I'm Back...a little

So it's been a long time since I wrote a blog, I know, but the writing juices have just not been flowing recently. The desire is still there, as it always is, but there just seems to be some kind of block between the desire and the act. I hate it when it gets this way. It really drives me a little crazy.

In an effort to see if maybe I can fix this dilemma I am going back to the White Mountains this weekend with my friend Ronnie. Most of you have not met him, but he's a really good guy that's been a friend at the coffeehouse for six or seven years now. Anyway, I'm hoping some wilderness time will help me to get past this block that I seem to have going on.

Sometimes everything just seems to die on the page, and sometimes it feels like murder. It can become a very depressing thing if it happens enough times in a row. I know that it is a common sentiment among writers and I continue to feel that I have probably just not been doing it long enough to have my own process worked out to the point that I can write something good, but I'm not going to get there any faster if I have to keep stopping for months on end.

The point being, Mother Nature helps. She always does. I'm not sure how it works but it just seems that every three to six months I get this pull somewhere between my stomach and chest and I just know that it's time to go. I know that it's been too long. There's a presence out there that you just can't feel here. I've grown up hearing stories about Native American spirit quests, where they would go wandering alone in the wilderness for days at a time, and the more I think about it the more I believe that all of us Anglos of European descent have just been to far disconnected for too many centuries to even know what we're missing, or what we've forgotten. When you're out there, if you really open yourself to it, you can tell that there is a lot more going on than what you can learn from books, or what's on the nature channel.

It's an experience I think that everyone needs, and that few people experience. Regardless of all of that "This is What's Wrong with People in General" theorizing, I'm headed out this afternoon and I'm hoping to find some of that mystic voodoo. Who knows, maybe it'll help me become a great writer someday. Right now I'd settle for a little less angst throughout the process.