Summer Lovin’ Blog Tour
Apr •
25 •
2012
How (and Why) to Be an Outsider
I like to be indoors. Indoors has my computer and my books and my sofa and Doctor Who. Indoors is dry and temperature-controlled and free of bugs. I haven’t always been this way. When I was growing up in Seattle, I was always on my bike or roller skates or screaming through the yard being chased by a giant mouse (I had a bizarre imagination even then). Or I’d read for hours under a tree. Outdoors was an escape, too from Mom and Dad’s regular Saturday screaming match. Even if I could still hear it (along with the opera music), somehow not being trapped with walls around me felt better.
And then there was my grandparents’ place, “Cherrywood,” in Indiana, where I spent my days among the oaks or on the screened-in porch. I loved it there—the warm, spicy air filled with birdsong. It was my haven.
But, I’m an adult now with task lists and deadlines and Important Things To Do—indoors, of course.
So when I wrote THE SUMMER OF NO REGRETS, whose main character, Brigitta, practically lives
outdoors, I was stuck. I stared at the screen, trying to imagine what trees were like.
It was kind of stupid.
Finally, I had no choice but to take the computer into the woods and find a stump to sit on. It was often wet, and I had to commune with the insect world, but I wrote some of my best scenes out there. And the earth began to teach me things:
1) Nature surprises. That “ptchioo” sound I kept hearing was not a bird; it was a squirrel called a
chickaree. One morning, I lay on a nurse log watched as two of them conversed from different
trees. Their bodies would go rigid with each call. After a while, a third squirrel appeared and
then a fourth. They called back and forth in rhythm, perfectly timed, as if they had sheet music.
Pretty cool.
2) Nature heals. After learning that someone dear to me had attempted suicide, I couldn’t sleep.
Sometime after midnight I took a sleeping bag and went outside, where I lay under the stars.
When you are sorrowing, look at the sky! You feel your smallness in the midst of something
vast and unfathomable. We are accustomed to thinking we can know everything, given enough
study. The sky gives me hope that we can’t—that there will always be things we don’t know and will never understand. I want to live in a universe like that.
3) Nature reconnects us. Because we are made of star stuff and nourished by the atmosphere of this planet, we suffer from the layers that separate us from the earth—roof, walls, foundation, floorboards, carpet, shoes, socks. To step barefoot out the door and into the dirt is to find ourselves once more. Try it!
And when you read THE SUMMER OF NO REGRETS, do so, if you can, under the sky.
Thanks so much for being here today!
Happy Reading!
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I like being indoors too. Unless I’m outdoors with a good book.
I loved Summer of No Regrets. And I love Brigitta’s name.
OH how cool! You wrote a book IN the woods! This sounds really awesome too Ive seen it before and have it on my TBR list 🙂
I am such an indoors girl too. I love that the author wrote some of the book in the woods! That’s great! 🙂
This sounds like some books I would like. I also need to get outdoors more. My pooch would love that. 🙂
I’ve always loved being outdoors, there’s just something refreshing about being out in the open, no walls or barriers or anything. I will day I don’t love the bug situation at all, I could do without bugs:) *shudders* Give me a book and a chair on a patio and I’m a happy woman!