Mystified

Have you ever looked out an airplane window and wanted to touch the clouds? Or walk on them, like an angel in a cream cheese commercial?

This morning, an hour after sunrise, a soft mist hovered over the field, across the path where I intended to walk. I smiled at the thought of being in the mist, like being in a cloud. What would it feel like on the skin of my bare arms, bare legs? Would it feel as soft as it looked? Like a gentle caress?

But as I approached the mist, it moved further away, then off to the right. I couldn’t seem to get into the mist. Turning, looking back at where I’d been, I realized I had already walked through the mist.

Sometimes it is only when we look back that we can see where we’ve come. Sometimes, being in the mist is not chaotic or soul wrenching, but is subtle, delicate, elusive. A soothing and tender transition.

As I look back at last month’s experience at Sage Hill Writing School, I remember a feeling of being held in the palm of compassion. By my instructor, by all the faculty, by my classmates, by the writers in classes of different genres. For ten days, I was a writer. We talked about craft, shared our stories, our processes, our goals. We allowed ourselves to be vulnerable. We respected and honoured that vulnerability in each other, in ourselves. We began to see ourselves as writers. Not just see it, but to be it. To experience it fully until the knowingness was imbued in every cell of one’s being.

I am a writer.

Yes, there is still much to learn about this craft, yet the knowing I am a writer now resides more fully. Or perhaps, having been through the mist, I am now seeing clearly what has been there all along.

With gratitude to Sage Hill Writing School.

For this opportunity, I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.