My experience in Taos

Monday, February 1, 2021

Taking a creative writing class at OSU’s Doel Reed Center in Taos, New Mexico, truly felt like a dream.

I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true. As graduate student in creative writing, the class felt like my first taste of a writing retreat or a writing residency. I, along with classmates and colleagues, spent eleven days writing, reading, workshopping, and learning from our instructor and the visiting poet, essayist, and visual artist Tyler Mills. We also experienced Taos and its surroundings. And when I say “experienced,” I mean experienced.Sarah Beth Childers, the course’s instructor, crafted a meticulous itinerary in which almost every day we visited museums, historical sites, national monuments, and more so that we could immerse ourselves in New Mexico’s history, cultures, and landscapes in order to inform our essays for the class. Even on a day off, she organized a voluntary hiking trip, a trip some of us took with writer and naturalist Susan J. Tweit. That Saturday morning is a trek I’ll always cherish, as it was my first “real” hike. As I trudged up two miles of snow (in the middle of May!), exhausted and exhilarated, I couldn’t help but feel incredibly lucky to experience this not only for myself, but with friends. I hadn’t done anything like that before. At Williams Lake, elevation 11,040 feet, I was the closest I might ever be to the belly of the sky. I count that moment as one of my happiest so far. 

Taking a class in Taos was one of the highlights of my MFA. Now, as a PhD student at Oklahoma State, I hope to return and recreate some of the magic I felt on that first trip. Again, I know that sounds cheesy, but for me, the trip did feel magical. It was magic sitting in the sun in the yard of the Doel Reed Center, writing, and looking up from my work to be greeted by the curves and edges of the mountains and the bluest sky I’d ever seen.