I’m not ready to process and share it all yet. But what a large and inspirational spirit. An artful giver who possessed a certificate of witchcraft. Friends with Jimmy Carter. Dying at 108 on her own birthday. Supporting artists and ecologists for decades. Pioneering interdisciplinary collaboration. Wanting people to become the best versions of themselves, to collaborate in an interdisciplinary way. Loving an island and its species with dignity and care.

I teach a course on Women and Conservation at Middlebury. I think a lot about caregiving - to people, to species, to place. I think women are particularly important in conservation history but are shockingly under-recognized in this regard.

Some highlights from this weekend’s trip:

A visit & existential moment with an island donkey

Moss and Sandy’s salmon-colored mansion

A healthy gator population

an old road and mansion gates

But most treasured - a last minute conversation on the front of the boat with a visual artist who was close to Sandy. This artist was the kind of person you only meet every now and then, whose eyes brim with passion and wisdom and humor. The kind of person you hope will just keep talking to you. Everything she said gave me chills. She spoke so movingly of platonic love and what connection and support can give not just an artist, but a person.

Bonus: thoughts on perception, sensory details, Nabokov.

For now,

x

M