I am sitting on a bench, eating my lunch, watching the slack river, typing this on my trusty AlphaSmart. Across the channel, a bald eagle perches in a black cottonwood tree. The first bumble bee of the season just bumbled by. Canadian geese are honking. Frogs just sent up croaky chorus. Here comes a little drift boat with a puttering motor. A man wearing a brown hoodie is sort of fishing. A log truck rumbles behind me, carrying death from the watersheds. I am thinking of a phone call I received the other day, around midnight, from someone incredibly dear to me. It had been almost two years since we last talked. It was good to hear her voice; there is something in that voice that has always entranced me. Perhaps it’s how she articulates her astonishing vocabulary. I hope to hear more of this voice in the coming months and years and hear it declaim dreams and aspirations. I long to hear freedom in her voice.<\/p>\n
This is a good riverine place. No one is around. I could teach a writing workshop here. To one other person. Perhaps that person could be the voice at midnight. I once saw her feed a candy cane to a gull. It was one the most graceful things I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n
I wish I knew the name of some of the waterfowl flying overhead. Sometimes I believe it is good to know the name of a species that confers delight upon me. That is a way of honoring it. We don’t honor nature enough. I have wondered if the current President of the United States has ever had a memorable delightful moment in nature. Golf doesn’t count.<\/p>\n
It is time to leave this river and go back to the artificial world.<\/p>\n
I love writing outside.<\/p>\n
(If you found this post enjoyable, thought provoking or enlightening, please consider supporting a writer at work by making a financial contribution to this blog or by purchasing an NSP book.) <\/i><\/p>\n\n I am sitting on a bench, eating my lunch, watching the slack river, typing this on my trusty AlphaSmart. Across the channel, a bald eagle perches in a black cottonwood tree. The first bumble bee of the season just bumbled by. Canadian geese are honking. Frogs just sent up croaky chorus. Here comes a little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3827,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[699,13,207,86,7],"class_list":["post-3826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-netul-river","tag-oregon-coast","tag-oregon-rivers","tag-river","tag-writing","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3826"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3829,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3826\/revisions\/3829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}