Page 21 - 2019 EMERGING WRITERS FELLOWSHIP ANTHOLOGY1

I’d read Pam Houston’s work many years prior, finding a familiar theme as she

maneuvered her way through landscapes and adventure. Like her, I’d worked on rivers,
not as a rafting guide, but a fish biologist. I’d admired Pam Houston’s work and writing

long before hearing about Writing-by-Writers, came to know her through her amazing
writing, whether essay or novel or memoir. And now I am on the coast of California,

walking the same dirt-path to the Lodge each morning where breakfast was served, and
Pam Houston is there too.

Is it that I’m intimidated by her, or just awe stricken? What is the origin of my fear?

I’ve always just considered myself just a brown-girl from rural New Mexico, not much to
offer, existing only because my mother wanted me to. But here was nationally-known

Pam Houston, offering a place and a space for someone like me to “create”, to be inspired,
to work from a place of alegrἰa. Yet still, what is the origin of my fear? Why can’t I just

speak at least a thank you?

8.

It is early morning, and mostly the baths are empty. I move in the morning darkness,

deciphering the language of the sea.

The big tub fills up slowly, water hot and steaming, direct from the springs running from

the cliffside. I sit in the tub as it fills, knees pulled in to my chest, hot water stinging my

bare skin, slight smell of sulfur rising up with the steam. I’m sitting naked in a bath-house
tub in Big Sur California. And I seek out the source of my sin.

What would Mama think/say were she to know I am here naked in a bathhouse in

California? What would Nana say? What would Papa Teo think? Might they be ashamed
of me?

Before sunrise, is only women that slowly trail in to the bath-house. They are naked too.
But then a man comes in, and I see his towering body as he makes his way into the circular

Page 22 of 48