Meditations and Musings with Bethany is a new series where we give Bethany, the founder of the Writing Barn, a platform to reflect on the Writing Barn’s place in her life. We invite you to keep checking in and read about the place we all love so much from the perspective of the person who created it.
It’s almost time for the bluebonnets. The time when the land here shouts it’s beauty in a way that only springtime in Texas can. March is when I came to live here. Late March is when Vivek proposed. Late March is when we married. This piece of land is home to my son, my husband, and to myself…but it is more than that.
It is not for us. It is for artists to enjoy.
For those who need quiet, solace, craft and camaraderie– a business but more than a business. A safe-haven writers call it.
The land itself—the flowers, the cacti, the smell of a humid morning—a bit damp, and musty—pollen coating the tables and floorboards of the party porch—occasionally it can greet me anew. It can reveal itself separate from me in the way the leaves fall off the trees, the birdsong that floats in the air, the way the deer scamper in a herd or strut slowly one at a time at the periphery of my field of vision.
I am in the buildings, the books, the programming…I have given myself over to all of it…but the land, the land gives back to me.
It was here before me. Will be here after me. It is…
Edited by Kat Shuttlesworth, Writing Barn Intern.