• gallery
  • shop
  • blog
  • about
  • contact
Menu

Susan H.Art

  • gallery
  • shop
  • blog
  • about
  • contact
×

Never Pass Up a Great Photo Op

House+on+Fire,+Utah.jpeg

In The Shelter of Each Other

Susan Hart March 30, 2020

I live in a rural part of California. My home is surrounded by a three acre greenbelt of pasture that separates me from my neighbors. I’m also far enough out of town to be physically detached from my local community. Distancing myself from people has been my lifestyle for years, albeit a lifestyle that I chose.

When I first moved to this spot, my guy repurposed a Tuff Shed, turning it into a creative space for me. Throughout the years this little workspace has served many roles: as a sanctuary, an escape room, a crafting space, an Etsy thrift store and, closest to my heart, a writing studio. 

I’m sitting it in now, looking out the window at my neighbor’s cows reflecting on the limited world we live in today, thinking about the words shelter-in-place, social distancing, self-quarantine … phrases that remove us from each other’s lives. The whole world is in clutches of COVID-19, an amalgamation of letters and numbers that when unravelled represent a global pandemic that has changed how we engage with each other.

In my morning reading I came across this beautiful Irish proverb: “It is in the shelter of each other that people live.” How do we shelter in each other at a distance?

My go-to solution at stressful moments, what I find the most solace in is words. Particularly the words of my favorite authors that have guided, challenged, tutored, inspired and, without doubt, comforted me in times of uncertainty.

Here are a few of those I shelter in with at times like this:

Harold S. Kushner
Anne Lamott
Terry Tempest Williams
John Steinbeck
Edward Abbey
Billy Bryson
C.S. Lewis
Eudora Welty
May Sarton
Robert Frost
Wallace Stegner
Michael Pollan
Brad Kessler
James Michener
Truman Capote
Joyce Carol Oates
Mary Austen
Jonathan Weiner

… and the writer, Craig Childs, who, after reading his book House of Rain, sent me on a quest throughout the four-corners area of this country to follow in the footsteps of the Anasazi, now more commonly referred to as Ancestral Puebloans. His writings about this “vanished civilization” provide a peek through the window of history at a society that flourished for centuries, and then collapsed in a handful of decades

I pulled if off my shelf recently, struck by the relevance of how they lived toward the end of their time on the Colorado Plateau. If you wander enough (I have) past the great houses they built at the peak of their society to the outcroppings of dwellings found in the rock niches, nooks, and crannies of mountain ridges as their society began to fail, you’ll find bricked-up small spaces, crypt-like in nature, where they hunkered down, surviving on the margins of their once powerful society.

It struck me as the definitive manifestation of the current situation the world is in; tiny shelter-in-place fortresses that isolated them but, in the end, didn’t safeguard them. So, they left, moving, dispersing, and then reconnecting and rebuilding communities.

The Irish had it right: it is in the shelter of each other that we live. It may look and feel differently right now. We might have to redefine how to interact in ways that help us flourish apart. We might have to be imaginative and resourceful to keep ourselves mentally, physically, spiritually, and emotionally healthy. We might have to adapt.

In this moment, I find comfort in examining this past society that, in spite of hardship and suffering, made a remarkable transformation that allowed them to thrive in unimaginable ways. So, too, can we.

Source: https
Tags Sheltering, SELF-CARE, Ancestral Puebloans, Anasazi
← Later Than Expected

Search Posts

  • October 2024
    • Oct 27, 2024 The Blissful Solitude of Solo Camping Oct 27, 2024
  • February 2024
    • Feb 25, 2024 Keepin' My Eyes Open Feb 25, 2024
  • January 2024
    • Jan 10, 2024 What I See Through My Viewfinder Jan 10, 2024
  • December 2023
    • Dec 7, 2023 Silly Gnome-nclature Dec 7, 2023
  • October 2023
    • Oct 8, 2023 Pumpkin Spice ... Treat, or Trick? Oct 8, 2023
  • September 2023
    • Sep 4, 2023 Dog Day Afternoon Sep 4, 2023
  • August 2023
    • Aug 25, 2023 "I'm Melting, I'm Melting" Aug 25, 2023
    • Aug 5, 2023 Memorable People = Memorable Trip Aug 5, 2023
  • July 2023
    • Jul 30, 2023 Top of the World Jul 30, 2023
    • Jul 16, 2023 My Memorable Minutiae ... Oh Canada! Jul 16, 2023
    • Jul 8, 2023 We Didn't Find Gold in the Yukon or See the Northern Lights in the Northwest Territory but ... Jul 8, 2023
    • Jul 2, 2023 See You! Canadian Rockies Jul 2, 2023
    • Jul 2, 2023 When in Alberta and British Columbia ... Jul 2, 2023
  • June 2023
    • Jun 25, 2023 A Look at New Worlds Jun 25, 2023
    • Jun 21, 2023 National Park Frenzy! Jun 21, 2023
    • Jun 19, 2023 Big Wyoming Jun 19, 2023
    • Jun 13, 2023 Wandering With Warti Jun 13, 2023
    • Jun 5, 2023 Landscapes Jun 5, 2023
  • November 2020
    • Nov 14, 2020 The Upside Down River Nov 14, 2020
  • October 2020
    • Oct 26, 2020 It's Pumpkin Time Oct 26, 2020
  • August 2020
    • Aug 27, 2020 Later Than Expected Aug 27, 2020
  • March 2020
    • Mar 30, 2020 In The Shelter of Each Other Mar 30, 2020

Powered by Squarespace