We woke up to Lois Lowry telling us a story about a young boy who wanted a copy of Number the Stars, because he loved it so much. And because he thought he could teach his mom to read with it.  Immediate punch in the gut, tearing up kind of moment. Made me happy I peeled myself out of bed at 6:45 am again.

(TIL: Lois Lowry was first published at 40.)

Yesterday’s surprise was a writer’s mood ring. Today’s was a Victorious Writer ribbon. Into it.

Up first was a session on writing about climate, from Tim Weed & Julie Carrick Dalton. I went because my book is, at the core of it, about the environmental crisis we are living through. But I’ve been feeling so weird and isolated. Am I the only one wanting to tell this story?

Well, Tim & Julie arrived with a list of about 40 books to convince me otherwise.  Their session was full of incredible examples, from Mary Oliver to Cormac McCarthy to Robin Wall Kimmerer. I’m no longer convinced I have to write about contemporary climate refugees.

They arrived with questions about hope and despair, elegy and inspiration. And I felt, very certainly, that I am not alone. That there are many, many people falling in love with the earth as it is, and wanting to see us all do a little better. Wanting to scare and cajole and seduce and dazzle us, collectively, into doing better. Into a better relationship with all the living things around us, from soil to mountain. 

It gave me hope, and it reminded me of what I already know. That I write the natural world, and our place in it. That I write about memory and grief and hope all mixed together, and that, of course, this book will be about those things. It’s not different from the poems I write. 

(Also, it makes me want to write a lot of nonfiction about habitat preservation and restoration for the desert Southwest because every book is about the eastern half of the country. Open to any reading recommendations on the subject.)

This world has space for me to be who I want to be. This world with hatching elm seeds and dust and sorrow, this world has space for me to be who I want to be. And for you, too.