If you’ll remember I attended an essay workshop up at Lake Tahoe. Turns out it was actually at a house in Squaw Valley, site of the 1960s Olympics, the entrance complete with Olympic rings and the famous flame: six women, a massive stone fireplace, hammered iron balconies, and a dining room table that belonged in King Arthur’s court. This was where we dined, but mostly where we wrote. I’m not going to tell you about how I stalled time and again on the page in response to the writing prompts.
Instead, I’ll tell you about the desperation run I took in 25-degree weather that second day to clear my head. Dressed in my winter clothes—Laguna Beach style—blue jeans, a sweatshirt and gloves, I tried to ignore the cold as I charged down the road and into the meadow that is Squaw Valley proper, evergreen trees not yet dressed in their winter white. It was only at a point where the trees converged into a dark narrow path, lowering the temperature by a couple more degrees that I finally turned around. By now, my nose was dripping, my toes about to snap off and I was shivering so hard I veered drunkenly off the path.
There’s a soft crackle and I stop. Around my feet, a carpet of tiny frozen spears of grass pokes up this way and that. I drop to my haunches and press down on an untouched area with my gloved hand, feeling the resistance there. Another satisfying crunch. Feeling a sense of wonder, I grin. Moving around, I press down on another spot, then another and another. I finally have to stop; the cold has become unbearable.
I run back to the house, feeling some kind of reintegration beginning to take place inside of me, something I vaguely recognize. I’ve undergone this experience before when beguiled by nature, whether it’s here in my adopted country or my native Africa. I’m reminded that as in nature everything in its own time and that I have to trust myself. The words will come.
I wish I could tell you I aced the rest of the writing prompts. I didn’t. But I did come up with a killer ending to an essay I’d been working on.
Ah, the writing life.
Sounds exciting! I need to do something like that to get my brain juices flowing again too! I might not have survived the cold if I were in your place. I can’t stand winter month-even in SoCal!
Thanks for sharing!
Nothing like a workshop to get the creative juices flowing. You should check out a Gotham class, maybe on essay writing? Thanks for stopping by!
Hi there. I’m a She Writer, and came over to read your essay. This feels like the start of an essay–not the end. I think that the conflict within it has to do with the disconnection between the “African me” and the writer persona who is having difficulties in a foreign landscape. I want more, not less, of you and who you are. You have good conflict within the wintry landscape and the writer’s fallow situation that you set up well; now let’s take this wintry failure theme to some place unexpected. My guess is that somewhere underground, where you can’t see it, there is something growing. What is it? And what does it mean to African me and by extension, reader me?
Cynthia, thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to comment. Lovely idea that, somewhere underground something growing. But for me it was simply about how those unexpected moments (the frozen grass) informs our writing in unexpected ways.