Ground(ing)
Maybe making was a way in which I was reminded of that deep place of our shared connection.
The sticks were like nothing I had seen before – almost uniformly cylindrical, deeply weathered and whitened, and evenly cracked along its form. Crystals do this, I thought. But wood?
They were like jewels scattered on the ground, a ground that was brittle, prickly, and dry to me as we walked along.
My brother had taken me there, to the area behind his house in search of sticks. These were from the Colorado pinyon pine. It was just a short distance to a roaring rushing creek, which he hears all the time and said is sometimes too intense.
We were in the high desert in Crestone, Colorado for a few days with my brother, Richie (and a supporter, thank you!), where he had moved to last fall. He seemed at home there, with a sense of belonging.
The energy was different somehow, deeply felt. Grounding. Uplifting.
It was there that the spectacular mountains, never-ending blue skies, and expansive desert terrain first begged me to open my chest and arms wide. Sometimes it was too intense.
When I’m gathering natural found objects I try to take only what I need, no more and no less. Although sometimes I feel I want more. Or need more. And sometimes I don’t need anything. Or want anything.
But it was only there, on the ground of my brother, where I gathered anything. Maybe that’s why I ended up taking so much, and why I didn’t take anything from anywhere else on the rest of the trip. All I needed was there. It was from his home, where I took something home with me.
The box of sticks I had shipped to myself came two days after we arrived home. I opened the box and peered in. The sticks felt alive in their distinctness, familiar in their memory, yet also curiously unfamiliar. I wondered what we were going to make together.
Back in my studio after being away and needing something familiar, I held the indigo fabrics and light indigo thread from Laos in my hands. The colors of the Colorado sky, from clear blue, to cloudy white, and stormy gray.
I also brought close a few of my nature collections – fiery orange dried leaves with peculiar spots; dark brown outer shell fragments of shagbark hickory nuts; long pine needles faded to a sandstone color; and faded olive-colored “Love in a Puff” ballon vine pods.
I found them all on the ground in my terrain back in Northern Virginia, where they had fallen and I picked them up on walks and hikes. It was my ground(ing).
I began to play, to experiment, but wasn’t sure what I was making. Wrapping, tethering, binding, and tying – connecting sticks from one ground with found objects from another ground. From my brother’s grounding to my own grounding.
“It means so much that you came out here.” He texted afterwards. “My place feels more like home.”
Maybe it was because I saw and felt that he had arrived home there, belonged there, is seen there. Maybe I brought a little ground(ing) to him, too.
I looked up the etymology of ground: from Proto-Germanic *grundu-, which seems to have meant “deep place.” Source
I realized that while making, a thought came to me that we originally came from the same place, the same terrain, nurtured by the same ground.
Maybe making was a way in which I was reminded of that deep place of our shared connection.
✻
LouLou
“Ground(ing)” was originally published as an exclusive post to my Patreon supporters in September 2022. Now the content is available to you!
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