Respect for tradition and the spiritual nature of the ceremony required that no
cameras, sketching or recordings be allowed while visiting on this day. What you see here are sketches that were created after I returned to my hotel. This was a new experience, the reliance on visual memory rather than reference photos. The detail stored is attached to what was most impressive or enjoyed. For me it was the drum beat, the native language, the women’s costumes, especially their boots and hair, the blankets the men wore over one shoulder and the overall reverence for ritual and tradition.
Only some of this can be rendered visually, but the images created hold the essence of the experience and bring to mind what matters. 
When I look at these sketches, I also recall what is not depicted, the two young German boys, ages four and six, who sat near me on a log bench in the courtyard as we awaited the ceremony. They had just moved to the states with their parents. A large thunder cloud darkened the sky and big, cold rain drops began to fall. The parents walked over to a shelter to avoid the rain, but the boys and I remained on the bench. 
I opened a small umbrella, anticipating a sudden down pour as the cloud moved overhead. But no sooner had I opened it, than the gusting wind flipped it inside out. As I struggled against the wind to correct this, I looked at the boys who were now staring at me, and muttered something silly like, “a lot of help this umbrella is.” The older boy laughed and turned to his brother to interpret. The younger child collapsed into contagious giggles and the three of us giggled together while the wind blew rain in our faces. Watching from a distance, their father laughed, too.
The Inn on the Santa Fe trail is located in Las Vegas, NM, an area of high desert at the foothills of the Sangre de Criso Mountains. Below, an old wagon on display in the central courtyard at the Inn. 
The Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge was located near by, a plateau where the Sangre de Cristo mountains meet the Great Plains. Here I saw prairie falcons, red-tailed hawks, ravens, yellow-headed and red-winged blackbirds and western kingbirds along with many prairie grasses and wildflowers. 
Below, a larger view of prairie marsh with bull thistles in the foreground. I must say that the prairie grasses here were unexpectedly beautiful, a sea of blue-green waving pale yellow seed heads in the breeze.
At home in prairies and open areas, I was first introduced to the western kingbird while st
Given that golden eagles prey on birds occasionally, especially the inexperienced or injured, this peaceful co-habitation seemed unlikely, but the area biologist said it is a fairly common occurrence.
About the size of a June bug, but more like a lady bug in behavior, they came in shades of blue-gray to blue-green and seemed to like people. They frequently landed on shirts and crawled about, before leaving just as softly as they came. Once as I was writing, one crawled across my notebook, halting my pen. This is what reminded me of my cat, the way he nudged his way into my attention by unceremoniously sitting down in the middle of the page. The Rose mountain blue bug--another new acquaintance.
But I have wondered what aspect of this experience made it so difficult to re-engage when I returned home, so much so, that it took a full two weeks before I could feel my feet firmly replanted in everyday life again. I have concluded it was the silence. The silence of the mountain, the silence we observed just after meeting each other--thirteen of us inclusive of teachers, the silence of meditation, of walking, of writing and of listening. 
There was nothing superficial, shallow or pretentious to occupy our minds. Everything around us was real and pure, the air we breathed through our nose, the earth squarely solid beneath our feet, the whisper of the wind in the pines. There was nothing in the way of our opening up.
Without everyday distractions and demands to hold you to the surface, as your pen moves across the paper, what bubbles up is what matters. And what matters comes from a deeper place. And when you go deep you heal and become open to who you are.
As we read what we had written aloud to each other, this bubbling up was honored with silence, reverent, affirming silence. No reassurances bombarded you. There were no attempts to repair your composure or make your voice go away. No criticism or ‘fix it’ responses, no rushing in to make you feel better. There was only listening and silence.
And how does this feel? Uncertain at first. It’s unfamiliar. But what follows is a very settling and strengthened certainty that you have honored who you are. You have listened deeply and heard what you had to say and in the midst of that profound silence, you know that is all that really matters.
Not only did he announce his presence with 
This gray-headed form of the dark eyed junco, with his pretty rufous patch, visited my tent in the Pecos wilderness one early morning, hopping inches from its screened doorway while I wrote.
We miss something, living in houses, that waking intimacy with nature that comes from being
I was introduced to a pair of Townsend’s solitaires in just this way. While I was sipping coffee, they landed in a shrub near me with considerable chatter. The bolder of the two flew down to the ground in front of the pool, paused to look at me, then continued on to enjoy his drink.
and lingered to eat it...
a voice then arose--"you mean you're taking pictures of it, not shooing it away?"
The rufous hummingbird is the species with the longest migration in relation to its size, wintering in Mexico and breeding in northwest North America as far north as Alaska. Its breeding season begins March through May in a climate where the warm season is short but daylight is long. Some members of the species begin their southern migration as early as July which helps explain why the rufous hummingbird is such a significant pollinator in the west.
What also gets your attention--the rufous hummingbird is declining. One reason sighted is the disruption of nectar corridors. Hummingbirds and other pollinating species, such as bats, are dependent on clusters of nectar bearing plants during migration which is timed when plants are at their highest nectar production--refueling stepping stones along their journey. Anything that diminishes these pockets of plant communities also risks the survival of a number of species dependent upon them for nourishment. 
Thanks to the 
I give myself a little slack for oversights on this excursion. There was a lot going on while snapping these photos, one of which was a rumbling thunderstorm that had our trailblazing counsel urging us to move on.
And I needed our counsel. They made it possible for me to lag behind snapping photos while they made sure we knew the way home. (To see more New Mexico posts click 
As the pods stretch and dry, they become like coiled springs and when the moment is right, the pods snap, firing the seeds as much as 30 ft, leaving behind the curled pod. And if that’s not dramatic enough, the seeds themselves have a tiny tail called an ‘awn’ which curls when dry and straightens when wet, causing a crawling affect. Biologists believe that this motion allows the seed to find its way to a hole or crevice where the motion then helps the seed plant itself and hide from birds and mammals that would make it into a meal.
It seems the plant derives its name from its shady reputation rather than the delicate bell shaped flowers that hang from its stems. “Apocynum” is the Greek word for “away dog”. Back in the 1700’s extracts of this plant were said to have been used as poisons to rid the countryside of wild dogs. In recent times, however, though the plant is still very toxic to both animals and humans, derivatives from this plant family have saved lives through use in many pharmaceuticals.
I spotted this dogbane along the roadside one afternoon and walked back the next mor
Hummingbirds are known for ‘hawking’, that is, hunting from a perch, flying out to grab an insect, then returning to a perch to repeat this again and again. And this is exactly what she was doing. In fact, as I stood photographing her, I became keenly aware of a different kind of buzzing around my head--I was attracting some of the mosquitoes that she was busily hunting. 
Best guess ID: female broad-tailed hummingbird. All hummingbird females lack the brilliant markings of the males, but their subtleness is also what makes them so beautiful. The rufous tint in her feathers along side that irridescent green is just exquisite. Also notice the delicate spotting under her throat.
I found him on a perch in this same area each morning, which was also the scene we looked out upon as we walked in meditation around the deck. 
This was a meditative writing workshop, a sit, walk, write workshop with 
We take our feet for granted. At least, I have. Our feet ground us and balance us and they feel. I am not a barefoot person in general, but this slow walking, this meditative way of experiencing the moment in movement, grounded me in my feet. I felt the cold puddles of water after the rain, the firm cracked surface of the boards, the forgiving lump of a tiny pine cone, the uneven board edges that moved, the nails that my feet rolled over without injury. This walking grounded us to the earth and back into our senses after our minds had been quieted through sitting mediation. Aware walking--one of many profound experiences.
Bird identification for some species is complicated, especially from a distance. It is the song and the location of the bird that often settles the matter. In the case of the western flycatcher, the species has been divided into two kinds according to breeding location and feather details that can’t be seen casually. And so, I will offer this identification as my best guess. 
