Mine officially started on Monday of this week when my husband
walked out the door to go to work, and I didn’t. The first thing I did to
celebrate my vacation was to gather an armful of flowers from our garden and
place them on my coffee table. Take a look:
The second thing I did was grab my backpack chair, fill its
oversized pocket with books, put on my hiking boots, and head to Big River. It
is a short seven-minute drive from my home. Here is where I settled for a time
of reading, writing and contemplation:
The second day I met a friend for breakfast and the meal was
almost too pretty to eat, almost.
It was big enough to share and have leftovers, but we
didn’t. We didn’t have leftovers that is - we DID share.
My husband took off the last half of the week so we could travel
to the wine country for a stay in a Bed & Breakfast. We spent our mornings
and evenings sitting on the deck enjoying the pastoral view, reading, chatting,
and writing.
Yesterday morning, sitting behind that coffee cup you see
above, I reread poems from a book by Mary Oliver and that reminded me of a
poetry exercise I learned in a writing class. I enjoy the way it helps me feel the
rhythm of language used by poets I admire. If you’d like to try it, start with
a line or stanza in a poem and exchange each word with another of your
choosing, using the same part of speech, noun for noun, verb for verb. Here is
one I wrote yesterday using four lines from Mary Oliver’s poem, Lightning:
Her words:
The oaks
shone
gaunt gold
on the lip
of the
storm before
the wind
rose,
My words:
A rock
glistened
sharp
silver
in the gaze
of the
morning after
a cloud
passed,
You get the idea. If you or your students try this exercise,
I’d love to see what you write.
Now back to my Spring Break. You know that hike I took on
Day One? You saw the relaxing spot I found, well I had passed it about five
minutes into my hike, but did I stop? No. I kept hiking, searching for the
perfect place - tree branches to hang over my chair, enough sunlight filtering
through to keep me warm and light my book but not too much glare, close enough
to the river to hear it rippling, and far enough from the trail so I wouldn’t
be interrupted by other hikers. I wasn’t asking for much! Now my chair has two
padded shoulder straps but after 45 minutes of hiking and searching, the
padding seemed thin. Then there is the metal bar that gives wonderful support
when I’m sitting, but doesn’t feel so wonderful digging into my lower back with
the added weight of a small stack of books. I finally figured out I wasn’t
going to find the perfect place so I turned back toward the pleasant place near
the beginning of my hike. I had achy shoulders and a bruised back when I got
there. I loved the hike but I loved the final destination even more.
We’ve left the trails and vineyards behind and now we’re in
Roseville. I am attending a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators
(SCBWI) conference today. I’ll write again next week but in the
meantime, I hope you’re able to see your perfect/pleasant places, moments, and
circumstances before you travel too far past them, and before you accumulate
too many bruises along your path.
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