Resonance "retreats"

I spent a chunk of the weekend hanging out with Resonance, the women’s chorus I’m volunteering with, at their annual retreat near Estes Park. It was a complicated mix: driving through some of the areas most damaged by the floods, soaking up the pleasure of working with this chorus, and delighting in the beauty of the mountains, where I’ve spent virtually no serious winter time for years.

Estes Park and the roads to it witnessed some of last summer’s most severe flooding. The main road to Estes follows one of the canyons most dramatically affected, and traffic there is still slowed by construction, so I took a more roundabout route. This canyon, too, saw serious flooding, and signs of it were everywhere. I could have taken uncounted pictures of damaged structures, missing bridges, debris caught 10 feet high in trees, and piles of boulders where none belonged. Instead, I caught this one view of an old church sitting high on a solid rock—a fortunate location during those days in September. The flood left the church perched higher than before, and the open valley below is still littered with trees and stumps and tangles of branches, despite now months of clean-up work. To the west and above the church is the mountain drainage that funneled the exceptionally heavy rains down the slopes and toward the church. Variations on these scenes linger all around this part of Colorado.

Scenes from the flood receded and the beauty of this area took over as I arrived Friday afternoon at the YMCA camp where the retreat was held. Here's the late-afternoon scenery that greeted me and views of the hills as the sun set. Home, for a couple of days, to me and about 125 other women. Not to mention hundreds of other folks who came here for retreats, for meetings, or just to hang out and enjoy the mountains in the middle of winter. I was officially "on retreat." 

     

     

     

Now, in truth, as the “Assistant Maven,” I had virtually no responsibilities at this retreat, but it was a great chance to get to know the group better and to watch another large piece of their process. I spent the weekend sharing a cabin with three singers I knew before I assumed my new role, which gave me a wonderful base for my exploration into this new side of Resonance. Friday night, we had fine conversation and dinner together, then talked some more and laughed ourselves silly over a card game before crashing (too late) in anticipation of a daylong rehearsal (for them) on Saturday.

Saturday was a remarkable day for me. It started with an early-morning walk with one of my cabin mates. But the serious wake-up call came with the wave of energy that struck me as I entered the rehearsal venue. There was this marvelous buzz made up of about equal parts chatter, laughter, and a sort of amorphous hum of movement and, well, energy. This in the community I craved. Then the singers settled into their places, and I sank into a chair in the back to listen. The day officially began with the requisite warm-up exercises. I had kind of tuned out, thinking there wasn’t much to listen to (it was warm-ups, for Pete’s sake!). Then suddenly, as I was starting to send an email to my partner, their voices just stopped me mid-word. I was stunned by the size and the beauty of their sound. I sat there, smiling, and just listened. Later in the day, before the director knew about my moment of awe, I heard her call such experiences “aesthetic arrest.” Good description. I didn't get back to that email for some time. 

I hung out in the back listening to the chorus rehearse for the rest of the morning, hearing them fine-tune a song from lovely to exceptionally lovely (to my untrained but very appreciative ear) and then work on a couple more before taking a lunch break. At some point, I’ll probably stop commenting on how wonderful I find their process to be—but not yet. It’s so impressive to me to see them moving with such precise attention to each piece of each song. It made me wonder all over again at how much work it takes to put together an entire concert, especially of the quality I heard that morning. Although I know that "retreat" has a particular meaning here, nothing I saw from Resonance looked like anything but joyful reaching forward. 

Then, in the afternoon, while they worked some more, I took advantage of the locale and headed farther up the mountain to a trailhead reported to offer great snowshoeing (well, it is a retreat, after all). I used to snowshoe quite a lot, and I grew accustomed to trails that were fairly remote and lightly used. I sometimes walked for hours without seeing anyone. But this was different. It was in Rocky Mountain National Park, close to Estes, and the area draws a lot of visitors, even in January. It was quickly apparent that this was the case with the particular trailhead I found, a hub for several trails. The scene in the parking hardly foretold a wilderness adventure. 

But the day was beautiful, the snow was really nice, and I was eager for a winter walk in the woods. So I set off up the trail to Nymph Lake. Despite the late-ish hour, there were still a lot of people on the trail—including, to my amazement, people negotiating this narrow, sometimes steep hiking trail on regular downhill skis. Apparently that sport passed me by at some point. The walk was invigoratingly uphill, and I loved both the scenery, with the the low light peeking through the trees, and the exercise.

The lake itself is a classic small mountain lake, set in a depression formed by a glacier, and surrounded by forest. It lies beneath some of Rocky Mountain NP’s craggy peaks, and the wind plays across the thick, opaque ice in snowy gusts. 

As I headed back down the trail, getting chillier by the minute, I found myself wondering how cold it might be at the top of those high peaks as they lost the bare warmth of the sinking sun. 

Back at the Y camp, I visited the end of rehearsal, enjoyed a quick dinner with my friends back at our cabin, and then joined them for the walk back to the talent show, an annual ritual of funny, gorgeous, and thought-provoking offerings by members of the chorus. And just in case the performance art wasn’t enough, there was an art show in the lobby, also displaying the work of chorus members. This is indeed a multi-talented group I’ve hitched a ride with.

I started Sunday with another early-morning walk with my cabin mate, talking about the retreat, about life and aging, and about the scenery. How could we not comment on the sight we were treated to as when we turned around to return to the cabin. 

I left early Sunday morning to pick up my partner at the Denver airport. As I started down the mountain, I spotted this scene—the winds whipping clouds and snow across the high peaks. 

   

What a fine finish to my weekend sojourn into the glorious mountains. No wonder they "retreat" here every year.   

Photo catch up

Over the past several weeks (months?), I’ve collected an assortment of photos that seemed worth taking at the time, but they never coalesced into a blog topic. So rather than have them continue to sit around dormant in my phone, wishing someone would look at them, I decided to post a flock of them. No particular coherence or purpose. Just for fun.

These don't have captions, but the first two may need an explanation. Not that their subject needs any introduction. Winnie the Pooh appeared in a tree near one of my regular walking routes sometime in the fall. At that point, he was upright, neatly tucked into the shadow of the tree trunk, looking down at passers-by. By January, the weather had gotten the best of him. Still there, but tipped over backward, now gazing skyward in the late-afternoon sun. Take from that what you will. Tenacious, but getting tired.

The others are from scattered times and locations—just some things that caught my eye.

 

          

      

      

      

        

Who needs captions?

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Alive

By afternoon, last Friday felt a bit like Alexander’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Just after a difficult mid-day encounter that left me pretty bummed, my partner called with some bad news. A friend had died that morning. Her death was not unexpected, but very sad nonetheless. Sad in its own right and sad as part of this recent drumbeat of deaths in my age cohort. The reality of mortality staring me in the face. The whole day felt heavy, and I just wanted it to be over so I could wake up and start again—hopefully on a less depleting trajectory.

But as my partner and I talked about this friend, we kept returning to how inspiring she was. She and her partner of many years had spent their professional careers working in settings where they didn’t feel like they could be out as lesbians. They had a large and very loving social circle, so they never felt isolated, but their identity as a lesbian couple was never shared in their workplaces. Then, when they both retired, they asked themselves the question so many of us ask: “What can we do now that we couldn’t do before we retired?” For many folks—maybe most folks—the answers are things like take more time for ourselves, travel, grandkids, gardening, golf, reading all those things I never got to read, maybe some volunteer work. But for this couple, the answer was different: “What can we do now? We can be out!” And they have been. As retirees, they became hyperactive in LGBTQ politics, lobbying at the statehouse, prodding their local Democratic caucus to get on board with LGBTQ issues, generally making themselves heard and seen in circles that had been very unused to seeing strong, smart, committed, vocal old lesbians. Straight from the closet into the streets! And because they made this choice, I’m certain that they’ve helped change the world for folks around them and for folks who will follow.

Thinking about the legacy this woman leaves behind, I recalled a recent Bruce Springsteen song that is my partner’s current absolutely favorite song . It’s called We Are Alive, and it narrates a story from the grave, as you can see from these excerpts (you can listen to it here). 

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our spirits rise to carry the fire and light the spark
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart …

Let your mind rest easy, sleep well my friend
It’s only our bodies that betray us in the end …

We are alive
And though our bodies lie alone here in the dark
Our souls and spirits rise
To carry the fire and light the spark
To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart
We are alive

The message seems so perfect to honor our friend. Physically, she has left, but her spirit is still here, still inspiring the rest of us. As I thought about that song, another came to mind, this one by Sweet Honey In the Rock, called Breaths. Resonance Women’s Chorus of Boulder will be singing this in their spring concert, and a woman in the chorus sent it along to my partner after learning how much she loved Springsteen’s song. The message is so similar—but this time, in women’s voices. And fittingly, women whose music focuses unwaveringly on social justice, just as our friends’ work has done. You can listen to it here. Excerpts:

Those who have died have never, never left
The dead are not under the earth
They are in the rustling trees
They are in the groaning woods
They are in the crying grass
They are in the moaning rocks
The dead are not under the earth…

They are in the woman’s breast
They are in the wailing child
They are with us in our homes
They are with us in this crowd
The dead have a pact with the living…

Thinking these songs reframed our friend’s death and reminded me how powerfully people’s presence, in some larger sense, remains after they pass.

And then, like gift from the universe, into this difficult day came an email from a dear, longtime (younger) friend announcing that she has achieved a marvelous pinnacle in her path toward work as an immigration attorney—she will be opening her own practice next week. I’ve watched her journey, often a very difficult one, that led eventually to a move to Grand Junction where she managed to get a job with a law firm—a job that met her needs but never matched her passion. She wanted to do immigration law—not a lucrative field, and not a direction this firm was especially interested in supporting. But she has a deep sense of social justice, and her commitment from the start was to find a way to use her skills on behalf of folks who had less opportunity than she, who were trapped in an unjust system. So she worked really hard, gradually earned the trust of the immigrant community around Grand Junction, and finally found a way to do the work she wants to do. When I read her email, I was so excited I could hardly stand it. This, I thought to myself, is amazing!

The next morning, these two stories came together for me: One friend just died and another just came fully into her own. As different as those stories seem, they have the same heart to them. Both of these women chose to be alive—really alive—to their choices and to the possibility of making a difference. It’s this that makes their time here so precious and so meaningful. There's a certain symmetry to the two stories. Endings coinciding with beginnings, intertwined somehow.

“We are alive!” The words could be sung in either of their voices. 

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