Field Notes 2022: Michelle Ruiz Keil

May 2022: Michelle Ruiz Keil

My time at Bloedel started with altar-making and ritual—a practice I use to begin a new project or reconnect with something I’m trying to complete. The book I came to Bloedel to write is historical and involves my ancestors, so an altar felt even more important to create the kind of space I needed to dive in.

My ritual began with a dance party and ended in a walk on the grounds. I noticed the myriad ways the gardens told their stories, narrative structures that inspired my own. I noted the gentle momentum of the Japanese garden as it drew my attention to this tree form or that moment of water, flower, and reflected sky. Daily, I witnessed the unfolding drama of a flock of ducklings in the marsh pond watched over by their mother and a Canada goose who seemed to be functioning as a comadre (co-mother) with her mallard friend, taking turns to dip underwater to feed so the ducklings were never unwatched. The dream logic of the moss garden’s surprise—the way the shrubbery tunnel drew me out of the velvet forest into the sudden sunlit symmetry of the reflecting pool.

I consorted with rabbits. Talked to crows. A coyote at dusk sat a moment to regard me. Words piled upon words at my little desk. I visited the place where one of my favorite poets, Theodore Roethke, died and read him the poems that moved me as a girl. I gathered myself. I gathered my novel. In the quiet, especially when it rained, I felt the story forming inside me, gaining momentum, moving toward a life of its own.

A little video made on my first day at the Reserve.