Winter Solstice--New Light and New Life

     Ahh, here comes Winter!  And yet here comes the light.  By May, Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration (CTNI) will be published, and my new journey--our journey for those who join me--will begin.  I look forward to the Winter Solstice on many levels.  I love the cold and snow that regenerates our world and puts the seasons into such striking perspective, and I love the returning light.  Each season has its wonders, its beauty, its stories.  CTNI is indeed a celebration of the seasons, the stories, the songs, as well as the triumphs and trials of a well-lived life working a challenging yet rewarding profession. 
     The book, however, doesn't read like a straight memoir.  Nor does it read like a volume of essays.  And it's certainly not a fictional novel, although I am preparing to write the third installment in the Jack Carment Novella Series.  If anything, CTNI reads like a big old volume of short stories.  Any chapter can stand on its own and can be read or enjoyed separately from the others.  And the chapters move from season to season, equinox to equinox, solstice to solstice, as they are driven by Natural Inspiration.  Some chapters engage several season.
      Yet there's more.  I've chosen to incorporate poems and songs, dialogue and digressions, pedagogy and philosophy--all sprinkled throughout the book like one sprinkles well-chosen spices to flavor a home-cooked feast.  If it's still possible to "bend" genres in the modern publishing world, I've reached for that possibility.  I sense that you will like it, maybe even love it, and hopefully be willing to pass the word, for as much as I love teaching, in the crazy world of urban public education, I'm ready to move forward.  CTNI  is for me a stepping stone.  Support from my readers will make it strong and secure.
         Meanwhile I'm grateful for a 13 day break from school this solsticy season so that Deb and I can wander on skis and snowshoes through some interstices out there in our own peripatetic world with the wildcats, coyotes, bears, fox, elk, moose, deer, eagles and hawks, and maybe even a distant call of a wolf.  Here's to imagining wilderness and living for moments when our ordinary world takes on the feel of being wild.  I believe that someday, all things again shall be wild.