Always Searching For The Right Words

It’s more than writing, but it didn’t start out that way. It began with a six year old’s appreciation of how words were like puzzle pieces to a picture that could be created, how they could sound like a spell when spoken, or could become a song when put to melody. This first grade poetry was penciled out in a baby blue spiral notebook:

Litter litter litter, why does everyone litter.

Even baseball hitters spitter their litter!

Oh why does everyone litter litter litter.

Through time, through experience, through the myriad ways in which I’ve used words to craft a story, sell a product, change a mindset, and make myself chuckle, I’ve realized that the scope of the puzzle that can be created through intentional word-searching is bigger than comprehension, and far more powerful.

Words are seeds. What am I planting?

Words are weeds. What am I choking?

Words are medicine. What am I healing?

The process of writing is a neurological and spiritual intersection, where the right now meets with all that came before me, and the possibility of all that has yet to arrive. I am like the fruiting body of a mushroom, made visible only because of the vast, interweaving mycelium that brought me here, the living and ancient network of which I am a part. The words I choose are the spores I send to the air. And so I choose them with care, everyday and everywhere.

A clutch of Cortinareus Violaceus on the porch at Jawbone Flats in the Opal Creek Wilderness in fall 2019.