When Writing Fails, Try Rocking

Don't call me Ishmael. Call me Nana Sue. Call me Happy Nana who has just spent eight lovely days with her new grandson who came to visit from half-way across the country. Call me a cliche of a grandmother who wonders how to describe in a new, fresh way this full feeling of love. How does a writer avoid cliches at a time like this?

Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she just enjoys without trying to describe. Maybe she takes off her writer's hat and puts it on the chair next to the baby blue fleece blanket and the tattered Dr. Seuss books, worn out from reading to her two sons a couple decades-and-a-half earlier. Maybe she just rocks a baby in a soft chair and pats his diapered bottom softly while he sleeps. Maybe she closes her eyes and savors the heft of a sleeping baby on her chest. Maybe some things are just beyond language.

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For Creative Energy, Get Moving

I’m guessing I’m not the only one right now who struggles this time of year with shorter days, lack of sunlight, and the impending cold. Every year I have to remind myself that to keep my creative spirit alive in November, I have to face the bogeyman. I’m talking about literally facing the monster by getting out into the cold, rain, and slush.

I’m talking about getting outside and moving around – vigorously, as in a half-hour jog or fast hike. And not just once in awhile. I’m talking six days a week. Getting outdoors, year round but especially in the winter, is my best protection against creative doldrums and the self-doubt that can accompany them.

For me, it’s not if I’ll exercise today; it’s when. Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD, argue in Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond that as we hit middle age, our bodies will start to decay. Basically, our bodies start to go into hibernation unless we signal to them to keep growing. The signal? Vigorous exercise, six days a week. Exercising tells our bodies to keep repairing and renewing. It also releases chemicals that bathe our brains in positive feelings.

“Being sedentary is the most important signal for decay,” say Crowley and Lodge. Thus, “Decay is optional.” And since aging is largely about decaying, we can slow our aging process by being physically active. That’s why, as they say, “Exercise is magic.”

And as I have discovered, going outdoors for exercise is part of the magic – even in the cold, rain, slush, and snow. Getting out into the elements causes nature’s beauty to trump the cold, taming the face of the winter monster and minimizing self-doubt about creativity in the process. Plus there’s all that Vitamin D to soak up during the daylight.

“Exercise is the opposite of crazy. It is the thing you use to drive craziness away,” write Crowley and Lodge. I agree. And for extra protection from the creativity crazies, bundle up and get outside while you move your beautiful body.

Need extra motivation to get moving outdoors? Try listening to music on an Ipod. And check out my essay, "Running through Life," about the joys of jogging to music.

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Ode to Friendship

Five years have past; five summers with the length

Of five long winters! and again I hear

These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs

With a soft inland murmur.—Once again

Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,

That on a wild secluded scene impress

Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect

The landscape with the quiet of the sky.

--from “Tintern Abbey,” by William Wordsworth

Yes, we were playing hooky on Monday when Wordsworth came to mind. My husband and I had made the two-hour drive to Pike’s Peak State Park in northeast Iowa. We knew the fall colors would be past their peak. It wasn’t really the color that we craved, anyway; it was the rolling terrain. Geologist Jean Prior wrote that “if you had to divide Iowa into two different regions, one would be the extreme northeast corner and the other would be the rest of the state.”

Pike’s Peak State Park is named for the same Lieutenant Zebulon Pike as the 14,110-foot peak in Colorado. Iowa’s Pike’s Peak, just 500 feet above the Mississippi River floodplain, happens to be the tallest bluff overlooking the entire length of the Mississippi. We drove into the park around 3:00 p.m. It was 70 degrees and sunny, with plenty of time to hike before an early sunset.

Unlike Wordsworth's poem, more than five years had passed since our prior trip to Pike’s Peak. But we too heard the inland waters rolling -- at Bridal Veil Falls, where a creek flows over a dolomite shelf and drops to the Mississippi -- and we saw the steep cliffs that connected the landscape with “the quiet of the sky.”

Except it wasn’t entirely quiet as we walked. In between the swishing of the dry leaves, I heard echoes of a friendship. About twenty-six years ago we’d hiked here with our young son and our friends Deb and Craig and their son.

I heard the chipmunk chatter of our two little boys – both three, one blonde, one dark-haired – while we hiked the bluffs and gazed at the panoramic view of the Mississippi. And I heard laughter, because that’s what inevitably happens when we’re with Deb and Craig.

And so it was Monday that while we listened to the murmur of the water fall, I had the pleasure of the present and the past – and not only the past, but also the sense of “life and food for future years,” as Wordsworth puts it later in “Tintern”:

With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.

As if I’d stepped into a time machine, other memories of times with Deb and Craig rose up and carried me to other natural places – camping at Yellow River Forest and Backbone State Park, not far north of here; canoeing the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota, a long way from here – and camping at Pine Lake State Park in central Iowa, three hours away.

After leaving Pike’s Peak we drove north into McGregor and wound up at Old Man River, a new brewery in town. We ordered beers and toasted to our long-time friendship with Craig, our master storyteller, and Deb, our generous friend with the tinkling laughter. All friendships ebb and flow, and ours is no exception; still, time has brought a depth to this good friendship that is not easily duplicated.

Here’s to nature, and to Deb and Craig, and to memories that have provided sustenance for yesterday, today, and tomorrow

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