What Was Your Favorite Picture Book?

Sometimes when I forget how to stay in love with my creative life, my favorite old picture book can remind me.

The image below is a page from Little Red Riding Hood illustrated by Elizabeth Orton Jones. It was first published in 1948 by Little Golden Books. This 1973 edition was a gift to me from my grandmother, who may have read an earlier edition to my mother when she was a small child.

The illustrations in children’s books of this era were so gorgeous.

I used to wander through these pages, hour after hour, in my childhood imagination. Now, I like to think that maybe this is why I feel so at home on the soft shadowy carpets of a forest today.

The spiral of time is a beautiful mystery, and I find it’s wonderful creative fuel to try to imagine life moving forward, back, and circling round in time. Do you ever play with this idea in your creative work?

On this single page, you’ll notice there are mushrooms, a trout lily, a butterfly, a squirrel, and what looks to be tiny, white ghost pipes (Monotropa uniflora). These are among my personal favorite forest lifeforms today. Perhaps my child-self held a dream about her someday life?

What did you love to play when you were little? Are there any heartstrings still attached to this activity for you today?

The microseasons remind me to feel the freshness of life, absorbed through my senses and through my direct—unmediated— experience of nature. No matter what’s bothering me, as soon as I’m on the path, light comes pouring into my day and I am changed. Everything about hiking is so healing for me.

Mostly, the microseasons help me understand that there is wonder to be found in the ordinary.

A while back, after several days of soaking rain, I found the largest colony of Ghost Flowers I have ever seen— dozens of them had emerged overnight!

These odd, mushroom-like wildflowers are my favorite species. I never know where or when they’ll appear along the trail. I love the mysterious way these flowers emerge already fully-formed from the ground, connected by the hidden mycelium below the soil, and fed through the generosity of a nearby tree.

Even after many years of hiking, I’m constantly discovering a new-to-me creature.

Recently, my husband and I came upon a harmless Giant Leaf-footed Bug. On all our hikes, how had we never noticed one before? The intricate armor of their body! Their sweet, shy side-eye glance! Utterly charming. Now we see them all the time.

Such everyday forest lifeforms scatter seeds of wild, creative Love that can inspire us to imagine what we might want to make, or write, or paint during this microseason of time.

Make the most beautiful thing you can.

Try to do that every day.

That’s it.

—Laurie Anderson

My contemplative practice is natural and unfussy. I’m not living my life by someone else’s expectations, nor politics, nor peer pressure, but living my life by the simplicity of being in love.

I’m paying attention to what I see—does it see me?

If I allow it, this feeling of wonder spills over, permeating my home life and my clinical days at work with a peaceful sense of ease. Then life becomes less of a struggle, less competitive, less grasping.

I’m reminded to grow in patience as I believe that the wheel of the seasons turns lovingly. This generous Love is what we can experience naturally, slowly, day by day. Everything takes exactly the time it needs to grow and flourish. So do we.

As each microseason reveals its simple gifts, it shows us the truth: our essential human nature is to be in love with each other and with Life.

xo Ann

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