Entering the Limestone Mines of the Paris Catacombs

Photo by Mari

Home Host House

Painting by Mari Mann (after Vincent van Gogh)

An Italian pergola to sit under

A rose bush to contemplate

A chair to relax in

Sunshine

From Mari to le Enchanteur

In 2004, I went to live with my husband’s step-mother, who was living alone and recovering from a broken hip. She lived in Roswell, New Mexico. Nearly 10 years before this, my husband and I had driven and camped across the US, from our home in North Carolina to his birthplace in San Rafael, California and back. Along the way we visited Taos, New Mexico, and Monument Valley, and I fell in love with the Southwest. I longed to go back. In 2004, I got my chance. For six months I lived in Roswell but took trips all over New Mexico and also to Utah to go on a month-long archaeological dig. After six months it became clear that the step-mother needed (and was willing) to move to an assisted living place and I returned home. I had kept lists of places and things to show my husband when we would be able to travel back to the Southwest again and last October, we went back for a two-and-a-half week trip. We traveled all over New Mexico, returned to Monument Valley and Chaco Canyon and the Grand Canyon, and saw (for the first time) Canyon de Chelly and Bandelier. It was a dream come true.

In Canyon de Chelly, we took a Jeep tour led by a Native American man named Oscar Bia. Deep in the canyon, I heard some kind of high-pitched keening, like a hawk or an eagle. But when I asked Oscar what it was, he said it was a raven. We’d seen quite a few ravens in the canyons and mostly they seemed to be squawking. So I was skeptical that this keening was a raven but Oscar, giving me a strange look, assured me it was. I couldn’t see the raven either, but I took his word for it. Just recently, I had a dream of the Southwest. I have been a lucid dreamer for many years, and my favorite thing to do is fly. In this dream, I was some kind of bird and was flying over the distinctive rose, cream and teal colored mesas and buttes of the Southwest. And something inside of me was singing, “I’m home, I’m home.” The song sounded like a high-pitched keening and I know now the raven I heard in the canyon last October was me.

The Portal