Following is a peek at some of the goings on at Mountain Water since our August message.

Rocket keeps a lookout during the first Artists Way retreat, organized by Laurel Miller. The proceedings must have been carefully guarded; no photographic evidence exists. We can, however, attest to the excellent blend of meditation, studio time, food and conversation visited upon the whole September weekend.

Our neighbor Nan Floyd honing her documentary skills interviewing Joan Anderson with questions about silent meditation and its courtship with creative activity, a topic about which we could go on and on. And we do…

Here is a work crew organized by Amy Dose, one of our earliest students from Naropa days. Amy, along with her daughter, mother, and stepfather, here planting daffodil and crocus bulbs in the oak grove surrounding the new cabins. This crew - some of whom came all the way from Memphis, Tennessee - were a lively company of enthusiastic workers and conversationalists. (We’ll also be planting hundreds of sprouted acorns in this grove to help re-generate the stand of oaks around the cabins.)

Here’s Bill Andrews from Memphis painting the ceiling in our ongoing renovation of Jimmy’s place. This is the house and partially completed Mayan temple complex that our friend Jimmy Robieson left to Mountain Water when he died. You can see here that Jimmy’s may be more of a Hobbit scaled residence once it’s ready for occupancy.

The studio desk of Jan Wilcox who is in residence this fall to work on her jewelry and on Mountain Water. She’s become a regular here and an indispensable ranch hand among many other things.

Chris Silks, our neighbor, is seen here mowing one of several tracts on Mountain Water as part of a larger land restoration scheme. It’s worth mentioning here that both Chris and Nan (the filmmaker above) met as smoke jumpers. We regard them as full superheroes able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. We’re lucky to have them as near neighbors.

Mountain Water continues its sauntering along. The pace seems exactly right. Residents come and marvel at the stillness and vastness of the land, which somehow seem to pacify ambition while being secretly in cahoots with our innermost voices. It’s rare and good during this unnerving era