The intrepid travelers reach the banks of the Amazon and catch a glimpse of what will be our home in the jungle for the next six days.

“Did you get homesick?…”

That was our first ten-minute exercise prompt at writing practice Tuesday night, and my thoughts immediately swirled around the toilet bowl of primitive living that I had recently endured while in Peru, with its hammocks and jungle beds swathed in mosquito netting, the sweltering Amazonian nights, and the total absence of electricity, internet connectivity, and running water — well, except for that rather hard-to-miss river running through our front yard.

Mostly, when I had time to think about it while away, I missed family and friends, my min pins, and the luxury of having at least one washcloth to complete my daily ablutions. Washcloths apparently aren’t not considered an essential tool of personal hygiene in South America, at least not in the places I visited. The one exception was the five-star hotel we stayed at for a single, deliriously soapy night in Iquitos. My guest room came equipped with tub, hot water, and not one, but TWO washcloths. Oh, the joys of indoor plumbing!

Despite the bug bites, odd night noises and interminable heat and humidity, despite the longing for a bit of toweling smaller than a yard of terry cloth with which to wash one’s face and, most especially, despite the lack of toilets that actually flush without the need for human intervention by way of dipping a bucket in a rain barrel and sloshing the contents in the bowl, all the while praying that the force of gravity will send everything along its way and not instead cause a backwash of effluvia, I loved the jungle with an enthusiasm that compares to childhood sojourns into the midOhio woods for girl scout sleepovers or float trips down the Current River after college. Nay, the Peruvian jungle was way more exciting than Midwest nature hikes. It was the best camp out ever!

I loved the rainbow effect that seemed to crop up everywhere, in great arcs across the sky, in colorful ribbons at tree height and along the river banks. I loved the great river itself, its milky, muddy depths and the chilling possibility of dangerous creatures, large and microscopic, hidden just beneath its surface. I loved the midnight noises, the unidentifiable creaks and croaks that punctuated sleeplessness, a sleeplessness caused no doubt by the whining of mosquitoes. The still air beneath the mosquito net was a relatively free zone from blood-sucking insects, but the inescapable humidity made the thought of a cool breeze seductive, and once or twice I succumbed to the temptation of freedom and paid the price.

Perils of the jungle spiced our waking lives. Knowing that mud in a flash can suck you under, that a snake or insect bite can kill or, at least, make you so ill that death would seem a deliverance, that you have to PAY ATTENTION and be mindful at all times… There’s nothing like a sense of danger to magnify the joy of staying alive.

At times, I felt a twinge of guilt at this joy. There are more than 85 references to the word “home,” in Kenneth Grahame’s masterpiece, The Wind in the Willows,” but none so moves me as one contained in Chapter 5, “Dolce Domum.” In that passage, Mole detects the familiar scents of home, longs for it and, with heart-breaking resolve, turns away from it out of fealty to his new friend, Ratty:

“Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way!”

I felt that tug at times. I missed Twiggy and Presh, my two miniature pinscer rescues who have been members of my small but close family for going-on seven years. I missed my 89-year-old mother who, I knew, was keeping track of my 23 days away by leafing through the detailed itinerary I had left in her keeping. I missed the routine I followed when in town — making plans for dinner and a movie with friends back home, guitar practice, gym workouts, staff luncheons and Multiplex Mondays at the office.

Sorely missed, of course, was my own bed, my own pillows, my sunken tub with the 17 jet sprays that I could, if I chose, run until the steaming, lavender-scented water was up to my chin.

The tug of newly forged friendships won out each time. The exchange of a few comforts of home became a small price to pay for the personal growth my comrades and I felt we gained from the experience and from the friendships formed during a leveling week in the wilds of Peru. Something changes in you when you live side by side with 9 other travelers, seekers all, in a jungle two hours up river from the nearest town. It goes beyond the collegiality of breaking bread and bending elbows over a shared meal.

When you share a razor, an article of clothing, or the uncertainty that you will emerge from the forest unscathed, a level of trust and caring deepens among you. And, when you put your trust and your hand into that of a fellow hiker while you wobble across a log over a rushing stream, your awareness of that level of trust and caring intensifies. Your group morphs into an interlocking and interdependent unit. A tribe is born.

I had an opportunity to compare notes with some of my fellow intrepid travelers, and a common thread ran through their observations. Each felt they had been challenged to their limit in some way. A few said they would opt NOT to return for a week in the jungle. But no one felt the time spent together at Camp Ayahuaca was a waste. Nary a one regretted that. We made a “solemn vow” to return in two years to reunite the tribe.

So, was I homesick? Yes, then and now. My feet are planted in two worlds.

Since I’ve returned, I relish the plumbing, but each time I turn on the tap, I hear the rushing river by our home away from home, deep in the jungle. Each time I notice the tops of trees swaying, I recall the blues and greens of a forest that stretches along either side of that river. Each time a min pin barks at a bird or a cat in the backyard, I remember the large playground of our adventure and recall chuffing jaguars, chirping frogs, and a sky that goes on forever.

The tug I now feel comes from opposite hemispheres of the planet, and I suspect the accompanying restlessness is shared by my former traveling companions. One continues to wander, the rest of us have returned to our homes, but I don’t believe any of us can say we return home as we left it.

The trials and triumphs of our journey have changed us in some irrevocable way. We followed the river. We hiked through first-growth forest. We climbed the mountain paths… And each of us met our challenge and somehow scaled it to reach a new awakening.

Next up: Ayahuasca Dreaming

I did some grocery shopping for my mother on Friday. Not a favorite pastime but a necessary one. Her idea of grocery shopping is to zig and zag in no particular order like a predator that has lost the scent of its prey. She arrives with a disorganized list or no list at all to wander up and down aisles, sometimes retracing her steps, sometimes stopping to let her gaze linger on glistening produce while the ice cream melts, occasionally relinquishing her place in line to go back to get something she forgot on the first, second and third trip past the display.

So I’m happier doing her grocery shopping for her than accompanying her on her unscheduled rounds. Left to her own devices, she could take three hours browsing through a thirty thousand square foot store, clueless, planless, list-less.

Me? Different story. I want that list ORGANIZED! I want items on it grouped by category. In sequence by department! And, of course, common sense dictates that perishables and frozen foods should appear last on the list.

I don’t want to spend a second more than absolutely necessary in the store. It should take 45 minutes tops to get a week’s worth of groceries. To shave even more time from the task, I push the shopping cart along with alacrity. Sometimes I skateboard. I sprint, hop on the bottom rung of the cart and careen down the aisles in search of whatever is next on the list. One way, no turning back, no impulse purchases. Everything must be done with dispatch.

Until, that is, I get to checkout. That’s where everything comes to a screeching halt. I can never seem to get it right. Never manage to choose the quicker checker outer. Always wind up in the slow lane, the lane with PROBLEMS.

Like Friday. There were only two checkouts to choose from, and I picked the one proceeding at a glacial pace. The person at the head of the queue obviously had issues, hunting through her zillion coupons, misspelling the store’s name on her check which, of course, was written johnny on the spot. Never do early what you can do while 10 people are waiting in line behind you!

The woman just ahead of me rolled her eyes. I rolled mine in response. We sighed in synch. Our angst became a dance, and we two-stepped in time to our shared impatience. Conversation was struck. Bets made. We bonded. Then the powers that be, in this case management, opened a third checkout.

Glory days! My new sister and I swung our carts toward the promised lane, eventual freedom and release from harsh fluorescent lighting. When we finally made our separate ways through the doors and out into the mist and the mud, we nodded our adieus and looked about in wonder. We’d shared a moment and, while we had, winter’s fist had unclenched briefly, turning the world outside into a soggy mess.

I checked the time on my iphone. What should have taken me 45 minutes or less had taken an hour.

And now I’m waiting for, not a “God-get-me-out-of-here” release exactly, but for someone to get back to me with news. Promises were made. Dates were given. Pleasantries exchanged…

And still I wait! That’s one of the frustrations of writing. You find yourself waiting for inspiration, waiting for feedback, waiting for someone, anyone, to come and kick you in the keister and remind you that deadlines delay for no one, not even your muse.

Guess it’s time to stop blogging and get back to business.

Tomorrow, I’ll worry about the next step: Revision. But for now

Good night,

Logged 1,565 words Saturday; another 2,394 today. It’s weird. The story has rounded the corner and entered the climactic homestretch where a lot is happening, but now each scene takes three times as long to write through.

Meanwhile, the weather could get interesting. We’ve had snow a couple times, but of the kind that turns into a soggy, muddy mess. The forecast is looking colder and snowier. Tomorrow will be a good day to stay chained to the chair pounding on the laptop.

Got a fire going and the kettle on for a strong cup of tea. That and a dollop of honey should keep the furnace stoked till dinner time!

So now I must repair to the trusty laptop to await the muse and trust that the war will not start without me and that those doughty allies will hold to their positions until reinforcements arrive.

Kinda says it all, doesn’t it? And, interestingly, it captures the trials of my protag nicely, too… She drinks. She smokes. She turns pumpkins into Volkswagens. Will her character deficits derail her or save the day?

I stand on the brink. The war is about to begin… and I sprained my leg! The garage floor rose with unseemly haste, and I got a good look at a cobweb under my work bench  before the dogs came to see why I had decided to dust the floor with my sweatpants. Sometimes this writing business has my pantaloons in knots!

Now I’m sitting here at my desk sideways, foot propped up with ice packs, trying to type. Not as limber as I used to be but have managed to squeak past the 1k word count, 1,096 to be exact.

Now, let’s talk a little about the “F” word…

Fear, it’s one of my biggest obstacles. Last spring when I answered the retreat workshop survey, I put it at the top of my list of writing weaknesses. There are times, those low-pressure fronts that pass over the soul, when I am afraid I won’t finish, won’t be up to the challenge, that what I’ve got so far is in fact a fluke. I’ve tried to nix the fear by chunking down this project into smaller steps. The step I’m working on now is simply to tell the story, from start to finish, no matter how skeletal, no matter how awful the prose.

I started with a soft Dec. 31st deadline, all the while my inner editor was telling me I’d have to extend it to mid-January, and my screaming monkey mind telling me that Jan. 31st was the absolute, drop-dead deadliine. And now an anxiety bordering on superstition is telling me to finish by that deadline or else!

There are 21 days left, three more weekends, three more writing Wednesdays. Deep breath, out slow. Yes, I can do this.

Better than zip, but I hated to leave so close to Cindy’s big birthday bash. She’s got a gun and a raging case of PMS. Will the Fairy God Squad get there in time? And what will they be driving?

Meanwhile, Gladiola has learned that the Fantasy Football Elves plan to gate-crash Cinderella’s birthday party.

But we’ll worry about that tomorrow…

An enchanting evening to all,

That got me thinking about MY process. I found Nat tremendously inspiring as I was trying to kick my way back to the surface as a writer. I had gone so deep into denial, I didn’t write for 30 years, except a dabble here and there.

Restarting the creative engine was painful and slow. The wheels and cogs in my right brain were sludgy and rusted. The oil that greased the wheel was first, Natalie, then my writing practice group. As a result, my creaky engine cranked into gear while I was still poring through the owners manual and work books, reading all that I could on craft, trends, new writing.

I found myself in middle age to be a nascent writer again. First, because lack of practice had made me as wobbly as a newborn. Second, years of negative internal dialog had to be deprogrammed and excised from my thought process, so that what had been frozen could melt and germinate again. And third, writing over the last 30 years has evolved, and I had a lot of catching up to do. And, of course, trying to take those first baby steps after years of inactivity. So what is my process?

I find my process changing with each new project, sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly. But it changes nonetheless.

When I wrote my first short story after years of silence, my heart sang with the poetry of place. My inspiration was the red desert of Northern Arizona and a terrifying but liberating experience I had while there. Trying to capture all of this on paper was a bit like trying to stake down fog. I was suffering sensory overload and drafts of writer’s block by turns. It nearly overwhelmed me. On the plane back from AZ, I quickly sketched out the basic outline of what had happened. When I got home, I generated a list of symbols and meanings. What did it all mean, for gods sake! How could I massage actual details of the experience into scenes, dialog, and story in such a way that my words would carry plot lines, through lines, character development, theme and message to a plausible conclusion — was there a conclusion — and leave the reader feeling satisfied?

Next I got started on novel, a fantasy. Here, I thought, the struggle I’d had with theme and message could be glossed over. Fairytales themselves would provide all that. I could just adapt and corrupt the storehoue of stories to suit my own mood and metabolism at any given moment. Wrong again!

The story I thought I would write turned into a parody, a farce, a satirical fantasy piece that constantly feels as though it is running away with me, on the verge of leaping out of control. It is a big, sprawling paramecium, and I feel myself constantly plumping it like a big, shapeless pillow as I try to force form and structure onto this mindless chaos, this free-for-all of indulgent but fun writing.

So that’s my writing process. I chase story ideas and suffer through restless nights while characters whisper plot points in my ear — one actually insisted the other night that I would have to “get rid of” another character. Herding the story through its various iterations is a big part of the process, even while the story contorts, twists and shifts to escape. Again, I am attempting to stake fog!