We form habits quickly in a new space, routines that help us feel comfortable and at home and establish rhythms that let us crack our knuckles and get to work. The temporary home becomes a blend of the familiar and the new, a place that quickly becomes welcoming and supportive.

Of course, every artist who comes to Starfield is productive on her or his own turf. But home features the constant distractions of the everyday: the messy closet that silently guilt-trips us every time we walk past, that ginormous pile of papers we need to recycle and file. Starfield, with its amazing beauty and history, offered my tired brain a tabula rasa, a chance to form new neural pathways and yank my feet out of the grooves they’d worn in my mental map, to crawl out of bed half asleep at oh-dark-hundred to use the john and fumble for the familiar light switch before I remembered why it wasn’t there.

During my residency I finished the outline for a family memoir that focuses on my late sister, who passed from liver cancer. And now, inspired by my time at Starfield I have my hip boots on and am wading through a first draft. As I packed my car to (reluctantly) “cross over the bridge” and head back to Cambridge, I mentally tipped my cap to Paul and Isabel Manship, whose commitment to art and artists will continue to bear fruit long after their time on this Earth.

And I told the birds I hope they enjoyed the rest of those blueberries…