At the weekend Mary Reynolds Thompson and I facilitated our Wild Places Lost & Found writing workshops.
On Saturday the participants came up the winding road to the top of Flagstaff, to the views of the Continental Divide, to sit and write in forest and mountain.
On Sunday, people found places under trees, in sunshine, on grass.
They were seeking the wild places outside and inside themselves and came together to write and to share.
Saturday began with a visit from 3 coyotes. As we drove to Lakewood on Sunday for the second workshop a coyote crossed the road in front of us.
In Native American lore, a coyote is a trickster, a creature of duality and paradox, a creative figure, a creator of culture and a breaker of taboos.
Their appearance seemed to invite us into the wild.
Writing took people into their wild imagination.
We looked at archetypal landscapes: Mountain, Forest, Water, Grassland, Desert. Mary brought us images from her Reclaiming the Wild Soul work to look at, to choose from, to enter, to write about.
Journal Prompt
Which landscape are you most drawn to? What does it mean to you? What are the feelings it evokes in you?
What is that landscape in you?
One participant said she had always found writing outside too distracting, she preferred to have a ceiling – but on this occasion her written words belied her spoken words.
How is writing outside in nature, in a garden, different from writing inside, in a coffee shop?
What do you experience when you write outside?
What are your favourite places to write?
This I will Remember
This I will remember,
Everyone’s sharing,
The courage it sometimes takes to read out loud.
This I will remember:
How a child touches your soul,
The distance and closeness of stories.
This I will remember:
Beautiful are the hearts of the people
Who shared this workshop,
And the profound beauty of this place.
By the participants at the Wild Places Lost & Found workshop, facilitated by Kate Thompson & Mary Reynolds Thompson. Boulder, Colorado, 21st April, 2012