One recent morning, about an hour after dawn, I sat in a stand of pines on a mountain side with my dog Wynton. We watched a broad tailed hummingbird hound a pygmy nuthatch. As the two zipped through the branches and circled our heads, we could hear the thrum of two sets of wings. Red-breasted nuthatches and chickadees chirped higher among the needles, and a flicker rattled a trunk in the distance. Wynton and I smiled; we felt great.
The world of my youth couldn’t have been more different than that patch of mountain filled with life. My habitat, natural or not, echoed with the squeal of tires, the blast of a horn, and the whistle of bad brakes. In an environment where inches separate houses, you learn to distinguish the cry of laughter from the screech of pain. I may not have known the difference between a nuthatch and a warbler, but I could recognize the mating call of the glossy-eyed and domestically disturbed. I came of age in a world of steel and flesh, blacktop and brick, plastic, glass, and dirty grass.
As a child, I sought any excuse to escape the city. Nothing beat waking in a warm tent on a crisp morning in the fall, hearing the birds chirp, or telling jokes around a fire. The Northwoods weren’t that far from where I lived, but getting there required a driver’s license and/or a reliable automobile.
I love the city. Please don’t get me wrong. I love the community, the opportunities, the competition, and the pace, an electricity created by so many people in so little space. I love the city, and I’ve loved the outdoors since the moment I realized they existed as an alternative.
This dichotomy, I believe, inspires my writing. Life and fiction are two forms of the same adventure, and adventure requires appreciating difference.
When I first moved west, I wandered the mountains and forests without purpose beyond escape. I simply walked with a pack on my back and spent the hours in nature looking back on the life I’d lived and looking forward to a life I couldn’t imagine, a life of change, maturation, pain, loss, and tremendous opportunity. The outdoors became a landscape on which I wrote my dreams and within which I discovered my possibility.
Now, I turn to nature to help me understand what it means to be in relationship. To connect to the world around us and to something deeper, the pulse that animates life. I seek the same pulse as I type these words, and I hope that pulse connects me to you.
Sincerely,
Well Worth Reading
I once heard an author, I forget who, say that you can’t trust a novelist who doesn’t read poetry. I couldn’t agree more. Poetry demands precision.
Antonio Machado is one of my favorite poets. His work provides a deep sense of place galvanized by luscious detail and intimacy. Times Alone remains one of the best translations of his work, at least to my knowledge.
If you enjoy poetry, you’ll love Antonio Machado.
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