CURA.

A journey to Orisons – A valley of circles, all connected through their center to the deep and ancient aquifer. Water has been pumped out through the veins of pivot irrigation systems for decades, first supporting the needs of intensive agriculture, then precipitating the death of the aquifer and us humans to the edges of our existence on Earth.

We are driving from Denver to the San Luis Valley, Colorado, to reach the circle at 37.735867, -105.836213 called “Orisons”. Drought, high winds. Circles have become ruins, or maybe space-time portals?

I drew: the traces of deer seen from satellites forming constellations. Have deer been drawing stars? I drew: holes and tiny leg foot prints I observed on the surface of the land. I drew: imagined burrows of voles, pocket gophers, ground squirrels and prairie dogs. The golden light, the fatigued soil, eroded and depressed (variations). Traces of machinery observed from satellites. Other traces of unidentified presences.

I drew: the circle, ghosts of pivot irrigation systems and of their circular motions, wounds.

I drew: the darkness of an industrial past, eroded soils, memory of the golden light and its variations. Memory of light. The sunset, flying seeds. Dormant seeds. I drew vulnerable, and healing plants, and plant oracles. The plants some call “weeds” may be living in our future already. Nomads, Russian Thistle, Tumble Pigweed, Tumble Ringwing, Burning Bush. Resilient living forms, Russian Knapweed, Canada, Mountain Thistle and Platte Thistle. Rain-dancers, Spurge, Japanese brome, Spike Bentgrass, Canadian Horseweed. Body parts, blood vessels, Nodding Buckwheat, skeletons, Douglas’s Knotweed, American Bugseed and Greasewood.

Flying seeds have no borders… I see freedom, hope and communion.

I drew: the entanglement of a turquoise stone, bird tears and a raindrop. Past and future rainmaking songs and dances, thunderbirds flapping their wings, the ghosts of sandhill cranes who don’t come anymore … ancient human communities, goat hair, silver, feathers.

Past rain, future droughts, present drought, past winds, ancient storms, predictions from the sky. Dark sky and shiny stars. I dream of: Orisons in the space-time and all times and living forms co-existing in it like particles of light in the cosmos, I dream of earth hugs, love simultaneously, and the mirage of a rainfall.