The Inspiration of Feathered Pipe Ranch

Melissa at Feathered Pipe Ranch asked me to write a blog about how the ranch led to the creation of Bear Speaks.  I first came to the ranch for a "one time" yoga retreat with Erich Schiffmann back in 2002.   I wasn't planning on sleeping in a tent, but when I saw the tipi's and tents - out there - I was instantly interested.  Howard, who was the ranch manager at the time, set me up in a tent at the spur of the moment.

I had camped once or twice before with my brother, and liked it.  There is a crispness to sleeping outside, something organic and life affirming about it.   In that tent at Feathered Pipe those first hours, I felt a rush of inspiration; as though I were cradled and stimulated at the same time.  I knew I was on to something amazing when I picked up my journal under a lantern and wrote "Good morning to my wakening soul."  It came out like an exclamation I'd been holding inside for too long.  It's a steal from the romantic poets I'd studied in school, but finally, I understood what they meant.

At the same time I'd fallen madly in love with Erich.  I had never understood what yogis meant when they referred with reverence to their teachers.  Erich's words rolled over me with a certain sweetness, and I was taken in the purest sense of the word.

Around mid-week out there, I heard a voice in my head, and I realized it wasn't Erich.  It was as if the forest itself was speaking to me.  I wrote what I "heard" in my journal, arguing with it, accepting it, all through the night, thinking that I was hearing a private message, meant only for me.  The voice that is the ranch persisted the entire week that first year.

I returned to Feathered Pipe again the next summer, but now I shared my inspiration with Gary Lemons, Anne Jablonski, and other yogis at the workshop.  Everyone was on fire that week; ideas were flying from all of us.  The conversations we had over dinner, on the lawn, on hikes, were not just about yoga, but about our dreams, our love, our families.  Ultimately we realized we had formed a new, larger family with each other.

I kept sleeping in a tent, and I kept writing everything down.  One night when I was headed out there to sleep, I mentioned to Erich that I was afraid of bears.  (Black bears get into the trash cans sometimes at the ranch looking for food.)  Erich growled.  That's when the idea for Bear Speaks really solidified.  The idea of a bear as a teacher - a force of nature tutoring someone who thinks she's alone in the forest - became the glue that held my ideas together for a short novel.

Red Wheel Weiser/Conari Press picked the story up instantly and published it.  Pat Olchefski-Winston, another ranch regular and a dear friend, painted the lovely watercolor of the bear for the cover. 

Bear Speaks is only one testament to the discoveries and connections that happen every year during the precious weeks at Feathered Pipe Ranch.  Poetry, art, stories, conversations flow freely from all of us lucky to spend time there.  The ranch remains an integral setting for my work, a personal "Rivendale," or as Anne Jablonski put it last summer, "the place where Superman goes to get recharged."  I cherish Feathered Pipe Ranch.  Bear Speaks is in many respects a love story to it.