41: Cloquet Forestry Center

I arrived yesterday afternoon, the sun full and bright, the Boreal forest opening up: the colors of pine, stone, timber. I am in a cabin and have figured out this new fangled wireless thing (I'm only teasing; our home is wireless) and how to upload photographs onto an external hard drive. I'm listening to Norah Jones on Pandora and feel absolutely naughty, though in twenty minutes, I will be back outside, eating pasta underneath a timbered pavilion, poets flanking me, mosquitoes finding sweet spots.

It's my week away, my workshop in the woods. The title: The Work and Play of the Poem with Michael Dennis Browne, the professor who, half a dozen years ago, opened my eyes to the beauty and the shape of poetry, to the musicality of it, to the way it can burst in your heart like a lark's song.

I know I am in the perfect place when I can touch pinecones at my doorstep, when I write poetry on long walks, when my camera is the quiet one and words begin to surface. My eyes are drinking this wonder, my ears, my heart. I am learning to write again, after a half-year dormancy, and I am grateful.

PS: I have started a photoset on Flickr for this trip. You can follow the beauty here, though I must admit, I have been strangely still with my camera these first twenty four hours. I promise more soon. Soon.