between here and there

Author Archives: loriryker


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The Sound of Silence

The Tetons

The Tetons

Yes. It’s an over used phrase. Perhaps because we are still learning to practice silence. The truth that come from silence for us seems impossible to recognize in these days of constant buzz. I even struggle in the mountains of Montana. A week ago I was in Texas preparing to leave for Montana. The miles pass fast in a car at 75 mph. We arrive to anything but silence. The humm of our anxieties, the blurr of the road. Arrival. Leaving the last place a distant memory we cannot tie to our present. But here they are. The mountains standing against our travels, our anxieties, the unmoored condition of the my days, the loss of identity as we move somewhere between here and there. And if we could learn to practice silence, if we could recognize silence from within, perhaps then we would learn the sound of silence.


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A Dog’s Face

 

 

 

Noel, 36 hours or this...

Noel, 36 hours or this…

 

Dog’s know what they like. And they show us all the time. I am also impressed by their memory of places. My dog Noel travels a lot. Almost everywhere I go, she goes. After being in Louisiana for five months we made the journey home to the mountains. She happily hopped in the car when I loaded it for our trip. She thinks anywhere with me is better than staying put by herself. After 12 hours of driving she let me know how she felt (see the picture for yourself.)
The next day, more of the same. Driving. And then at the end of the day the landscape changed. About three hours from Jackson Hole she could smell the difference in the landscape. Could she recognize the distant peaks of the Wind River Range?

finally.

finally.

oh, yea. now this is home

oh, yea. now this is home

An hour from the Tetons she definitely knew where we were. Just take a look at the rest of the photos, shown in sequence. We arrived to Remote Studio and I unpacked while she sat on the table looking out the window.
The next day, under a beautiful blue spring sky, we took our first hike of the season. A place well known and loved by her, where leashes are packed away and the creeks flow abundantly with clear, cold water. Six miles of peace and joy! She remembers each side trail and every bush from her previous experiences. She knows her truth and she knows her place.

my place

my place


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Oil and sunshine

 

 

 

 

On the way to Grand Isle

On the way to Grand Isle

I am on the road again. Traveling away from Louisiana. A few hundred miles across a state line and the horizon in front of me seems like another reality. I imagine in a way , that’s true.
We seem to lose sight of what is important in the world when things are not right in front of us.

water blurred with land

water blurred with land

I visited Grande Isle, on the coast before leaving Louisiana. Grande Isle was a resort destination at the turn of the last century. A landscape that Kate Chopin wrote of in her novel “The Awakening.” It’s beauty must have been significant – it must have been full of grace. Today it is crowded with cheaply built beach homes. The grace is gone. Grande Isle is recently remembered by most because it was the primary beach that the oil spill from the Deep Horizon disaster washed up on. The oil is now buried under the sand. Upon the sand are the things that mark the island’s condition and abuse. Shells mixed with plastic debris. The loss of birds to the oil pollution still obvious.

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on the beach

on the beach

I remember Grande Isle on this day, and on the days to come when I return to my home in the Northern Rockies.
As much as I look forward to going home, I will long for another day on the marsh, another day full of the scent of magnolia, jasmine and gardenia filling the streets of Spanish Town.


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Learning by living

Polling in the Bayou

Polling in the Bayou

 

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marsh

marsh

end of the day, bayou style

end of the day, bayou style

“this is much more fun than learning…” she said. And like a passage from “Alice in Wonderland” after Alice fell down the rabbit hole I responded,” but you are learning and you haven’t even realized it .” The day was glorious. Full of new experiences. Immersed in the world as we all should be, learning from the world and each other. Not in a room, or from a text book lesson. Boat rides to the beach edge , walking the ridge alive with ancient oaks, the first line of protection for the marsh from hurricanes . Up bayous and dispersed in groups of two and into the marsh to wander through a vanishing landscape. Polling the boat through shallow water . Pulling caught catfish from the line. Knowing where your dinner comes from. This is the best source of learning. Learn to live and love. Be passionate about the things in life you care about.


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Learning the wetland

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It seems that it has been months since I have posted anything. But looking now I see it’s actually only been a few weeks. Time and many places pushed up against one another trick our perception of life. And perhaps the outcome is the feeling of all of the new experiences combined. From Louisiana and to Bozeman and back again. 3 post office boxes, one street address that rarely receives mail. Life floats over the concrete material of reality.

This morning I am here, in Vermillion Parish. The heart of Louisana’s wetland. A spot that is closest to what this place felt like before we dredged, cut, and leveed the marsh to become what we needed it to be.

A 5 mile canoe trip to help our bodies record this place. Mosquitoes, humidity and a breeze remind us that we are in a place that is not the same as yesterday’s place.

I breath it in, I scratch the mosquito bite on my neck. I meditate on this place, this world and try to stretch my memory over time so that I know and then remember what it feels like to be here when I go.


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Mardis Gras Season

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The season of Louisiana’s biggest party has arrived. Everyday there are more beads, more ribbons, more ornaments arriving in trees, bushes, fence posts and doorways. I walk Noel in the morning to these new arrivals in my neighborhood . Purple, pink, and gold frivolity, the joy of celebration! Joie de vivre!


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Permanent:Impermanent, Design Week 2012

Life in Louisiana is speeding by….rain, humidity, ticks, ick. But that’s just part of my story. Design Week ended with great joy all around. For a week, 13 teams of 8-10 students worked with their hands and materials that they found, organic and manufactured. They lived their dreams and created beautiful experiences to share with others. Make art, live the joy!

As I noted in an earlier post, these installations are located in the Hilltop Arboretum in Baton Rouge.


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LSU Design Week- Learning the Place

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Design Week starts and the students spend the day enjoying the landscape. Dreaming what could come to be….groups gather, discuss, sketch, collect, learn about the garden – it’s current condition and future plans. The students have been working all week, rain or shine….


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LSU Design Week 2012 Launch

LSU Design Week – A tradition of the Landscape Architecture School – started today. The 2012 event marks the first venture to support an interdisciplinary experience by including students from the School of Architecture. About 150 students and 15 faculty advisors in total will spend the week working on 13 different installations to be built on the grounds of the Hilltop Arboretum in Baton Rouge.

I have the honor of developing the project scope and directing the progress over the next 5 days. Woo hoo! The week is an exciting endeavor for everyone involved. Today we met out at the Arboretum after a formal introduction on campus, and students explored and contemplated the site where their group will design and build an installation. By Friday 13 fantastic pieces of environmental art will grace Hilltop.

For those of you who have taken Remote Studio this ambitious project takes the concept of making vessels to another realm.

Stay tuned……for the ideas, the work and the ART !

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Day before tomorrow

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Rushing, rushing to deliver all the text and photos for the new Artemis Institute website…clouds are rolling in, tomorrow I begin teaching at LSU, so much to do , best to ride the bike now before the rain, before the night , before tomorrow , before another day goes by.