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Author's Notes,   Beside The Rio Hondo

Beside the Rio Hondo  is a work of creative non-fiction that follows the seasons for one pivotal year of my life.  In 1992, at the age of 49, I separated from my husband and made a beeline for our family home in Arroyo Hondo, a quiet valley in the mountains of Northern New Mexico.  Embracing the emptiness of my nest, I returned to an unfinished task that I had shunned at the age of eighteen: to establish an independent identity.  For the first month, alone on the land, deep listening became my daily meditation.  Grounded in the solitude of our old adobe on the edge of the national forest, I finally slowed down long enough to experience an epiphany.        The story expands to include the flora and fauna of the high mountain desert, the geology and changing weather patterns, my interaction with the neighbors, notes on the daily struggle to survive and a taste of local history that spans the centuries from ancient petroglyphs and pit houses to the wild hippie days during the 1970s when three communes in the area wrestled with rural life.        More than a personal memoir, this book is about the fierce spirit of place, the politics of the tri-cultural community of Hispanos, Indians and Anglos, the give and take that allows us to work and play together, and what it means to belong to the land.

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PHAEDRA'S  PHOTOGRAPHS