Taos and Back

I just got back from Taos, New Mexico this afternoon. This is my third year attending the Taos Writers' Conference and I always feel refreshed when I get back.

I drove across the desert from Mo Val to Taos. My original plan was to drive the whole distance like I did last year, but that plan changed as I drove into Arizona at about midnight and saw the thunderclouds in the distance. They were amazing to behold, but the rain they brought with them made me decide to play it safe and check into a motel in Kingman. Didn't need the extra challenge of rain coming down in the dark.

It rained off and on the whole trip and. When I arrived Friday Night, it began to rain pretty hard and kept up the whole weekend--stopping on Monday. Usually, Taos is sunny and hot, with the occasional winds or showers. But this was a constant downpour.

I took a weekend poetry workshop during which time we wrote about four poems each. Rough drafts, of course--but I felt that each had possibilities and plan on revising them this week. The workshop group met in an upstairs meeting room. Strange thing was that we had two participants out of the 12 who had major injuries that made walking up stairs difficult for them. One young lady had some kind of leg injury and used a crutch. The other injured was this poor woman who looked like she must have had some major car accident or something. She wore a neck brace, had to pad her chair with special cushions, and used a walker to get around. The hotel provided assistance for her, but I was surprised that no one offered to change meeting rooms to accommodate her.

The week-long workshop was for fiction. That focused primarily on stories we had brought with us. We spent the week reading one another's stories and critiquing them. The participants ranged from amateurs, like me, to published authors. One 72-year-old lady had written one book, her memoirs, and gotten them published. Another woman had just signed a three-book deal with a publisher and was in the process of re-writing the first one.

Didn't do much of the touristy stuff. I've already done most of that in Taos. When I wasn't meeting with my workshop, I was either reading, writing, or walking. There are lots of walking paths behind the hotel, but there are also packs of wild dogs that lurk there. One lady told me of her encounter with three dogs who weren't very friendly. So I just created a civilized trail for myself at Kit Carson Memorial Park and environs and walked that every day.

Anyway, I'll post some of the stuff once I've had a chance to revise it.