Four months after being attacked by a pack of 3 pit bulls, severe PTSD clutched my guts and sabotaged my studio life.

The multi-weapon antibiotic assault on the threatening blood infection had thrown my body out of kilter. The pit of insomnia which accompanied decades of my life (and pock-marked my childhood) deepened and widened.

My studio, usually a healing and spiritual place, felt hollow, cavernous and frightening. Sharp chisels and power tools scared me. A “harmless” piece of charcoal resulted in a dark grotesque fang-filled demonic drawing scratched furiously onto big paper. Scary stuff. The process of creation may at times require glistening sweat and even drops of bright blood but PTSD tarnished sweat and blood into sickly blackened sticky goo. Scary stuff.

Uprooted and flailing after a summer lost to the attack, I grasped onto the “INKtober” challenge proposed in social media. The drawings were done outside my studio, mostly at home ‘tho I remember one evening self-consciously drawing at a tall two-top table in a crowded restaurant before a rodeo event in Billings.

Thirty-one drawings - tiny white tendrils - wispy roots that helped me navigate a steep deep pit.

Six more months crawled by before I inched my way back into the studio enticed by Cliff’s boot prints in the snow. The fire he’d built early one spring morning sent smoke signals from the studio chimney - love notes of encouragement.

Inspired by an unforgettable Great Horned Owl who visited me on a full moon night when 2015 rolled into 2016, I began a small palm-size sculpture of an owl. Cliff was excited about my return to work but more than that, he was excited about the beginnings of that little owl sculpture. Ah Cliff. The owl who perched on top of that big dead o’l tree and the little lump of clay which began to turn into an owl in my hands is a potent, ominous and mystical entwined story (for another time).

I’ve been missing Cliff something fierce. Autumn was his favorite time of year.

Tears. Walks and talks with his spirit on this mountain. Life and loss and love.

Earlier this week Raymond’s mother Linda spotted a Great Horned Owl perched on top a giant tree while she and I sat together on the studio deck at dusk. Then today, seven years after I scribbled this owl on a piece of scrap paper found in a tiny drawer of the small antique desk which belonged to my mother, Facebook reposted “INKober Drawing #2.”

I marvel at the gift of one tough and tender nutrient-gathering, stability-seeking tendril after another in a long healing journey mapped by gnarled roots and lotsa love.