Head for the Hills, the Desert, or the Stage
by Christopher Gearon
NRTA Live & Learn
Looking for that special holiday that promises adventure and personal growth? Take a trip that will teach you skills for a new or favorite hobby. Here are three places where you can experience everything from folk art and culture to banjo playing and blacksmithing.
Destination: O'Keeffe Country
Ghost Ranch, some 21,000 acres located in the high desert country
of Abiquiu, New Mexico, offers more than programs in art,
culture, and creativity. Its craggy cliffs and beautiful valleys
inspire all who visit, just as they inspired artist Georgia
O'Keeffe, whose summer home, Rancho de los Burros, sits on
the property. "Almost everyone who comes here is searching
for something within themselves," observes Jim Baird,
director of programs at Ghost Ranch. And when people leave, he
says, "somehow their lives are changed."
Some 250 million years ago, Ghost Ranch was a low-lying swamp, and fossil remains of one of the earliest known dinosaurs, Coelophysis, have been found there. Owned and run today by the Presbyterian Church as an education and retreat center, Ghost Ranch was part of a land grant from the King of Spain in 1766. Since then, it has seen a blending of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo American cultures, its name derived from Spanish tales of ghosts and disappearances in the surrounding canyons.
Dolores Olson, 72, a part-time art teacher from New York City, was a guest in 2002. She had previously traveled to places like China and Peru, but found that after 9/11 her interests turned domestic–specifically to the art of the American southwest. The retablos (folk art altarpieces) lured Olson to Ghost Ranch.
For two weeks she painted, learned about Spanish Colonial retablos, and visited area museums, churches, and O'Keeffe's haunting grounds. Olson brought her new ideas and techniques back to elementary school students in New York City–one way, she says, for the experience to live on.
Fiddles and Folklore
Nearly 25 years ago, retired special education teacher and
administrator Charley Orlando, now 70, came across a place
nestled in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina that has
since transformed his life. Orlando is not alone. The John C.
Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, has touched
people deeply since its founding in 1925 by two progressive
educators and a nearby community, providing a chance for visitors
to stretch in thousands of ways. Some 450 courses are offered
throughout the year, from crafts to folk dance to storytelling.
Orlando first came to the folk school to take a course in blacksmithing-not entirely a foreign subject, because he had once owned horses. Since then, the Belmont, New York, resident has added more courses to his personal curriculum: knitting, dulcimer making, banjo and mandolin playing, and tin can art. "I'm now learning how to play the fiddle," he said. He also teaches blacksmithing and knitting (with a specialty in Aran Isle sweaters). Orlando figures that since 1985, he has spent a total of three years taking or teaching classes on the school's 380-acre campus.
"Learning helps you grow," says Orlando, who shifts happily between teaching and learning-like many of his colleagues in the profession. "You learn about yourself and you grow."
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Hidden Valley Music Seminars, a performing arts institute in
Carmel Valley, California, offers programs 42 weeks a year.
Located in the scenic northern California countryside, the
institute focuses on choral, orchestral, and big band
performance, covering all levels. Classes provide students the
opportunity to work together so that by week's end they are
ready to perform their piece.
Performance weeks run during late summer and early fall, beginning on Sunday afternoons. By Tuesday, says Peter Meckel, the institute's director, progress often comes to a screeching halt as performers grow grumpy wondering if the group can pull off a performance by week's end. "By Wednesday night," he says, "they get a glimmer that it might be possible. By Thursday night you feel it and it's powerful. By Friday night it's a peak performance."
And the conclusion? "The important part is the process and not the product. It's very challenging," he says.
