Rewilding:
A Return to the Writing Life
I left my writing studio in 2012 after 15 years of creative reverie in the SW Four Corners region of CO and moved to a newly booming but still easy to live in city. I just wanted a break from the creative deep dive and the endless expanse of the Colorado Plateau. I wanted to play in an urban setting; I wanted to be new. I left my art supplies and writing journals in a box in my shed on my property in the high desert and showed up to my downtown apartment creatively empty-handed. I still wrote some psychology articles and did daily journaling while living there and enjoyed a rich immersion in dance and conscious movement modalities. Yet, five years later, in the middle of a mindless shopping experience, I decided that to go another year without being claimed by the vitality of poetry was unacceptable.
Therefore, I decided then and there, in Nordstrom’s lingerie department, I must re-wild my poetic self. From experience, I knew it would require me to expand in ways that would stretch my current capacity to meet all those words I had left running feral in the massive wilderness of the unconscious.
At the time, I had picked up a copy of Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia, which is Martin Shaw’s very manly poetic and eco-philosophical meanderings. Inspired by his passionate, raw dedication to place-based writing…
