Exercise those Creativity Muscles

God knows the world needs all
     the good it can get right now --
Out in the gardens and fields,
     Goldfinches are gilding the land for free,
Leaving little gifts of light:
     a gleam for the teasel,
     a glint for the tree.
~from "Goldfinch" by Robert Macfarlane

Back in February, I visited a friend who lives about an hour away. Maine was still in deep winter, every inch of ground covered in at least a foot of snow, although that day temperatures would peek up above the freezing mark for the first time in over a week. I parked my car outside her rural home and we took her car into town for lunch, window shopping, and a visit to an art exhibit. As I made my way home that evening, my car underwent a series of worrying symptoms: a popping sound, followed by the dash lights coming on, a realization that the power steering wasn’t working, cessation of warm air coming out of the heating vents. About seven miles from home, the headlights dimmed to almost uselessness. I pulled over and called for help, moments before the car shut off completely. When Curry arrived I rummaged around in the back in search of jumper cables while he opened the hood. On the sound of a rare expletive escaping his lips, I came around to see what was up.

There, in the depths of my car, illuminated by Curry’s bright headlamp, I saw a mass of dark brown fur, mangled by and tangled in the car’s drive belts. A woodchuck (aka groundhog) had poked its head up in the balmy 36 degrees and, upon seeing its shadow, decided to go back to sleep until spring, but instead of retreating to its burrow, decided the splash guard beneath my engine compartment would be cozy place to rest away the season. The tow truck dispatcher got a good chuckle out of the story, but my mechanic, who spent an hour chiseling frozen woodchuck chunks off various components, was less amused. Tragedy for the woodchuck aside, it was the stupidest car breakdown I’ve ever experienced (and I’ve experienced a lot of breakdowns).

I see it as a metaphor for what’s happening nationally in the US, with the gang who can’t shoot straight driving our country off the fascist cliff. It’s the stupidest, most embarrassing descent into authoritarianism any country has ever had to endure, but much like a woodchuck derailing my serpentine belt, the result are the same as if it we had a more serious and dignified bunch of Nazis at the helm—a total hellscape and an abdication of all this country is supposed to stand for.

I was hoping their buffoonishness would slow them down, but apparently not, so I’ll keep writing letters and making phone calls to my congresspeople and holding up signs at rallies, because even a joke of a coup is still a coup.

This month I’ve been teaching a workshop called Journaling Backyard Birds. Every week I get together with a group of about a dozen enthusiastic participants and go through a range of drawing and writing exercises designed to get them to truly see and pay attention to birds and have fun making art. It’s been incredible to witness the work they’ve produced, but it’s also fascinating to me how much anxiety many people bring to creative work. The exercises I give students in all my classes are designed to help overcome this anxiety. I have only one rule: no disclaimers. Still, almost always someone says, “I’m not an artist,” or “I can’t draw,” or “I’m not a poet.”

I believe humans are inherently creative beings, and yet there’s something in our society, or in our personal lives, whether it’s parents or teachers or the overarching culture that convinces us that if we’re not natural-born geniuses, we have no business creating, that the goal of creative expression is a product, and if that product isn’t perfect on the first try, then don’t bother. Part of this I think comes from seeing professional artists’ end result, not their struggle—we attend the concert, not the rehearsals; read the book, not the rough drafts littering the floor; view the painting, not the sketchbooks full of attempts. It’s more romantic to see art flowing from inborn talent than sweat and toil.

Even as I coax my students to have fun with and enjoy the process, and encourage them to see the goal (with nature journaling at least) as developing a relationship with whatever aspect of the natural world they’re drawing or writing about, rather than creating a framable piece of art, I struggle with this myself. A year ago, I was on fire: during that late winter and spring, I was generating an essay or two a week, plus a couple of short stories, and a freelance article. Then, with one thing and another, I just kind of. . . stopped. . . when summer came and never got going again.

Back in February I was invited to contribute an essay to an anthology. At first I was thrilled at the opportunity, but then I struggled with writing the essay more than I’ve struggled with anything for a long time. I usually have a hard time getting going on a writing project but eventually hit my stride and the words start to flow. That did not happen. Each and every word had to be chiseled out of solid concrete with a nail file. I have a few theories on why this piece was so hard to write, one of which is that after a hiatus of about nine months since I’d last been writing personal creative work with any degree of regularity I was out of shape.

This adds one more element to my (probably not very original and still under development) theory of creativity: 1) we are all creative beings; 2) many of us our socialized into being afraid to express/practice our creativity; 3) the process of creating is fun and liberating and much more valuable than the outcome; 4) creative work (art, writing, music, whatever) is made up of two parts: an internal spark or drive plus the skills to execute that drive in our chosen creative medium; 5) both the spark and the skill can be improved/enhanced with development, through training and practice; 6) regular practice is essential to keeping our spark alive and our skills in shape.

I’d let #6 go for close to a year, and my writing muscles got flabby. But I finished that essay, and most of another one since. I’m doing reps and laps and working my way toward getting back into creative shape, with a goal of staying there.

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Spring is making its slow way into the land here in Maine, with the occasional snowstorm to remind us we’re not out of the wintery woods yet. Migratory birds are showing up daily, frogs are singing, and we’re getting our first flowers of the year: speckled alder, willow, beaked hazelnut, and quaking aspen, with the first of the maple buds just starting to open. I went for a hike at a land trust property near the coast last week, and, crossing a swampy area on a boardwalk, came across a profusion of skunk cabbage flowers. We don’t have any skunk cabbage growing on our property (despite having plenty of swampy areas), so it’s not a flower I think about from year to year, and one I only run into by chance.

Skunk cabbage, a relative of Jack-in-the-pulpit, is a wonderfully alien-looking flower, with the actual flower a spiky yellow knob growing within a hood-shaped red spathe. The plant also has the amazing property of creating heat, by absorbing oxygen and burning off the starch stored in its roots through a process called thermogenesis. This handy trick allows the flower heads to melt away ice and snow as they emerge in the early spring. Scientists have found that the heat differential between the ambient air and the area within the spathe can be as much as 60 degrees. The bloody color of the plants and the rotting meat odor they generate attract flies, carrion beetles, and other insects that feed on flesh, and these in turn pollinate the plants.

I’m thinking I need to visit the land trust again in a few weeks to collect some seeds and see if they’ll grow into stinky, fascinating skunk cabbages in one of our wetlands.

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Still going through a dry season for writing and publishing, but I’ve been making up for not writing by reading like a maniac. You can check out my March Reads post here.

And if you haven’t read it yet, with hiking season on the horizon now would be a great time to pick up my book, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail.

Happy spring, friends! What’s blooming in your neck of the woods?