Many times, vacations are a productive writing time for me.
I may not produce a lot of actual words until after the vacation, but often rest for my soul translates into ideas I want to write about.
I carry index cards with me and write down the phrases and ideas that pop out.
(This is me, on the trail in Cinque Terre, Italy, last February, writing a note card about volcano tears that ended up in As Soon As I Fell.)
Last week, I came home from Canada with nothing except one little card with descriptions of wildflowers, and the note that in an area of "prescribed burn" from 1993, I could see 7 different kinds of wildflowers growing around fallen and charred trunks.
22 years is a long time to wait for green grass and some wildflowers, I thought at the time.
It's pretty.
But 22 years is a long time.
photo: Andy Bruner
And then, this morning, I realized.
1993 was the year we went overseas for the first time.
2003 was the year it all fell apart.
2013 was the year I finally was able to put it all out there in public.
It's been 22 years.
Recovery is a long, slow, delicate process, it seems to me, and so much like that prescribed burn.
The fire, the falling, the destruction, the ending comes first.
And then, slowly, slowly, slowly, the beauty appears again.
Different from before.
Never, ever the same again.
But beautiful and fresh, new every morning.