I’m feeling an inward thrum, a tingling aliveness, from my time beneath the majestic peaks of the North Cascades mountains. Last month, I served as creative resident at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. I dove into learning, teaching, and writing, in a glorious nature-and-learning paradise.

Before I hit the road north, I returned six overdue library books I’d never had the chance to read. I left traffic, texts, appointments, errands.

I tumbled into a spacious house overlooking majestic Douglas firs, where I spread out a crateful of journals and books and typed or read, or stretched, or researched. I curled up in a cozy chair in the library, while silver light angled over snow-capped mountains and skimmed Diablo Lake. I was fed delicious, nourishing, organic meals and charged to create what I had designed. I disappeared from social media and stopped answering email. I wrote seven chapters of my new book. I hiked to waterfalls, along lakes, and in high snow-laced forests.

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