Smokey Mountain Breakdown

Every once in a while you meet a stranger who is as familiar to you as an old friend. It's those moments that make me believe in reincarnation and rebirth.

My thinking is that there are people out there who aren't opposites. Who aren't the same. They are flip. So like you yet so unlike you that the two of you seem to be like two sides of the same coin. That was how it was when I met Erin. I was conscious of running into my flip side. It's a very rare thing.

Erin lives at 9,000 feet in the Sangre de Christo Mountains of New Mexico in an old adobe house with no plumbing. She raises sheep. She weaves. She spins. She writes poetry. She has a sordid past that I hope she will tell us more about one day.

Her poetry is deep, visceral, political and filled with powerful physical memories. I don't much care for poetry in general unless it is really exceptional. Hers is. I can hear the wind crashing through those high mountain passes when I read her blog.

and here i am gifted with these voices drumming
relieving tears feeding some thirsty need
for normality thats not bloodshed
or a million stories of military might
stored away deep in my bones so that just getting up in the morning can make some sense
some drought stricken belief that privileged people care about changing

from "springwater"

Read more of Erin's poetry on her old blog, The Real Dirt. The poem she wrote for Amnesty International, Violence and Women, concerning the women of Juarez is brutal, hard-hitting and should be required reading in feminist circles.


I consider Erin to be further up the foodchain than myself in the artist category. She's an amazingly talented fiber artist, spinner and weaver. Her rugs are soft and densely woven. She hand dyes each color. Her work is shown in some galleries in Santa Fe. She can tell you the names of the sheep whose wool was woven into them.

She sells the yarn she spins to knitters and craftspeople on ebay. She tells me that knitters are picky about their yarns.

But Erin truly suffers for her art. Her lifestyle is much more ascetic than mine. We share the disability thing. Poverty is is the ever present shadow. But I sit here in my cozy cabin drinking cocoa that I made on my stove and knowing my shower with hot steaming water is just across the hall, I know she is made from sterner stuff than I. She goes weeks without seeing a soul. I worry about her sometimes. Just because that is in my nature.

Of course, I have a big ole crush on her. Don't be jealous...I seem to have an unlimited number of crushes to go around. But any woman who can make a sheep smile like that...well, that's just something special.