In third grade I
won the classroom penmanship award, but in sixth grade I did not win the short
story prize. One school night in junior
high I relished the solitude of my newly private (unshared) bedroom and watched
as the rain dripped in twinkling streams down my window, backlit by the streetlamp
on my block.
As a ninth
grader I composed - in the very long night before the paper was due - the first
and only draft of a twenty page footnoted research paper, with a piece of
carbon paper sandwiched between two sheets of typing paper inserted into my
family’s Underwood typewriter. I remember
walking to classes in the torrential rain those four high school winters, legs
wet from oversized puddles that would not drain off the roads; I refused my
friends’ rides.
In fourth grade
I copied the entire “John Muir” entry from the youthful red hardcover
Encyclopedia Britannica Junior into a paper I hand wrote about National Parks. I also attended a week of outdoor school
that year, hiking in the blazing hot chaparral a few hours from my childhood
home.
As a graduate
student, I awarded an “F” to one of my sophomore college students because he engaged
in gross, blatant plagiarism. To ease my
discomfort that afternoon, I took a long run along the rolling country roads
bordering the barn apartment where I lived.
The other morning
I received a press release from a global professional organization honoring me
for “excellence in writing.” I went
outside and felt the ever-cooling autumn breeze swirl around me, mix with my
breath, become my inhalation, receive my exhaled air and I looked to the sky in
reverent gratitude.
I opened up
email today to find the official acceptance of my proposal to speak at the
international conference of a scholarly community to which I belong: welcome news. Just below this was another email
notifying me of rejection for something I didn’t want: also welcome news. I walked into the front yard, gently laid my palms down on the dry
roots of a eucalyptus, and felt the ground as my ground, my center, my passion.
I write about
people’s relationship to the natural world. And my own. Yesterday I was woken at first light, not by the unexpected rain in this
year-round sunny place but by the thunder and lightning hurling piercing
flashes and crashes through my bedroom window.
And the past two
mornings I have journaled in bright red pen some reveries about light and
clouds, rain and thunder, lightning and arcs of prismatic color. I took careful notice of the stormy sky,
attempting to capture on digital photography some essence of the incredible moving clouds, colors and shapes
and textures changing several times a minute.
Sometimes I
review my life using eight fingers and a thumb on plastic squares; other times
I scribble with outrageous colored ink in the unlined sketchbook that I prefer
for journaling. But always, writing has been my mainstay. It reminds me about
my past. It offers me ways to explore my current experience. It is the manner
in which I am notified about professional awards or rejections. Writing is the
format through which I keep in primary contact with loved ones far away, or share
a quick weather snippet via text message with a nearby sister. Most often I use
email for my correspondence, with the exception of my technophobic
mother who prefers letters in her postbox. And because I am a little old-fashioned (for my age), I still like sending
handwritten letters and handcrafted cards for birthdays, holidays, bereavements
and celebrations. And because I am of
this earth, I am rooted in direct, tangible, expression of it – hands touching
the dirt, fingers using implements to somehow translate that experience of the
natural into the symbolism of words. Moving in outer landscapes is the way I
remain in contact with who I really am on the inner one. I take my pain and
sorrows, my excitement and successes, my frailty and courage and history and
future into the present moment of shared passions: writing and earthiness. For me, these are
inseparable…I cannot have one without the other.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
