Something about the late-afternoon light of January prods and stirs words and dormant stories. So what if you've got no plot, or at least not a riveting one (yet), the propulsive kind that keeps a reader enchanted. Something about the hard orange sun setting over rock-solid snow makes you think, hey, it's coming. The land, the storyscape, is only barren if you think so. Because the clarity of winter light shouts that there is more than meets the eye. There's sap in the trees; somewhere tucked away you have pages and pages and pages of stuff that, given a little warmth, could be fanned into life. A tidy bonfire to melt away the ice. A bonfire in the middle of a frozen lake, a glow to skate circles around. If and only if the surface could be shoveled off, melted just a little, smoothed. Just enough that you could see through the ice: lily pads and reeds caught there. All of it waiting for you to get down on hands and knees and look, really look, and let whatever glimmers back be a sign, a serendipitous hook in sync with all the gobbledygook spilled out on those pages. Pages that suddenly feel connected.
Walking on ice.Trusting that it holds. Being fearless, even reckless: the trick is not looking down too long, but keeping your eyes on the light skimming the spruce tops: their jagged zigzag, black on blue.
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