Peters Valley: Day Three

I woke up in rough shape on this day. Maybe a little too much wine the night before. A big headache and a dehydration problem. I have not mentioned that there was a sign in our house warning that the parks department had posted a "boil water advisory" for our house. We were told we could brush our teeth with it, but don't chug. I really needed to chug. I just never thought to get myself any water to keep in my room. I wandered downstairs to see if there were any sympathetic souls around, and saw 2 big cooler jugs of (clean) water in the kitchen for the first time. I had barely even been in the kitchen before that, because, you know, why? Anyway, that brought me partially back to life. Then I saw Crystal in the hall and she had the Ibuprophen. I was on the road to recovery.

We had to get ourselves out of our lodgings by 10 am, so I was taking an armload of sheets down to my car. When I got to the porch, a woman ran around the corner and said, "You want to see some bears?"

Along with tick warnings, there were bear warnings posted all over the place at Peters Valley. We are starting to see bear in some unexpected places in New Jersey, so it is really no big surprise that they would be there in the woods. Still, up until that time, I had never seen a bear outside of a zoo. I dropped the sheets and ran around behind the house with her (I think she was taking a photography course) and another bystander. We went a short way on a path to a pond, and there were two black bear on the other side of the pond. And get this: The woman was bird watching, so she had a pair of binoculars with her! ( No camera, though) I was struck with how big the ears are on a bear. Kind of Mickey Mouse- like. They were looking at us, and we were looking at them, and the fact that there was a big pond between us made it seem pretty safe. Eventually they lumbered off. Really cool!

So then I finished packing up my car and made my way over to breakfast. For your information, every single time I went to a meal, I told the food nazi my name, Chris Mundy, and every single time he acted like he had no idea who I could be, and I would have to say Chris Murphy, and then he could find me. You would think he might catch on after a while.

Peters Valley has a craft store, with many tempting things. I had stopped in a couple of times, but this time I bought a mug for my husband. His favorite mug had recently crashed. He usually brings me back a heart when he goes away for the weekend.

Back in the studio, Barbara showed us some more slides. The evaluation form went around and also a form for us to fill in contact information which was copied and shared. I still have to find that and rescue it from among the chaos I dragged out of my car when I got home. But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Everyone hung up what they were working on and we talked about it.

At this point I must mention that I am just learning to take pictures of things in my life. It isn't that I don't know how, it's just that I will be so into what is going on, that I won't think to take pictures. I remember my son's first birthday party and how I forgot to take a single photo. Fortunately my mother can't stop taking pictures. What I am getting at is that I wish I had taken better pictures of people's work, and that I had taken pictures of the people. Inexplicably, I have a picture of everyone in the fine metals studio, but hardly any pictures of the people in my own class. Weird.

The rest of the day was spent working on projects, if we wanted to. Everyone was leaving early, so I packed it in around 3:30 pm. I left with more than I came with, largely thanks to Bev, who was trying to move and had a couple of bins of fabric and scraps for the taking.

I thought a lot about my life and the directions it has taken. I look at the students at Peters Valley and wonder what they will go on to do. The decisions you make early in life are so important. I know I need to go back to school. I just need to figure some things out.