10 things I learned in the woods

A week of lessons at the Grey Highlands Wizard Writer's Retreat

Dear Reader, I made a list for you from my week with the trees trying to write . JL

1. In the morning along the path that leads to the spot where the watercress grows just above the rich soil tiny moths tremble on the spring air like torn bits of blue airmail paper.

2. The river is better for clearing your mind than a shower.

3. You think you want to see something in the forest before writing but it will be sound that touches the air that touches your ears and enters your body. Sight is a reflection.

4. A glittery reflection. Spiders make the webs that hold the droplets that bend the light into rainbows that flash between two green shoots.

5. The rain is a varnish.

6. The varnish makes each beach leaf into a bronze sculpture that you can take back to the residency but there it will go back to being a dead leaf.

7. It helps to make a map of homemade cue cards before writing, and colour-code them and tape them to wall and it’s like the wall is your brain full of ideas and the project opens up like an adventure that you are on. And then the espresso wears off. And the map is an empty promise and it is just you and the alphabet battling it out but with a slight zing of wild watercress still on your tongue.

8. Evening is long.

9. First it gets quieter and then cooler and then each clover leaf folds in half and then the whole plant folds itself closer together and then birds seem to explain their day to each other across the wild strawberry field and then you look up and it is all blue and the frogs are beginning their warmup.

10. If the frogs could play piano and get themselves a bit more organized, it would be Chopin. Probably one of the 3 Nocturnes that he dedicated to the woman who was married the man who made his pianos who was having an affair with Liszt in Chopin’s apartment. And the next day there is one more thing….