|
|
home
anthology
writing tips
publishing tips
writers' group tips
reading list
links
member pages
Colleen Fullbright
Teresa Funke
Jean Hanson
Kathy Hayes
Luana Heikes
Sara Hoffman
Paul Miller
Karla Oceanak
Kay Rios
Debby Thompson
former
member pages
Tracy Ekstrand
Leslie Patterson
Laura Pritchett
Laura Resau
Todd Shimoda
Greta Skau
Zach Zorich
all content copyright 2003
Slow Sand Writers Society
or individual authors
email:
info@slowsand.com
|
Kay Rios has a masters in communication development and a Ph.D. in educational leadership from Colorado State University. She is a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in a variety of newspapers and magazines including the Northern Colorado Business Report, Colorado State Magazine, 25 North, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Business World, Fence Post, Triangle Review, Changing Woman Magazine, ArtLinc and the Rocky Mountain Bullhorn. She received an honorable mention in the Writer's Digest non-fiction article category in 2005, honorable mention in creative non-fiction from Writer's Digest in 2003, first place for creative writing, Colorado State Creative Arts Symposium, 1989, and a Juror's Award for the Art of Peace, short fiction in 1986.
^
top
|
Creative non-fiction
excerpt from “Mountain Magic”
The hot, dry air of the plains surrounding Sterling, Colorado pumps me full of restlessness. I lived the first 13 years of my life with that wild, taunting, sandy wind whistling through the empty hole in my stomach. It served as a reminder of the hunger I couldn’t fill. It made me wild, sent me on quests for things to throw, glass to break, places to scream. The voices in my head raged and were not to be satisfied with everyday life.
My family took weekend jaunts to the west up through Fort Collins into Estes Park. Three women – my mom, my two sisters both 20 plus years my senior – and the five of us kids. We were a manless crew – the two youngest kids were male but, for the most part, I tended to ignore them. We were a tightly bound bunch, however, strung together by the edicts that no outsiders would ever get in that inner circle. We kids weren’t allowed to bring friends home, my mom and sisters forwent social activities. They were the “divorced women who worked.” That was certainly outside the norm in the 50s and 60s. We were lumped together in a bland package of the “not” family according to rules of the day.
But in each of those trips, all of us seemed to become more individual, more real, more independent of social expectations. Each time we’d settle in to whatever cabin Mom had managed to work a cheap deal for and it quickly felt like a homecoming. I loved the quiet; the only sounds that pervaded my solitary sense were those that put me to sleep. Talking seemed to be through whispers and thought transmission.
Surrounded by those magnificent mounds of Rocky Mountain rock looming on every side, I felt protected, and saw raw honesty in the jagged rocky skyline. I saw perpetuity and forgot my fear of an expanding universe. The warm, sun-baked scent of the trees, the whispers that came on the cool breezes served to calm all of us but, more than anyone, me. The angry voices gave way to playful, caring ones that coaxed me on walks up hillsides, through forests, by streams. They drew me there and brought me back again. My mother knew. She saw it on my face and, I think, she shared it.
She would sit on the porch of the cabin, coffee cup in hand in the early morning hours and watch the sun come up. I would watch her from the bedroom window until sleep had subsided enough to allow my legs to inch toward the floor. I would quietly leave the cabin, sit on the porch floor, next to her legs and curl in tightly. She would stroke my hair and hum.
When I was 14, Mom fulfilled her quest to move us closer to the mountains, finally getting us to Fort Collins. We were close enough to escape into the magic more frequently. I was home. Our jaunts became weekly. Sometimes my sister Viv would take us up the canyon fishing for the day. Other times, my sister Ginny would pack a big breakfast and we’d head up the Poudre or the Big Thompson for a Sunday breakfast at a little picnic table cuddled in next to the river. My mother was gone all other days, working long hours, and this was truly her only day of rest. I came to associate that long breath of relaxed air she let out with those rocky inclines.
^
top
|
