“What a BEAUTIFUL day,” I said looking up at the Bridger Mountains from the chairlift where I sat next to Becki. “I am so glad to be here.”
“YES!!” she shouted triumphantly. “I am so glad to be here. Do you know where we would be if we weren’t here? Guess where we would be. Do you know where we would be?”
“Where would we be?”
“We would be STUCK. Stuck. We would be stuck like a window chewing up the walls” Becki said.
I repeated her statement. She repeated her statement. “Chomp chomp” I said with a grin. Becki’s eyes were barely visible behind goggles; the helmet with yellow lightning stickers matched her jacket stained like a child’s bib down the front of her giggling jiggling body.
I sat next to this mentally disabled being, our feet dangled below the chairlift above the white snow slopes. The image of a window occupied my mind. Clean. Clear. The wonderfully pale blue wall crumbled like a cookie as the window made loud destructive satisfying chewing sounds. Sunlight beamed through crystal clean glass. How wonderful to share the lift with this special gleeful person.
Each Thursday I ski with Becky as a volunteer for the Eagle Mount program. Time with her on the mountain is a gift that charges my heart with energy even while my healing body struggles to keep up with the physical effort. The image of the wall-eating-window has stuck with me and I wonder…
…perhaps being an artist is a bit like being that window.
I’m curious – do you think being an artist is like being a window that chews up the walls?
