The winter winds blew this way last weekend, and what seemed
like an endless summer ended abruptly. Winter is my most productive season when
it comes to writing words, and I welcome it knowing I’ll enter a headspace I
value very much. This will be my third winter since I committed to the life of
a free writer, a decision I don’t regret in any way.
I write these words from my second office, the coffeeshop,
though office is certainly the wrong word for a space to create art; rarely do
I write much from the coffeeshop, usually I’m doing electronic chores for the
day, sending emails and doing other interweb related things.
My town, Durango, is my kind of town, home, a place I don’t
ever see moving away from, one that will fill many chapters in the book that is
my life. I enjoy the chapters of winter because it is the only season I don’t
feel much angst. I can accept the shorter days, set small goals to get done
each day, type a few paragraphs for chapters, allow the novel that is life to
build slowly. In spring, summer and fall I feel so much pressure to climb, run,
party, love…winter is the season that balances it all out, to just take it
slow.
And how slow can I take it? How much could I appreciate this
sip of tea, this moment in my downtown, the trees that shed their remaining
leaves, the mountaintops that finally look right because they are covered in
snow.
What is this life as a writer? How does it influence my
daily life? The trips I make, the risks I take? When the season of adventure is
nearing a close and the season for reflection begins? For others it is the
opposite, snow has a different meaning for everyone. For some their love for
snow will claim their lives this winter. It always seems to. We’re all going
there, one way or another.
They say you can never go back home, I guess you can never
just go back in time. Yet with seasons are the constant reminders, and though
the climate is changing many reminders are still there. I think we can still
find home though, find home in a place we’ve never been, yet the community is waiting
to accept us, welcome us.
On this third winter, on my verge of my thirty-fourth year
of life I am at home, hoping for a few more days of Indian Summer to spend in
the red rock desert, then welcoming winter in, to take it easy, take it easy
baby.
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