Nature Nurtures Me

I grew up right next to a woods. My mother said this was a good thing––girls need a place to go and cry. She was wrong. Oh sure, she often saw me running toward the trees with a thunder cloud across my face. No matter how miserable I was, I never cried in the woods. As soon as I was among the trees, I felt what the adult me now knows was peace.

Sadly there aren’t as many wild places anymore. Children no longer have much unstructured time or unstructured places in which to spend it. As a result, they have what Richard Louv describes as a “Nature Deficit Disorder.” He believes that lack causes all kinds of health and learning problems. According to Dr. William Bird, the chair of Britain’s Outdoor Health Forum, a person’s stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces.  

The same is true when I see blue oceans, brown deserts or even a vast grey sky. When I'm in nature, I don’t dwell on my own problems. I gain perspective. The woods, the sky, the ocean, the desert are all much larger than I am. The abundance of life outside myself doesn't diminish me. It expands me. When I am in nature, I feel part of the world. 

Now that I’m an adult, I live in a city of 8 million people. When things go wrong, when I feel bullied or disappointed or discouraged, I walk to our nearby park. I find a spot where the grass isn’t mowed and the bushes aren’t trimmed. A hawk flies by. The wind rustles the branches. Two squirrels play chase up a tree. Life continues there, in a crazy profusion, so I feel like I can too.

You’ve probably heard a lot about saving the environment. Let’s not forget that when we save the environment, we are actually saving ourselves. 

GPS or Map?

Which do you use to plot your course?

(Before I explore that question, I need to thank my guest blogger, Blackberry the cat, for re-inspiring me. I’m sure she will return from time to time. But since she uses maps for naps, I’ll post on this topic today.)

A car trip is kind of like writing a novel. You start here. You end over there. In between are so many routes you could take, it’s probably a good idea to make some kind of plan before you start.

Thanks to satellites we can’t even see, the Global Positioning System knows where you are and the location of where you want to go. GPS will insist, in a polite but firm voice, that you turn where it tells you. If you stray, it will “recalculate” and tell you again. Of course you can disobey its commands. Once my husband Lee thwarted the GPS so many times that it shut down. He is the exception. Most people are grateful for its advice.

If the goal were just to arrive at the end where the monster is killed and the lovers get married, then GPS probably works best.

But I love maps. I always have. I like solving the puzzle of navigation. I like making the leap from the two dimensional view to where I am in the world. I like to look at maps even when I’m not going anywhere. I like to see where I might go. I love the names of places. The Great Dismal Swamp. Jenny Jump Mountain, Promised Land Lake. The town of Porcupine. And just to the south of it, South Porcupine.

Yesterday I reached the end of a draft. I was so happy when the ending I envisioned flowed from the previous chapters. I had gotten from the start to the finish. But I had not stuck to my plan. Sometimes the characters took detours. Sometimes they decided, hey, why not take a trip to the ocean because I can see from the map that we’re pretty close to the beach. Would GPS have told me that?

With a novel, the journey is always about more than reaching the destination.

Fur-ther thoughts from Blackberry

 

Dear Two-legged One,

I don't know why you are upset that I rearranged your pieces of paper. How was I to know that you had spent hours placing each square in a particular order?

I didn't think you were the type to make an outline. That implies planning. Do writers plan? I don't think so. I never see you creeping up on a target. You never tense your muscles in preparation to pounce. You never twitch your tail because you absolutely must have some outlet for the adrenaline surging through your veins.

Oh that's right. You don't have a tail. Perhaps that's why I never see you twitch it.

I did find it interesting that you wrote some of the squares in red ink and some in black. Is that because the red words describe the actions of one character and the black words describe the actions of the other? Hmmm. Have you  taken my advice about making me one of your characters? I am, as you know,                                                  
                                                                     BLACKBERRY

PS After re-reading your first book, I've decided that I like the dog after all. He is almost clever enough to be an honorary cat––provided he changes his name to Mew.

a CAT-a-log

Dear Two-Legged One,

I have taken over your blog. Don’t be surprised. I always sit in the chair you have just vacated.

Besides, you don’t blog very often. I've eaten 63 cans of cat food and many mice since your last entry. However that isn't the main reason I'm taking time from my grooming and napping to walk across your lap top.

I know you are writing a new novel. I want to make sure that this time you feature a cat.

Your first book Nature Girl centered around a small white dog with questionable hunting skills. Believe me, if I had been in the woods with Megan, I would never have been hungry.

A cat made a brief appearance in your second book, The Girl Behind The Glass, but you portrayed it in a most unflattering way. What’s worse, you allowed your characters to name it Mr. Muffin. How could you do that to one of the most aristocratic beings in the animal kingdom?

Why won’t you write about cats? I would be an excellent subject. You've had ample opportunity to observe my leaping, my battles with pens, and my preoccupation with paperclips.

Maybe now that you know I can also write, you will change your heroine to . . .

                                                             Blackberry


P.S.  Are we out of tuna fish? The last can you opened contained tomato sauce.

TWINS

In just three days, my second novel The Girl Behind The Glass will be published by Random House.  A few days after that, my daughter’s play 22 Stories will have its opening night in the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival.  This is an exciting coincidence.  Especially since we have both written about twins.

Here are my twins.  This image is a section of my book’s cover (illustration by Jaime Zollars). 

The hands in this photo (taken by Keith Weber) tell the story of my daughter’s play.  Her twins embody the conflict between wild creativity and discipline.  I know I have that struggle in me.  If I don’t get both sides to work together, I’ll never write a book. 





My disciplined part likes to have a plan.  It decided my second novel would be about a girl who pretends a house is haunted and is shocked to discover it really is.  Then my wilder part whispered, let the girl be twins.  Naturally the wilder part didn’t say why.  Wilder parts don’t need reasons for what they do. 

The disciplined part believed there was no justification.  Two sisters would just be a distraction from the scary fun stuff.  The howling wind, the bats in the attic, the glowing eyes.

Then my husband, who is often wiser than I am about what I’m writing, pointed out that twins are experts at wordless communication.  Since they understand each other so well, they might be able to understand whatever that haunting presence is desperately saying.

So many human sorrows stem from this.  Are you listening?  Are you there?

Disaster strikes my daughter’s twins when one sister fears that she has lost her connection with her sister.  Mine are led to a similar brink. 

But in the end, they do listen.  They do understand.  And they are understood.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST LOVE?

“What was the book that made you love reading?”  a high school student asked me. 

I had no answer.  I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t.  But he could.  He named The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo. 

I was surprised by his choice.  It’s an excellent book about following your dream, but it isn’t for young children.  He must have read other books for school.  Hadn't he loved any of them?  He seemed so bright and articulate.  How could he have spent all these years locked out from books? 



There’s a moment in the movie The Miracle Worker when Anne Sullivan finds the key for her pupil Helen Keller.  Anne has been unable to teach any language to Helen who is deaf and blind.  As Anne vigorously pumps, water gushes over their hands while Anne’s fingers spell the word over and over again.  W- A- T- E- R.  And then, at long last, Helen understands.   W- A- T- E- R is that wet, cold liquid so absolutely necessary for life.  Helen drags her teacher around, demanding to know the word for each object.  Helen had been aware of her surroundings.  But now language enables her to grasp them.

We are isolated in our individual worlds.  We think no one understands us.  We think we suffer alone.  And then one day a teacher or a friend says, “Have you read this?”  Or maybe we find the book completely by chance.  Somehow we discover that the words inside that garish or tattered cover are naming something necessary for our existence. 

From that point on, our lives are different.  Even if we read a hundred other books that we can’t “get into” as the saying goes, we still know that there will be ones that we can inhabit.  Someone has put words to our sensations.  Once that door has been unlocked,  we can find our way into whole new worlds.

So -- what was the book that made you love reading? 

MAKING FERTILE GROUND

MAKING FERTILE GROUND


It’s officially spring.  Daffodils are blooming.  Seeds are sprouting.  I’m writing a new book.  All these growing things make me think about fertile ground.  If you don’t have it, whatever you plant won’t thrive––whether it’s an idea or an actual tomato.  You don’t need to envy those who live where the grass is greener.  And you don’t have to spend a lot of money on chemically enhanced dirt.  You can compost. 

Wait, what?  Isn’t compost another word for garbage?  What does that have to do with writing?  Actually a lot.

The principles are the same whether you’re making literal or figurative dirt.  Your compost depends on what you don’t eat.  Rich compost starts with a balance of fruit and vegetable scraps.  So try new things.  Expand your diet.  Mix those coffee grounds with mutsu cores and beet peels.

Your compost is also what you read.  Good old newspapers are a great addition to your pile.  But those glossy magazines with pretty pictures can be poison for growing things.  So don’t put them in.

And don’t put in anything really stinky.  Those old chicken bones and cheese rinds really are garbage.  So is the cat poop.  You might think you can get some use out of that crap, but you can’t.  Get rid of it.  And get rid of anything infested with diseases like greed or envy or cruelty.  It takes a tremendous amount of effort to keep those poisonous feelings from infecting whatever good things you’re trying to grow.

Okay now you’ve got a lovely pile of whatever you’ve half-eaten, experienced and read.  But your work isn’t done yet.  You’ve got to turn the pile over and over, again and again.  You need to air it out or your ideas will rot.  Some moisture is necessary, but if you drown the pile with too many tears, you’ll get slime. 

Finally, you need heat to speed up the magic of decomposition.  And what is heat?  Passion.  Get excited about whatever you’re doing.  Love your work.  Love your family.  Love your garden.  Love your life.  

And then, when you’ve got a dark, rich pile of compost, plant your best seeds and watch them grow.