Non-smoking area...

The Bitteroot Valley is hosting another wreck of a forest fire west of Hamilton. People have had to evacuate their homes, live in shelters, take their small animals to the humane society and their large animals to the fairgrounds. And the air is barely breathable, with ash floating to settle on you or your car after only minutes.

But when the rain finally comes, and it must, and soon, the smoke will clear. We will see devastation in all it's sweeping, bleak ugliness. Until snow arrives to cover it up. Then next spring will wash dusty ash and burnt debris off the hills and mountains into the muddy river, making an organic soup whose main ingredient is carbon.

The sun on August 11, 2012 -2:00 p.m.

Green grass will grow, but the black trunks will remain, stark, naked, sad. Brush will fill in quickly, berry bushes and alders. Young trees thrive on the carbonized soil and, by the next year, will be six inches tall. And nature will replenish herself, as she always does.

Unless man, excited by the suddenly exposed ground, decides another subdivision is in order, forgetting that Montana, in all her beautiful glory is not a non-smoking area.

One in the mouth, two in the bucket

Mountain Huckleberry

When I was a little girl, my mom would tell us on our way up to pick huckleberries, “Remember, more in the bucket than in the mouth. And I’ll be able to tell by your purple tongues.” Of course, we ate until our tummies hurt… all of us hunkered down with the murmurs of our mothers' voices keeping us close. Bored after only minutes, we generally sneaked off to explore, find a creek or build a fort. Then I grew up.

  Picking huckleberries has been a summer ritual all my life, as natural during the warm days as going barefoot, floating the river and shooting off fireworks. Some years berries are sparse or non-existent. This year they were everywhere, huge, juicy and irresistible. We four women drive up Crane Mountain, car windows shut against the dust. There are cars pulled to the side of the road everywhere. Another year we might moan, not this year. There is plenty for all after this late spring. Piling out of the car, one of us will ask about bug spray, another always has it. Buckets are distinct and individual, every kind from cut off plastic milk cartons to woven baskets.

 Not so long ago we were the murmuring voices and our children had the tummy aches and tried to sneak off to build forts while we picked. For twenty years we four women have berry picked together, raised our children, shared terrors and triumphs as they grew up, became adults and went off on their own. We still talk about our kids, sometimes our jobs, the struggles of life, our aches, books we’ve read, how mad we got over this or that and how hilarious it is when we can’t find our sunglasses perched on top our head or remember where we parked the car. The content of the conversation has changed, a little. But the warmth and intimacy has not. We are best friends. And we hoard, bake, can and freeze huckleberries.

 Some of us live in different towns now. But this yearly summer ritual never changes. It keeps us close, will have us gossiping and laughing years in the future when our knees are locking up, we’re using canes and our dentures stain from one berry in the mouth for every two in the bucket!

Smitten Image, paranormal romance teaser

Dreaming schematics...

Last night I had another house dream. I often dream of houses, inside and out... vivid, very visual dreams that haunt me through the day. What does a "house" dream mean, Jungianly speaking? This morning I have new insight. Maybe.

This house, I was invited to by someone close to me, perhaps related. It was bizarre and archaic, filled with rooms like warehouses full of theater set pieces. A hoarder's paradise. I touched ancient books, school texts, shelves of novels I'd read (in real life), old toys I'd coveted (Barbie's and dolls), costumes I would dress in (oddly also a recurring theme in my dreams... mmm.) The design meandered, the bedrooms were down slides or hidden in secret nooks along passages lined with works of art, nick-nacs, beautiful junk. Stacks of odds and ends, a mish-mash from a collector's fantasy. All had some vague emotional value to me that I can't pin point now I'm conscious, of course.

Awakening from this wonderland of subconscious form and elaborately organized objects infusing me with a happy glow, I understood that this house (I even touched a giant broiler tank made like a wine barrel and tracked mold along a floor board), these rooms, the clutter, the emotional zing, all represented my cluttered, often scattered imagination. I'd dreamed a literal schematic of my creative brain! How cool was it? I can't wait to go back to sleep.

The moral of this story? Sleeping might get you a dream, but waking is where the work gets done...

The comedy of editing…

(I posted this last week on Montana Romance Writers blog but having just finished edits on final proofs of Smitten Image, am adding an Amen as an addendum!)

A lot of writers I know are in the process of editing right now. This ungentle, unintentionally uninspiring process is a love/hate relationship for most of us. If we’re still sane. So… here’s to having some fun while marching to the military drum of your dictatorial left brain.

You’d rather be editing because:

1. It’s housekeeping without having to clean bathrooms.
2. You only need pretend fins and snorkel to navigate the deep water.
3. “Swamp People” reruns get old really fast.
4. It’s a great excuse for doubling up on your drug (drugs) of choice.
5. The pool boy thinks you’re not home and strips down to speedos.
6. Grammatical monsters are simply rhetorical.
7. You have a good excuse not to watch Wimbledon for the strawberries and cream (and a glimpse of Prince Harry.)
8. Syn-tax can be taken with alcohol.
9. It’s Sudoku for the right brain and, like Scrabble, counts as exercise.
10. The cut and paste function is in code you don’t have to understand, ever.
11. You glow during every “pregnant” pause.
12. You may feel like you know diddly, but in your Iron Man jammies you are a super-hero.
13. Attitude is nine-tenths of the sum total divided by the parabola but not equal to 0.
14. The most interesting man in the world is not the one doing television commercials.
15. Too soon you’ll be back teetering on the creative edge.

A Wise and WayWard Sand-Wich

Wise Woke me this a.m. “Why are you Working so attentively at What makes you feel Worth less?”

And WayWard answered. “We Will help With finding your Way.”

“My Way?” I asked. “Way Where?”

“Why, to the Who you Were,” answered Wise.

art by Cruzeiro Seixas

“Oh, Will you please? I  am Weary, Weak and Witless With loss.”

WayWard Winked. “That is Why We are here.”

Wise said, “Where are you Wanting to go, girl?”

I had to stop and ponder, I’d so Whittled my path a-Way.

WayWard re-Worded, “Where Were you going, girl?”

“To Write!” I proclaimed. “I Was going to al-Ways Write!”

“What are you Waiting for?” asked Wise.

“I Wonder…” WayWard mused, “have you Wasted all your Words?”

I stopped to think. W-once more.

“Writing is playing Witty, Whimsical Word games,” I said. “It is fun. But the networking, publicity WhirlWind is impossible, unmanageable and therefore real Work and no fun.”

WayWard Wisecracked and Wise s-Wore.

While I Was Whispering self-justifications, WayWard and Wise proved me afraid and a fraud… A Writer Who forgot to Write.

No longer Woeful, I’m now sq-Wished between WayWard and Wise and W-once again a Whole sand-Witch.

                                                                                                                       

Shinin' On My Phobias

With the arrival of summer, at last, comes a cornucopia of phobias, both old and new. In the admission that yes, I do suffer phobias, I am fighting my instinctive Phobophobia (fear of phobias) and keeping my spirit on alert. You may want to watch for signs of suffering near you this season:

1.     Aerophobia (fear of swallowing airborne toxins)

2.     Nudoknotta-phobia (fear of string bikinis)

3.     Aphiddaphobia (fear of aphids)

4.     Ashiva-phobia (fear of air conditioning)

5.     Chiroptaphobia (fear of bats)

6.     Asplasha-phobia (fear of mermaids)

7.     Dermaslasha-phobia (fear of shaving legs)

8.     Ompholamucha-phobia (fear of belly button rings)

9.     Slatha-phobia (fear of sunscreen)

10.   Kosmikophobia (fear of cosmic phenomenon)

11.   Blennophobia (fear of slime)

12.   Havtagoa-phobia (fear of stopping play in order to pee)

13.   Sloppa-phobia (fear of dripping ketchup)

14.   Exposa-phobia (fear of falling out of swimsuits)

15.   Grossamundo-phobia (fear of older men in thongs)