book launch: wilder

It's all about convergences: being where you need to be at the moment all the points come together to form that great spark. It was last night at Claire Wahmanholm's book launch for her gorgeous debut collection Wilder. There we were in the quiet world of the Bell Museum's planetarium, and I thought of the worlds we occupy: the present, here on Earth; the imaginative, out into the universe; the quietest, in our homes.

I want to write in a way that honors these places: the mapmaking, stream ecology origins of my husband's work; my daughter's deep, driving interest in animals and their habitats; my son's curiosity with those that dig in the earth and how helpers exist and offer that help in respectable and generous ways.

I had a spark of an idea, and I thank the opportunity to be where I was in that time. These posts seek to track that process as it unfolds into what I hope will be a viable manuscript.