Wednesday, July 29, 2009

On Words

"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used."

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1918)

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

A Little Poetry

Okay, since I've just returned from the mountains, I thought I would share a bit of poetry inspired there a few years back. This one is for Daddy, the one who taught me to hike the timberline trails:

Maybe you don’t know
Because I’m always right behind.
You are the one I’ve followed
from day one.

Place your foot and lift off.
I take a breath, count a rhythm
in my mind. One, two three,
Here I go, in your steps.

Continental trail or meadows high.
I have invested faith knowing that
not even this divide can make me
lose the pace.

Because, Daddy, it’s not just my feet
that have followed one step behind.
In heart and mind, I’m right here.

Just a step behind.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Venture into the mountains

In a week, I will venture into the same mountains in which my young adult historical fiction novel, "Moonshine Murder" takes place. The same location the beginnings of the novel's creation evolved.

Each writer has a place of sanctuary, which reflects the inspiration inside them and feeds that inspiration. For me, the Weminuche Wilderness is such a place. High above timberline, bordering the sky, a place exists like no other, where the mountain lakes swim with rainbow trout, mountain willows sway in the tempered winds, and the wild geraniums blossom on the hillsides. If I'm lucky, I may spot a herd of Elk, or even the spirit of a wolf, ranging far from its northern safety.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

From Faulkner

"Man will endure because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's duty is to write about these things."

William Faulkner

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

From Twain

"My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water."

Twain

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

From John Adams on Reading

"I read my eyes out and can't read half enough...The more one reads the more one sees we have to read."
John Adams, 1794.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

From Hemingway

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was."

Ernest Hemingway, "Old Newsman Writers," Esquire, December 1934, p.26.