I was on the way to a pottery workshop in remote Tuscarora, Nevada. The instructor's son had picked me up at the airport in Elko, 50 miles away, and was driving me through a landscape chock full of things I'd never seen before. Sage brush and bunch grass. An enormous mule deer buck, bounding along the shoulder of the road. Magpies.
We didn't have magpies in Wisconsin. Crows, yes. Blue jays. Blackbirds, bobolinks, grackles. But nothing like this.
Bigger than a jay, smaller than a crow, with a long, elegant tail, striking black-and-white plumage, occasional flashes of blue iridescence. They drove home the exotic environment I was settling into for two weeks of concentrated clay work. Part and parcel of a magical time that literally changed my life. It's not an exaggeration to say that two weeks at the Tuscarora Pottery School set me on the path to where I am today.
So when someone on Instagram saw my "octopie" plates and quipped, "What about magpie plates?" I was more than happy to return to that time. To paint magpies on dessert plates. Tall mugs.
And yes, mag-pies.