Rhonda L. Wilson
Note: From the Outdoor Neophyte…
Rhonda was the first person I ever heard use the phrase "nature fix". I was clueless, at the time, what she even meant. "I've got to get my nature fix!" and off she'd drive with a sack of food, bottles of water, her camera and a sleeping bag. Rhonda didn't believe in using a tent between her and the stars.
Three years ago, she gave up designing and building custom homes to study fine art, black and white photography. Her photographs capture the essence of the universe in vignettes of grains of sand or the intricate swirls of ancient bristle cone pines. For her, such images represent small, discrete worlds harbored within the enormous outdoors.
The older I get, the more fascinated I become with the different currents that carry our individual journeys forward. Image plays a huge part: the secret image of how we see ourselves, how other people perceive us, or how some people try to make us into the image of how they think we should be. Take, for example, an incident that happened to me several years ago while I was still selling real estate.
A major company in Seattle decided to relocate one of its divisions to Reno. I was selected to be on the real estate team dedicated to seeing that as many of their employees as possible, fell in love with the area. The first wave of potential relocation families flew down and were booked into the lush resort at Squaw Valley. We spent the weekend touring area neighborhoods in a luxury greyhound-size sightseeing bus. Evenings were spent in Q&A sessions and sumptuous dinners.
Early Sunday morning, before breakfast, I decided to take a short hike. It was barely spring; snow still dotted the landscape. I put on my hiking boots, backpack and grabbed my hiking poles. One floor down from mine, the elevator door opened and a woman with her small daughter got in. As we exited in the lobby, I heard the mother say, "She's a mountain woman." Fully aware that there had only been three of us in the elevator, I still turned around to see of whom she was speaking. By default, I was elected. Never in my wildest dreams have I ever envisioned myself a mountain woman; yet, to her and most assuredly to her small daughter, they had ridden the elevator down with a mountain woman. Standing in the lobby in my clunky hiking boots I thought, "Can't she tell that I'm a ballerina?" which is, of course, the secret image I've always carried in my heart, even though I've never had a lesson in my life.
Rhonda Wilson, on the other hand grew up in Laguna Beach, California. At a time when every convertible cruising the Pacific Coast Highway blared, "Don't You Wish They All Could Be California Girls?" Rhonda haunted the beaches sketching driftwood, shells, tidal pools and patterns in the sand. Blond, blue-eyed and petite, she looked like the classic Cal Gal. Yet, in her own mind's eye, she was a mountain woman.
Here is her story... Next Part