Dear Reading Friends,
So, it's official. I'm not capable of maintaining anything regular in this space. I hope these occasional words will help span some gaps of silence between the appearance of books and essays.
I am writing from Harvester Island again, in the middle of our commercial salmon season. It's been a very slow season so far, with few fish. The whales have been frolicking in great numbers out our front windows, and the bald eagles are plentiful, as are the voles and the mosquitos, so fecundity is still abundantly evident! We hope the pink salmon and the red salmon will soon make their appearance. Somehow they do. somehow they seem to magically trace their path from the sea back to the stream bed of their birth--the very same. A common everyday miracle no one can yet fully explain.
A quick catch-up. We did indeed make it through our year of travel and delinquincy from a real schedule and a real life. The fake life on the road is infinitely more preferable than the scheduled life---even a life scheduled around the salmon and the tides! I met many fine people and students as I spoke and gave readings at colleges and universities around the country. Our winter in Guatemala was excellent---warm, rich, the people delightful, the Mayan culture thriving, the colors brilliant. All as far from an Alaskan winter as I had hoped. There was danger as well. My six year old son and I were held at gunpoint by a car thief one morning in Guatemala City. We met and made a number of friends, most of whom have lived there for years, spending their lives in service to the needy. They live with this threat, and worse, every day. We left Guatemala humbled by their lives.
I am in the trenches of another book right now, with a deadline hovering over me. This one on parenting---a spirituality of parenting, of sorts, that will challenge a lot of common practices and beliefs. A second project, equally challenging and enriching, is a look at food, all aspects of food: its gathering, preparation, feasts, potlucks, etc. and how we use its presence and its absence as a means of drawing us toward God and one another. If you have any thoughts to share on either of these topics, please do write and share them with me. (
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Thanks for spending these few minutes with me here. I hope you find the good you are searching for, and the words that speak all you hunger to know.
Gratefully,
Leslie
