How do you improve if you never start?

There it is, the quintisential problem of creatives everywhere. “I want to do a thing but I’m not very good at the thing, how do I improve?” Answer: Do the thing.

So writing? How do I get better at it? meh, not the question to ask at the moment. The better question is what do I want to write about? Life? Happiness? Everything?

Is this a diary? Essays? Poems? Yes?

So here goes, INHALE - JUMP

Last month I assisted my friend Andrew in teaching a nine day timber framing class at North House Folk School. Now North House is WAY up the Minnesota North Shore in Grand Marais, almost to Canada, which means a five hour drive up Interstate 35 and Highway 61. Now all of that is just setting the stage, What I want to tell you about is the WATER.

If you spend much time in Cook County in the spring this is probably not news to you. However this was my first time visiting in the snow melt/rainy season, and it had been raining recently. What I noticed the most was all the little creeks, normally dry channels, damp cliff faces, and the ditch on the inland side of the highway. Water was everywhere, and it was all moving. Normally I look at the the lake, and the trees, but I couldn’t help but look at the water.

Now I had my camera, I thought about stopping every five minutes to make photos, but chose not to, because it’s O.K. for some things to just be memories. It was an ephemeral moment in time, and the memories can be ephemeral too, I possess them, I am sharing them with you, but someday we will be gone, and so will they, but the rain will continue on the north shore, and those rivulets and water seeps will flow with the seasons, long after our molecules return to the planet.