My backyard is bursting with life. Even with this terrible drought we manage to save enough water to grow a few vegetables. After each trip to the garden I come into the house bearing armloads of zucchini, cucumbers, basil, cilantro. The gophers, rabbits and squirrels get their share, but we still have plenty for us each night.
For the past few weeks I have been living a quiet, behind the scenes lifestyle. Like in the old days before the Internet, before blogs, back when writers wrote and you only heard from them when a book or magazine piece was published. The way Annie Dillard lives, even now. It is a lovely serene place. Doesn't do a whole lot for my popularity. But it does wonders for my soul.
Last week I left my quiet world, and for six days moved into all things writing at the 46th Annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Volunteering, paying the rent for the space I take up on planet earth. Giving back to a conference that gave me my writing and publishing start more than 30 years ago.
I’m older than dirt and I’m feeling old in a wonderful way. Hint. I remember the first Santa Barbara Writers Conference forty-six years ago—sort of. I remember sitting on the floor with other writers. It was in 1988, I think. We were in a tiny beach cottage at the old Miramar, the original conference home, a few feet away from the ocean, waves crashing, the scent of saltwater and sea air all around us, and my friend Bill Downey, who was one of the early SBWC workshop leaders, told us stories about the first conference.
You will have an opportunity to meet Bill in my forthcoming memoir. I hadn’t planned to write about him. Yet one day he climbed onto the page and insisted on having a role.
Today I had lunch with a best friend from my growing up years. We’ve been close since we were thirteen and in the 7th grade. Fifty-two years of friendship.
Tomorrow I’m taking a reading vacation. Every couple of weeks I take a reading vacation day. I pick up the book of my choice and read all day long.
Sending out love to all my friends, and may beauty surround you.
We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty.
With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something.
University of Nebraska Press | Barns & Noble| Bookshop & IndieBound | Amazon
“Terra Trevor’s memoir is a gentle invitation to journey with her across decades, an invitation to notice with her as she seeks healing and finds belonging. There were phrases and sentences I underlined, places where I wept, passages that will remain with me as they drew me to insights I’d previously struggled to name. I closed the final pages and knew that in reading this book, I had been the recipient of a generous and much-needed gift. While I can certainly finish a book in a day, I chose to move slowly through this one, letting each idea, each paragraph, each reflection gently spill over me, allowing the pages to alter me in some way.” —Patrice Gopo, author of Autumn Song: Essays on Absence
