The Necessity of Summer Words Near Winter (a.k.a. another reason to write)
Guest Blogger: Missy Wick, Straw Dog Founding Member
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November in Northampton, MA 2012
Each day the sun sets a few minutes earlier now. Frost is no longer a warning – it is a given – and neither my body nor mind is willing to accept winter’s arrival. Luckily, I am easily distracted by a few paragraphs written in the heat of summer’s sun, near the beach, within earshot of the surf. As soon as I read, “I sit on an Adirondack chair” I am there…
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August in Truro, MA 2012
…on the third floor deck, my tree house, where I sip morning tea after an early beach walk, alone with the seals, seagulls, and herons. I sit above a canopy of lichen covered scotch pine and scruffy oak competing for light. Shades of dark green push into a sky so blue I am not sure I have a name for it. There are no clouds, just the broad reach of sunlight streaming across the horizon.
I sit and marvel at the action at this elevation, a place I do not normally dwell in body or mind. Dragonflies flit where crows soar, while mosquitoes buzz, and crickets sing. Multicolored birds, their species elude me, bounce from one part of this celestial landscape to another. I am crashing a raucous morning party, and I will stay until the bouncer says go home.
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November in Northampton, MA 2012
Thank goodness for my compulsion to scrawl these innocuous moments of life, to squirrel away words in storage. Words that beguile when I want to be elsewhere, but I cannot go anywhere.