Writing Journal

    Off and on for nearly four years, I've been working on a manuscript for what I hope eventually turns into a published book of memoirs.  As it stands now, I'd love the title of the book to be Hill and Valleys: Memories of a Countryside Youth. What follows will mostly likely eventually find it's way into my manuscript in one form or another. 

   The lazy September breeze swept me out of my studio and into a reverie of thought.  Her zephrys carried me into my past and home.  What is this past to me? A memory? An illusion? A silent movie starring the best times of my life. A still life set in motion to the rhythms of blissful teenagedom.  A painting, reminding me of the fields that separate me from those bygone days. The fields that  carried me to my best friend on those unsullied days of youthful summer and into the opulent forest that begged us to frolic in her thickets.  To this place, the currents of reverie have carried me.  To this place of spendid home--where identity is not hidden deep within our souls, but proudly worn through the extemporaneous decisions of youth. 

   The bright stars began to race past our tents as the Leonids showered down upon earth.  Bright streaks of yellow and green exploded, leaving firework-like trails weaving among the thin wisps of clouds.  This awesome display helped me if not but momentarily forget the intense cold of the bitter wind beating my tent against my climbing equipment.  The snow provided a cold bed on which I snuggled throughout the night--the night before I was to summit the beast. The crouching monster that lay ahead of me.  Her peaks where shadowed by night, but the glowing metero shower gave glimpses of her precipitous slopes that would torture my lungs and my soul in the pre-dawn morning.  A torture worth it's weight in punishment for the prize of her peak.  

    As I unzipped the flap of my tent, the beams of morning sun dashed in illuminating rainbows across the morning sky.  Bright blue stretched from horizon to horizon, waking the clouds from their night rest.  Small rapids rushed, batting sunshine from their waves.  Taking with it the leaves of summer, the waters of Penns Creek rushed around the borders of my sleeping island on a cool September day.  Those days in the woods of Central Pennsylvania were never lonely.  They were alive. 

   That morning my family and I journeyed over to where a construction team was laying the mortar for our new home.  As our car pulled up the driveway, I could see the land that had once been my playground was gray and brown, scattered with mounds of dirt, mortar, and bricks.  The hemlocks that towered, guarding me from our country road now lay defeated--charred, broken dead.  The place where my old home stood, nurturing my family was now vacant. The hole of it now filled with ash, charred memories, and dirt.  But, a new hole lay open, ready as strong men threw bricks to each other and slapped mortar with their trowels--creating the rhythm of my new home--my new life where the flat stone that once lay in my front yard becomes a distant memory lost among the rubble of a burnt house--where from black cinders sprouts the grass of spring and new memories yet to be lived.