Have you ever had a time in your life when you sit back and can't make heads or tails of but know it was deep and impacted you?

Get you coffee for a bit of a story. Set the stage. June (my sweetheart) and I are both dealing with serious health issues: Doctors labs, etc). It wears on your soul as much as your body. And it wears on your pocketbook. Also, your career as you just don't have the time or the energy to devote to it, it feels like things are falling apart and I am behind on everything. Apology to those who I owe work to!

The balloon fiesta happens, and I haven't a dime, but my good friend, Damon, drags me there and all over New Mexico to get me out. Best friend for as long as I remember. More than the trip just laughing like we were 15 again was healing. We ride the historic steam engine out of Chama. And I add to my bucket list to chase it and photograph it from the outside.

Another friend, Israel, after this, knowing of my goal to photograph the train and chase it, gets a BnB with two bedrooms in Taos NM and says come on. Again, I am broke as a joke so what a gift.

On the way there to meet him, we didn't travel together, I stop at a used bookstore, mostly to walk a bit, riding far is painful now. I find an 11-dollar used book on Georgia O'Keefe. My friend loves her, so I buy it for him. I mean it is a small gift compared to what he is giving me. Turns out he has it, so I decide to read it. It is all about her life in later years at Abiquiu, New Mexico. Something in the book deeply resonates with me, perhaps the way her art is integrated into her life, I don't know. fully but it strikes me deeply.

Low and behold I drive right by Ghost Ranch (Geogia O'Keefe owned it) and then Abiquiu where she lived and where the book I am reading is set. Not intentionally just happenstance, the book which already resonates with me explodes into something alive as I breathed the air of the things in the book, stood in the rooms and the vistas talked about. Now remember none of this was intentional on my part.

Look them up, Geraint Smith on the left (one of the Best next to the other best Israel Guajardo, both amazing artists.

Off I go and stop on the side of the road to take a photo of a great scene. I take it and back to the bnb I go.

I met a hero of mine, Geraint Smith whose art has inspired me for years, and my friend Israel and I got a personal tour of his latest exhibit. Talk about inspiring.