There is a lot of hoopla about his remains, and a Hollywood-style hype about how his ashes got to New Mexico from where he died and had been buried in southern France. The story goes that his wife Frieda von Richthofen brought his ashes back to Taos and had them mixed with sand, cement and water to make an altar which was then set up in a specially built chapel that we are about to visit on this day.

Then there is the additional story about his ashes. The one that involves a difference of opinion of the three women who it is said competed for his attention, namely Mabel Dodge Luhan, a close friend from Taos, who gave Lawrence the one-hundred sixty acre ranch in return for the manuscript "Sons and Lovers," Dorothy (Lady) Brett, a painter who lived in a separate cabin on the ranch, and of course Frieda, his wife.

It was Frieda’s plan to have Lawrence’s ashes placed in an urn in the memorial building that is also present on the ranch. But Lady Brett and Mabel Dodge Luhan preferred to scatter the ashes over the ranch. So, it is said that Frieda dumped the ashes into a wheelbarrow containing wet cement and exclaimed, "now let's see them steal this!" The cement was used to make the memorial's altar that also displays Lawrence’s symbol of the phoenix above it. Frieda died in 1956 and she is buried just outside the chapel.

We use cars rather than camels to caravan north to the ranch, a trek that takes us onto a steep and winding dirt road. When we arrive, we are at ranch headquarters and the place of a small three-room cabin where Lawrence used to write the likes of literary classics such as “Women in Love” and “Lady Chatterley's Lover.” It is said that he also wrote his biblical drama, "David" and parts of "The Plumed Serpent" during his last visit to the ranch April through Sept. 1925.

Lawrence was greatly influenced by the land of New Mexico. Of it he said, "I think New Mexico was the greatest experience from the outside world that I have ever had. It certainly changed me forever......O, let me get away! But the moment I saw the brilliant, proud morning shine high up over the deserts of Santa Fe, something stood still in my soul, and I started to attend."

Standing on this land where he wrote, one can easily understand that it would be life altering to live here, or even just to stay for a week. It is at the high desert elevation of 8,600 feet, and is well beyond the likes of civilization, presenting the possibility for one to get in touch with the more feral side of life, as if Mt. Lobo Peak behind the ranch were a shamanic influence.

This land also called to the likes of Georgia O’Keeffe, who painted the renown redwood tree that still stands twenty feet from the porch off the kitchen of Lawrence’s cabin. The tree is still known as the Lawrence Tree. O’Keeffe’s painting of it is now owned by the Wadsworth Antheneum in Hartford, CT.

In Lawrence’s words, the Lawrence Tree is, "The big pine tree in front of the house, standing still and unconcerned and alive...the overshadowing tree whose green top one never looks at...One goes out of the door and the tree-trunk is there, like a guardian angel. The tree-trunk, the long work table and the fence!"

If my memory serves me correctly, Lobo Mountain is also the place that Clarissa Pinkola Estes wrote “Women Who Run With The Wolves.” Whether or not she wrote it on this particular land is a question I do not have the answer to, however it is also known that faculty and alumni of the University of New Mexico have cabin priviledges here.

Leaving the cars in the parking lot of the headquarters, we walk around the side and back to the Lawrence cabin. The west wall is adobed and features an aged yet striking picture of a buffalo painted in 1934 by the Taos Pueblo artist Trinidad Archuleta — physical evidence of simultaneous reverence and esteem, and of now unspoken relationships.

We continue around toward the south side, carrying our bags, writing books, pens, water bottles, and cameras. The group gathers by the huge trunk of the ponderosa pine, its bark very coarse and reddish brown. We also peek though the windows of the cabin. An afternoon storm is moving toward us from the northwest and it begins to sprinkle. Some of us seek shelter beneath the roof of two small porches, the others open their heretofore hidden umbrellas or put on their slickers.

On one porch there is a very large rocking chair that has no seat to speak of, but just a few narrow boards with large gaps between them to offer a place to sit. Behind it is a large O’Keefe poster, adding her inimitable wild and colorful presence to the primitive homesteader’s cabin made of hewn ponderosa pine logs cut from the land and covered by an adobe plaster mixture of mud, straw and water.

Here, in this setting we write Haiku with the rain gently falling, thunder in the background, a view directly south toward the valley and the mountains on the other side, a vast and varied western landscape before us — and the always present, Lawrence Pine in front of our eyes.

In that vein, the following Haiku pieces are the collective offering that we created in this setting. Remembering that there is always a lively discussion about whether the poet stayed within the parameters set, feel free to check ours out. We did not always agree, just as it is also reported that the great masters themselves had different views.

I wish to thank the writers from the group who contibuted their Haiku for this article. They are GemFireAir's first guest writers, a feature I hope to make available on a regular basis in the future. Here are our efforts.