Amazingly enough, it was only when a stretch of drive through the Guadalupe Mountains National Park seemed awfully familiar that I recalled I’d spent another early December climbing the highest mountain in the state of Texas—nearly fifteen years ago to the day on my birthday. At the time I’d recently quit my library technology job in Chicago to become an intern at the Chinati Foundation, where I led tours of the collection and fantasized that I had been invited there as an artist in residence instead (never mind the fact that I had no art practice to speak of). I was ashamed to have quit a position to become an intern, but was convinced this was my only hope for experiencing a few uninterrupted months under a huge West Texas sky.
I returned for most of 2009 to work on a project at Judd Foundation when the itch for the Chihuahuan Desert resumed. This stint introduced me to two dear friends whose endurance for small town living continues to impress me. The first time I met Shelley she was attempting to warm the drafty apartment we’d share above the Judd ranch office by opening the oven door. I remember many evenings in the unheated kitchen eating in fingerless gloves, as if we were camping rather than across the street from Lance Armstrong’s proposed training outpost. (The wifi network that showed up at the same time as his moving trucks? Livestrong.)
