About Dr. Lucy Griffith

A native of San Antonio, Lucy Griffith has been a lover of wild spaces since she was a young child, having memorable escapades at the renowned Esperanza, Hillingdon and Gallagher ranches. Once her family acquired a property on the Guadalupe River, that love grew. Her father was her first teacher, and as she walked the pastures with him, she learned about the joys of attachment to a particular place. His stewardship of the ranch was her primer; their walks and chores, a daily tutorial.

Lucy Griffith is a retired clinical psychologist and has worked extensively in the mental health field as well as serving as a school principal and a Special Education teacher. Her experiences as a therapist inform and inspire her work.

Lucy is also Certified Texas Master Naturalist. As a regular contributor to the Texas Star, an award-winning publication of the Hill Country Chapter of Texas Master Naturalists, she has been sharing her observations of the natural world, the “View from Rusty Bend.” These observations of life at Rusty Bend Ranch are detailed and whimsical, leading you to say,” I’ve never thought of it that way, but that is exactly how it is!” Lucy writes with a perceptive eye and a finely-tuned ear, coupled with a grace and understanding that makes us more aware of the world around us, whether we live in the country or in the middle of a city.

In an ekphrastic collaboration with Jim Bones, iconic landscape photographer, Lucy is co-editor of Echoes of the Cordillera: Attitudes and Latitudes along the Great Divide. Forty Southwestern poets contributed ekphrastic poems to accompany Jim’s images of the Western Cordillera from Denali to Chiapas. To order your copy, go to:

https://www.museumofthebigbend.com/exhibits/echoes-of-the-cordillera/

As a finalist in the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Contest, Lucy’s first collection of poems, We Make a Tiny Herd, chronicles a story of Judy Magers, the Burro Lady of Far West Texas. As one reviewer put it:

“Lucy Griffith’s work grows out of a passionate love for our southern borderlands, and for their harsh and harshly beautiful landscape. These poems are a poignant lovesong to west Texas, and to the power of “a woman alone”—be it the nearly mythic figure of “The Burro Lady,” or Griffith herself, calling across the desert to “La Reina.”

—Patrick Phillips, author of Elegy for a Broken Machine