Lonesome west

I don’t know if there is a more lonely and lovely place than Mono Lake. Its almost dead and only briny shrimp live in the salt waters. An endangered heron nested in a dead tree beyond the shore. The memories that I access through my own vision, they are still sharp. I was building a narrative. I created a feminist revisioning of Helen, as others have done. But this was in the wild west, and it was a fragile vision, but still beautiful. It was enough. They were the seeds of my freedom, which I watered in my mind. They were my visions, my dreams. As I gave them form I began to see the contrast to the world I had adapted myself to … and it took many years to even partially reconcile all of that.