Day 11: Creativity and Escape (1/16/22)

 Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of my favorite writers, was in love with language and with nature. Both priest and poet, he glimpsed the mystery and beauty of God in the green hills and woods of England. Read him sometime, just for delight. Anyway, he coined a word, “inscape,” trying to capture the qualities of an object or idea that gives it uniqueness. He wrote in his journal, “There is one notable dead tree…the inscape markedly holding its most simple and beautiful oneness up from the ground through a graceful swerve below (I think) the spring of the branches up to the tops of the timber. I saw the inscape freshly, as if my mind were still growing….”

On my morning walk, I found several trees that might have made it into Hopkins’s journal.

As a busy parish priest, Hopkins must have prized his solitary walks in the hills, as well as his quiet hours spent crafting poetry and writing in his journal. It would have been an escape from the constant press of his parishioners’ needs.

I found this thought comforting, because I too can feel hemmed in, living in a small space with two dogs and an extrovert for a husband. Phil does an outstanding job of trying to give me space, something all introverts require on a regular basis. But there are times when escape is needed.

So today I took pen and paper and a thermos of tea to the other side of the park, sat in a shady spot well away from picnickers, and thought about writing a story that involved finding Roman and Saxon artifacts in England.  It was a refreshing way to spend several hours—staring out at the lake, jotting down thoughts, listening to the conversations floating across the water. I met—metaphorically speaking—two girls, Freya and Fatima, and began a journey with them that might end up in a story someday.

For those few hours, I was no longer in Texas, no longer living in a travel trailer, no longer the caregiver for two needy dogs, no longer trying to figure out how to cook the evening meal. I was gone…away…living and breathing elsewhere. It was the perfect gift for a Sunday afternoon.