This weekend I had one of the best days I’ve had since the start of the pandemic. I went for a meandering walk in the pouring rain at Minto-Brown Island Park in Salem. I had no deadlines, no purpose, and was dressed for adventure.
Having spent hundreds of hours hiking in the park, I’m fairly familiar with many of the smaller, back trails. I took a few rarely-traveled paths towards the river. The recent ice storm had caused a lot of damage, and some of the trails were barely passable.
I scrambled over, under, and around trees and branches. I took macro photos of buds on a cottonwood branch that had fallen across the trail. The whole adventure opened me up creatively and for the first time in years, my creative path forward was clear to me.
I wrote a sequence of seven haiku all inspired by one of the images I took on the hike As I manipulated the image, new haiku stories presented themself to my imagination.
I hope you enjoy the results!
Please share this post with anyone you know who might enjoy it. Your recommendation is the best endorsement I can receive for my work.
Be the weird you want to see in the world,
Jason