Fall is farther along here at home than it was out west. Only the Japanese maple is still brilliant with color. I’ve written about it before.
Today, it seems a souvenir, a memento from the trip. For so many years my writing has been what I do around the edges of things, something I slipped into the day wherever it might fit.
The last three weeks have given me an idea of what it’s like when writing comes first. It becomes a glowing thing, a beacon, the last tree gleaming.
On a last walk before leaving, I find a new path to the brow.
Places are like that. Just when you think you know them, they open up and offer more.
Yesterday I strolled out to Battery Stoddard, one of several battlements at Fort Worden. Only this time, I was on top of it rather than below. Seeing it — and the coastline — from a fresh angle. Kind of sums up the residency, too.
I write this post from a little room in Seattle, continuing the work I began two weeks ago. I left Fort Worden with two overriding thoughts: keep it going and keep it fresh. And that’s what I intend to do.
By the time I finished writing yesterday it was mid-afternoon and the rain was settling in. What else to do but take the walk anyway. It was my last full day in this marvelous place.
So I ventured out into the drizzle, plugging into a chipper playlist and heading up the hill, the way I’ve started most every walk since I’ve been here.
It was the perfect northwest experience: trees were dripping, waves were pounding, gulls were soaring — and some brave soul was wind surfing.
I returned home a bit damp but no worse for the wear. I knew the walk would be worth it — and it was.
In the beginning was the Word, and the word was a Fort,
a peninsula, open to the sea.
Pilgrims seeking vistas and space
scale battlements, walk gunnery lines,
marvel at the madrona, her red skins shining.
We climb steps for inlet and strait,
whitecaps, a lighthouse on the point.
Wandering trails.
Reading verses in the vault.
Looking west to spy a mountain range
we didn’t know was there.
In a place designed for war
we find peace.
For a walker in the suburbs, I have trouble with pacing. Not with the steps themselves — those come naturally — but with how many to take in 17 waking hours.
The days of high walking, of great movement, those liberate and restore. But so do the days of sitting and writing, jumping up only when the sun starts sliding to the west and I realize that if I don’t leave now I won’t get to town and back before the sun sets.
Every time I walk in this place, this faraway and beautiful place, I’m struck by the connection between location and inspiration. I write, I waffle, I sink into despair. Then I lace up my hiking boots, step outside — and the vast views pull me into a deeper truth. And that, I realize, is what I seek.
Yesterday I met the artists who are in residence here this week. It’s a bigger crowd than last week, and a more eclectic one.
Tucked away in various cabins and studios around the park are a sculptor, a painter, a concertina player, mother and son visual artists, two musicians who usually collaborate electronically and are thrilled to be working together in person, and an author of children’s books.
It was a congenial group, and we parted with the promise of a studio visit or concert to come.
Companionship after solitude is welcome, especially when it’s with others who are jealously guarding their private time … what you might call “companionship lite.”
(The residence lounge where we met.)
Where does inspiration lie? I’ve asked myself that question often since I’ve been here. Does it wait for us in the pages of books, the work of others?
Does it greet us on the springy, needle-covered paths that wind through the woods near here, the woods that are tempting me even now?
Maybe it lurks in vistas I glimpse from those woods, the shining waters of inlet and strait?
Right now it’s coming from notes scribbled long ago, from yellowed pages and handwriting much like my own.
(Yellow leaves, yellowed pages.)
It’s a day of hauntings, of swirled fog and footsteps in the night. But here on the tip of the Olympic peninsula (actually, a map tells me that it’s called the Quimper Peninsula), it’s bright and clear.
I arrived here yesterday when the sun was streaming in the windows of the house that will be my home for the next two weeks. There were just two hours left of daylight. I had to explore.
There was a road down to the beach and a lighthouse at the end of it. There was a single sailboat moored in the waves. There was Mount Baker and the North Cascades on the horizon.
I walked until I was hungry, then came back here, to this most improbable home.
I’ve removed the standing desk from my office, a large black metal contraption that sat atop the scarred apple-green desktop. The standing desk was helpful when I spent more hours sitting. Now I’m free to jump up and down scores of times a day — and I do so, probably more often that I should.
But that’s another matter.
What I wanted to mention today is the geography of my workspace, how the terrain has changed. A vast, flat expanse has emerged now that I’ve removed the two-tiered standing desk. And with it gone, I realized I could shift the desk lamp from the far corner to the exact midpoint of the surface, between the windows, so as not to block the view of trees and sky.
It’s a blanker canvas. A more open vista. It suits me now.
(The prism that hangs between the windows makes rainbows on the walls.)
For many years my professional goals were closely tied to the wages I needed to earn. I made a living from writing articles, editing a magazine, telling the stories of an organization.
Now I’m glimpsing a different way of being, one where pen and keyboard are no longer expected to bring home the bacon.
Both ways are worthy. Both ways work. They’re just very, very different, that’s all.
(To be continued…)