wow.

yes - i still get up early. it will take a while to process through the gift of the past 5 days...not just the art that i learned....especially that - those techniques and lessons are already wonderfully incorporated, to be practiced and played with. no, more the relationships and bonds formed - even unsuspectingly...much like adding an element changes the whole chemistry of the formula, meeting a new person touches you and changes you...sometimes for a moment, sometimes for an ever. so imagine being in close contact with 125 wildly diverse, incredibly creative, unique people, set in the woods - no, make that wooded paradise - for 5 days with the sole purpose of letting themselves be free to create art and learn art and teach art and share art, and meet other like-minded people? can you imagine? you can't. trust me, you can't. throughout the whole energy-charged balsam-fir scented explosion of activity and creativity, ran a gentle, quiet thread, a strand of a wisp of a smoky, gentle, wafting and wending and seeking out each heart, each soul, pulling gently, challenging yet not demanding, each knowing they were part of something new, something extraordinarily special, with no words to explain or contain it into a cohesive thought, for it was just a Knowing....hearts given with a glance or a hand across rugged paths through the woods, gratitude, people as different as east and west, peas and chocolate suddenly realizing they were the same, the costume didn't matter, the opinions and beliefs not a thought. for it was the hearts, the souls that connected, that played, that recognized each other in each other, and this, my friends, was what became of the most incredible idea thought up by a most incredible woman in New Hampshire to hold a most incredible art workshop week in the beautiful wooded hundred-year-old complex of Great Camps set on a famous lake, and call it Squam Art Workshops. you had to be there. L.