I looked around for something to sit on while I wrote and tended a flaming burn pile. It was a fine sunny morning at the sanctuary, the dogs were in the back yard, and I was giddy at the prospect of my first burn pile in over a decade. Over the years I’ve spent my good long hours around burn piles, alone, with friends, dates, dogs, but the habit got away from me. That was a mistake.<\/p>\n
A bald eagle circled overhead. I heard geese upriver. I heard a logging operation and the distinctive toot<\/i> of the of the horn that signaled a fallen tree was ready to be hauled up the hill and later loaded on a truck and sent to a mill or China. I’m glad I knew what that toot<\/i> meant. That knowledge comes in handy when writing about Oregon and clearcut metaphors.<\/p>\n
The fire was ripping and the scent delighted me; the manual labor delighted me.<\/p>\n
A rusted metal chair near the house caught my eye. I went over to inspect it as a possible chair candidate. It looked as if it had absorbed a million gallons of Oregon rain the last 30 years and its sturdiness seemed dubious.<\/p>\n
I examined the chair. It had a bullet hole through its back. Someone had shot the chair! It had survived.<\/p>\n
Now that really delighted me!<\/p>\n
I picked up the chair and brought it over to the burn pile. I sat on it. Rock solid. I knew I was going to write a letter to a friend from this chair while tending the fire and hanging out with the dogs. I also knew I had just commenced a new chapter in my writing life because I would be taking the rusted bullet-hole chair home with me and write everything while sitting in it.<\/p>\n
Where will the writing go from this chair? Or should I say, where will the chair lead the writing?<\/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 looked around for something to sit on while I wrote and tended a flaming burn pile. It was a fine sunny morning at the sanctuary, the dogs were in the back yard, and I was giddy at the prospect of my first burn pile in over a decade. Over the years I’ve spent my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,7,731],"class_list":["post-3913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-matt-love","tag-writing","tag-writing-chair","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\/3913","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=3913"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3916,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3913\/revisions\/3916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}