The 5 C’s – (Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb) Camp and Courage, Creativity, Community, Compassion

November 13, 2018 by

Lake Kanuga at Dawn ©2018 Bo Mackison

Camp.

A camp for adults…

A sleepover camp for adults…

A sleepover camp for adults where one can connect with some mighty special people in a supportive community. It’s a great event for everyone — artists, writers, musicians, coaches, parents, travelers, and truly, anyone who practices kindness and inclusivity would feel welcome.

It’s a sleepover camp for adults where one can, according to Patti Digh:

“reclaim your courage, reignite your creativity, reconnect with your community, and rekindle your compassion.”

It’s Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb Camp!

Lake Reflection ©2018 Bo Mackison

And if that isn’t enough to pique your curiosity, camp is held at Kanuga Conference Center, a short drive from Asheville, North Carolina, and next year it takes place on October 31 through November 3 which is perfect timing for the fall color extravaganza.

Home Sweet Home Away from Home ©2018 Bo Mackison

(I recommend adding a day before or after and exploring the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway and/or Great Smoky Mountain National Park to take in the glory of the region.)

Life is a Verb Camp with Patti Digh ©2018 Bo Mackison

I just returned home from Camp 2018 which marked my fourth year in attendance and I’ve already registered for Camp 2019.

I took my first ever jewelry workshop with silversmith Molly Sharp and it was an amazing introduction to the wonders of creating fine jewelry. What a kind and informative instructor! She guided eight new-to-jewelry students through the needed steps to create silver and stone pendants, earrings, and rings, and we all left her workshop wearing jewelry we’d excitedly created over the course of 6 hours.

Molly has already agreed to return next year and I highly recommend her workshop. (She’ll be teaching a pre-camp jewelry workshop on October 31, 2019.)

Cleaster Cotton taught her Contemporary Primitive Art workshop and created a welcoming atmosphere where campers could play and create and make magic with color, pattern, and texture.

Cleaster will be returning to teach at camp in 2019. Yay!

The musicians at camp – wow! Inspiring. Talented. Energetic. Magical.

 

Gaelynn Lea is a moving songwriter, singer and violinist. She won NPR’s Tiny Desk award in 2016. And I invite you to download her music. Take your time to listen, really listen — her music is a transformative experience.

Carrie Newcomer not only gave an inspiring concert with favorites such as You Can Do This Hard Thing, Sanctuary, and A Gathering of Spirits, but she also taught a master class in songwriting!

A group of campers spent an afternoon with Carrie brainstorming topics and phrases, then putting our ideas/words into a song, and finally adding a melody. We even sang our newly created song at the Camp Talent Show — Yes! Camp has a talent show!

Drumroll…here is the song “Love is a Verb” featuring Carrie Newcomer and The Verbs.

Singing and Signing! ©2018 Bo Mackison

There was so much more – speakers and fiddlers and more musicians and more create workshops and there were s’mores and an open mic. Stephen Kuusisto, author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel and Planet of the Blind spoke. He was accompanied by Caitlyn, his guide dog, who nearly stole the show.  Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni was stunning, a gifted storyteller telling an important story and her reflections on Truth, Justice, and Love was expansive. Santos Soul brought the house down with their rendition of Ancestors played to close Sunday’s session. So much happened over the course of those four and a half days, it’s almost impossible to document it all. So much goodness and inspiration and community building. So much goodness!

There will be new speakers and musicians and poets in 2019. Poets Patricia Smith, Danez Smith, and Liz Acevedo will be reading poetry. Patti Digh hosts the event and leads the camper troops ever onward. (While you are thinking about all the wordsmithing awesomeness, check out Acevedo’s new book Poet X! )

Make a Wish ©2018 Bo Mackison

SO COME TO CAMP!

Life is a Verb Camp 2019 registration is open. If you register by November 15, 2018 you get a price break. it’s a priceless event, but you might want to check it out at discount prices.

Come to camp, okay? You know you not only want to come, you really NEED to come.

Filed Under: Creativity, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Autumn Color in the Blue Ridge Parkway – Cherokee to Asheville, NC

November 11, 2018 by

Driving the Blue Ridge Pkwy ©2018 Bo Mackison

The idea is to fit the Parkway into the mountains as if nature has put it there.
~ Stanley Abbott, Landscape Architect for the Parkway

What a grand day for an autumn color drive! The sun was bright, the trees were in peak colors at the lower elevations, and, surprisingly, the traffic was minimal on a Monday in late October. We were heading to Hendersonville, North Carolina, en route to Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb Camp. (More on camp coming in later posts — it’s my annual recharge!)

We left the Cherokee Visitors Center in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park around noon and headed south towards Asheville.

Groundbreaking for the 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway was in late 1932, but it was officially dedicated on September 11, 1987, fifty-two years after construction began.

After President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Virginia’s first Civilian Conservation Corps road building camp where they were building the Skyline Parkway through the new Shenandoah National Park, he approved a similar CCC project, with the intention of creating jobs in the rural areas of North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

Blue Ridge Vista ©2018 Bo Mackison

Plenty of opportunity to pause and gaze at the scenic mountains in the distance. It makes for slow travel, but every stop is worth it.

Log Hollow Overlook ©2018 Bo Mackison

Trees! Shades of oranges and reds, yellows and browns, with a scattering of evergreen green. Log Hollow Overlook offers a stunning view of Looking Glass Rock, one of the largest masses of granite in the Eastern United States. This rock gets its name from the shimmering mirror effect when sunlight hits its surface after a rainfall.

Blue Ridge Parkway ©2018 Bo Mackison

Nearly 200 parking areas and overlooks were incorporated into the Parkway’s deisgn so that motorists could enjoy a leisurely ride through the mountains. The road rises to 6,000+ feet at Richland Balsam Overlook in North Carolina. Up and down and around every curve — beauty!

Blue Ridge Autumn Glory ©2018 Bo Mackison

We only drove about 70 miles on the Parkway, but it was a leisurely drive — is it possible to have a drive too leisurely on this scenic road? — with many stops at the overlooks and a desert and coffee break at Mt. Pisgah Inn. This inn, at nearly 5,000 ft elevation, is the highest place for lodging on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Imagine how gorgeous is the view from the motel rooms’ balconies! (Sorry, no photos of the Pisgah Inn — we were in a hurry to get to our cabin in Hendersonville by night fall!)

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , ,

Exploring Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountain National Park

November 8, 2018 by

The sun was shining; the trees were glowing.

On our way to Asheville, North Carolina, we took a side trip in the Smokies and drove the Cades Cove Auto Loop. It was a lot of extra driving, but well worth the time. The trees were like a towering cathedral, the interior a sacred space.

Open spaces gave a view of the countryside. These clearings were first settled by Europeans in the 1830s. Deer and turkey were plentiful along the route, but none conveniently posed for a photograph.

 

Cades Cove Methodist Church, built by John D. McCampbell. The white frame structure has two front doors, a design that was common in the 1800’s in the Smokies.

Spots of color brightened the way along the 11 mile loop road. Though the traffic was not bumper to bumper, it still took several hours to follow the loop.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,

Autumn Road Trip – Great Smoky Mountain National Park

November 8, 2018 by

On my way to Patti Digh’s Life is a Verb Camp, I took a long cut–as opposed to a short cut–and spent a day in the glory of autumn’s yellow deep within the Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

My traveling friend and I first stopped at Sugarland Visitor Center just inside the park entrance near Gatlinburg. I spoke to a park ranger who said the autumn color was two weeks behind schedule. Lucky for me, because the lower elevations were at peak color. If the colors had been right on time, we would’ve missed them all, but we were smack dab in the glory of a hardwood forest autumn.

Elkmont River flowing with ferocity through the Elkmont Campground in the southern Smokies. The golden reflection of the trees in the swirling water was quite mesmerizing.

As we stood here, on the river shore, my friend recieved a much hoped for message that a relative was cancer free. Here, in this space and time, we felt an abundance of blessings.

And then a heron appeared at the river’s edge.

According to Ted Andrews:

“The Heron is a symbol of balance, able to be sure-footed upon the ground and fly gracefully through the sky. They explore quietly and slowly along shorelines, waiting for opportunities. But once they have spotted what they want their swiftness in attack shows no hesitation…

There is a sense of security in the Heron energy. They have the ability to evolve and become more adept at their talents so they may always be taken care of…

Self determination, self-reliance and guidance are the trademarks of the ever popular “lady” of the lake and spiritual guardian of the nature lover’s soul, the Great Blue Heron.”

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Day 13: From Ship to the Shores of Lake Mendota

October 25, 2018 by

LEGO Traveler at Copenhagen Airport ©2018 Bo Mackison

October 6, 2018

It took us 25 hours to get home — 25 long sleepless hours. But it all went smoothly — no lost tickets, no lost luggage, no missed connections.

Flying Over Amsterdam ©2018 Bo Mackison

Flying over Amsterdam, I was able to spot the Viking Sky in the Cruise Ship Terminal. (near the bottom of the page — where the harbor splits into an upside down V, that skinny white ship is the Viking Sky)

From the ship (1 hour) to the Amsterdam Airport where we had a long wait for our first flight (3.5 hours) to our first flight to Copenhagen (1 hour) to our second long airport wait, but this time with lots of shopping options, so not as tedious (4.25 hours) to our second flight of the day to Chicago (9.25 hours) to going through customs (1.25 hours) to waiting for the bus (1 hour) to the bus ride from O’Hare to Madison (3 hours) to a car ride to our front door (.75 hours)

Home, safe and sound, with memories to last forever.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »