Buffalo, Wyoming. Seen, felt, understood: From the life of Soren Dietzel, saxophonist and Residency Director at Free Columbia.
The snow fell in June. I was laying in my tent awaiting the sun. Camping miles away from civilization at 10,000 feet near the tree line, surrounded by rocks turning white, the mountain peaks extending into clouds, required surrender. I was afraid it would snow for days and make it impossible to hike the ten miles back to the truck. More realistically, I was afraid of boredom. A few of the crew went walking though the wet, whipping snow cresting ridges and struggling across drifts waist high to appease their restlessness. I chose to sit on a perfect, stone seat projecting from the hillside—a bubbling, rushing creek just below and so alive in the silence of snow. Settled in my own stillness, the flame of spirit leapt across my mind’s eye, filling the moment with color. In the surrender of the Bighorn mountains’ vastness, overlooking Wyoming, sitting in the seat of America, the quiet of the snow fed the rushing water of the river and inscribed on my being a stillness that could feed my soul and my imagination with rushing life and meaning.
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Image Soren Dietzel
