Back from the woods and the tiny town of Shelton, WA. Elspeth Pope and the Hypatia-in-the-Woods organization gave me my week in the beautiful house Elspeth's late husband Jim built. The house is not just surrounded by trees, but seems to have grown right out of them. They were my constant companions. The top photo is the view out the bedroom window. Every morning I got up and felt like I was in a Grimm's Fairy Tale. Every day I sat looking out the dining room window at the trees in the bottom picture, a chaos of greenery. At night, I listened to the owls moan and sobbed over any small thing offered up in the movies I watched on my computer.

I thought long thoughts. I wrote words and barely erased anything at all. I bathed in silence. And by the end of the week my longing for home grew piercing. This is my way, my stubbornly middle path. I like the idea of falling full force into a piece of fiction, into language itself, but I can't obsess that way. It's rare that I pick up a book and can't put it down, no matter how much I love it. And when given all the time and space needed to dig deep into my own imaginary worlds, I only have so much breath. Good things happen down there below the surface, but I need to come up for air. I need to talk to my family and friends and walk down a busy street. I need to watch The Simpsons and rant about some bullshit on the news.

I'm thankful for my week away and equally thankful to be home.