Day of Mourning

 

In the summer of 2019, I spent two weeks in rural northeastern Wyoming for an artist residency. The Ucross Foundation was located on a 20,000-acre ranch for cattle. The foundation’s verdant grounds were carefully manicured and mowed every weekday with a hulking riding lawn mower driven by their groundskeeper.
 
On my first morning there, the newly-arrived residents were provided an orientation. The vast grounds included hills where we could hike. One trail had Tipi rings. Mentioning this provided their staff member with the opportunity to inform us that these lands were once inhabited by a number of Native American tribes, including the Arapaho, Blackfeet, Crow, Shoshone, and Sioux.

Life-altering Moments at Artist Residencies

northern New Mexico, 2011

In June 2010, three months after a PET scan showed no cancerous activity in my body, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico awarded me with my first artist residency. Then, on January 27, 2011, bulky luggage in hand, a guitar bag strapped around my shoulder, snowflakes fluttering through the night sky, I set foot in Taos for a six-week residency. I was living in San Francisco at the time, sharing a flat with three roommates. After ridding my body of Hodgkin lymphoma with over half a year of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, it was my first adventure away from the city where my body had manifested a blood cancer.

The Wurlitzer Foundation provided me with a home: Casita 9n on quiet Burch Street. The tiny adobe home was nestled beneath cottonwood trees. The casita’s backdoor opened to a snow-covered field. Every day, scores of crows and magpies squawked and flew about the trees that had sprouted from this land. Albeit fleeting, it was the first home of my own. I was thirty-one years old.

Shit I’ve Learned About Wyoming (Part Two)

photo by Juan Alvarado Valdivia

Thanks to the good folks at the Ucross Foundation, I was blessed with an opportunity to visit Wyoming a second time. I learned a lot about the The Equality or Cowboy State on my first trip back in the winter of 2016, and I learned some more this time around.