Fragile Bridges to Peace
I often dream of solitude, my thoughts take me to places that I've never been but are always strangely familiar. It's in nature that I find this peace, always to the hill country of West Virginia, the fjords of Washington State, the mountains of Colorado; mountain streams just this side of Montana, a Sunday afternoon in the wheat fields of Kansas. I can go anyplace in my mind, and I do. It's like an expression I heard once, "Beautiful music makes you yearn for something you never had, and never will have" and this is where I'm at when I go to these places; yearning, resting, robed in peace. It's as if I can reach out and touch the reality of my imagination, but when I do like a pebble hitting the surface of a still pond, the image blurs and I'm back to reality. I've learned to relax and take it in and drift; like watching the clouds roll by. My writing is a bridge to that place, a place where I can weave a memory, an event, a thought and breathe words of life into it. This is a place where I can open the window of my imagination and invite the reader or the listener to come in and share. Come in and touch something that without my words would have never been revealed, never seen, even if for a moment I can share the vision with someone else, even if that vision is a fleeting vapor of emotion, an escape, a dream, a message of hope as much for me as anyone else.