Follow Me . . . and Find a Mythical Creature!

Thank you to those who have found me on my new blog, Writer in Residence.

I'd love to see the rest of you over there:  Just click here and find the "Follow" button at the bottom of the page:  Writer in Residence.

Today's post features a photo of a mythical creature and a full speech on shyness & introversion!

See you there!
Becca

Writer in Residence

Dear blog follower extraordinaire!  Happy new year!  Although January has already got a bit of mileage on it . . .
Just to let you know, I've migrated my blog to wordpress, and it would be awesome if you'd follow me over there.  And comment there about how your new year is going so far!  Just visit www.beccalawton.wordpress.com and sign in.  Love to see you there, as I'll be more actively writing about writing on the blog this year.

Thanks for following my work so far.  And thanks for doing yours!
Becca

Postmodern Manger

On the brink of 2012, all things are possible--even a log-cabin creche in which one finds a melding of poultry and hoofed beast.  Manger in French is to eat.  In English a manger is a trough housed in a stable and used to hold feed or fodder for livestock.  In this scene the duck lies down with the lamb.  It reminds us all things are possible.  All resolutions can be made and kept.  We can resolve to stop global warming.  We can have world peace. 

California

Chainsaw totem from Highway 128 In September, I had the great pleasure to serve as Writer in Residence for The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.  http://home.gci.net/~island/index.htm. "The Island Institute cultivates uncommon conversations about the nature of vital communities -- the web of human relationships and responsibilities, and our connections to the greater natural world." Before I departed California for Alaska, I wrote a version of the following musing, emailed it to friends in a newsletter, and pasted it to my website: Who knows how change comes about?  Sometimes we change in great surges that seem obvious; sometimes we find ourselves altered in increments so tiny we don’t recognize them any more clearly than we can see the forest for the trees. What a surprise to discover that I’m one of the trees.  Why has it taken me so long to see that?  The forest is changing—taking on more people, warming, losing numbers of species, acquiring great new voices.  Jordan’s work is taking her further into classes she shares with fiction writers of all inclination.  My own change is taking me north to learn about community—how art is used to create dialogue in one small town in Alaska.  Because I’m so close to the California community I’ve inhabited for the last twenty years, I’m going away to view my home from afar—and let those at home see me in a new light, too. I’m going north to write about water: in fiction, in our lives, in our future.  I’ll spend the month of September on Thimbleberry Bay on Baranof Island, witness to the migrations of great ocean creatures that pass in channels off the Pacific.  I plan to use the time to write deeply, as I’ve always taught in my own workshops and practiced when I can.  From the residency time I intend to bring home an honest work about water as I see it. I’ve experienced water from the river’s waves, under its surface, above streambeds gone dry, from boats riding on ninety thousand cubic feet per second, and from boats dragging through cobbles on 1/1000 of that flow.  Now I’ll see water in a northern world, helped by dialogue with those who live there year round. While traveling Route 128 between Cloverdale and Mendocino with my daughter last summer, I found this chainsaw totem by the side of the road.  It is to the art of tree carving as the remaining redwood forests are to the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska--pale in comparison.  But, reluctantly, I admit I love this rough-hewn face--and, reluctantly, I admit I still love California.  Now I'm home and writing about the Sacramento River, California.  Many know that California is an island too.  In fact it is said to be named for Queen Calafia, who ruled a colony of women on the Island of California before explorers found it was indeed connected to the mainland.  And it is.  Sort of.  As Baranof Island is sort of connected to Alaska.

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© Rebecca Lawton 2011

Confluence

The Sacramento River near the confluence with the Feather is a place of sedimentation, old marinas, and salmon fishing.  With photographer Geoff Fricker (these are not his photos; his are much better!), I visited restoration sites installed by the nonprofit group River Partners, designed to allow the river to go overbank in flood.  Pungent mugwort, thriving sycamore, sign of beaver at work, more birds than we could count--those are the gifts of these installations.  Out on the water, the clouds reflect back into a blue sky turned cold by the first snowstorm over the Sierra.  A good day to stand by the joining of two rivers--two streams of water from the north, where the ducks and geese are settling from their long autumn flights.

View

Virginia Woolf said that for a woman to write fiction she must have two things: a room of her own (with key and lock) and enough money to support herself.  E.M. Forster's heroines in the pensione in Florence insisted on a room with a view.  My view is: it helps to have a room of one's own with a view. 

Here is the view from the window in Sitka, Alaska, where I wrote fiction 99% of the time, nonfiction 1%.  When I looked up from my work at the kitchen table, there were whales, ducks, gulls, mountains, forested slopes, and fishing boats on the move.  The tide was always there to remind me, too, that the earth has a pulse.  Helped me stay alert and focused as I wrote about water and our relationship to it.

Thank you Carolyn Servis and Dorik Mechau of the Island Institute, Dave and Marge Steward, Joan VanderWerp and Bob Ellis, and the friendly community of Sitka.  It was a remarkable time.

Canines

Now that the bear's teeth are painted on the Baranof pole, the canines I thought were missing can be seen easily.  Canine means "pointed tooth," comes from Latin "caninus," meaning "of the dog."  Hair of the dog that bit you?  You can say you've come down with Caninus.  A canine tooth is also called a cuspid, dogtooth, or fang.  

A mother brown bear from these woods, protecting a cub, charged one of my neighbors last season, according to friends here.  The neighbor tried to escape the charge but fell to the ground.  The mother bear came on, overtook her, and opened her great jaw.  She gently squeezed the fallen woman's arm with her canines.  A little warning nip.