gone fishing

Yes, that’s me fishing at age 6 in a little corner of the world called Crandle Lake in Northeast Montana. My father loved to fish, and I was generally the eager adventurer, so fishing it was. This is one of my favorite pictures of childhood. For one, in order for this photo to happen, my Dad had to have thought ahead to bring a camera. I’m wearing handmade clothes my grandmother made, and those soft hair ties we used to wear — Mom put them in. It was a windy day so my father threw his sweater around my shoulders. He had such toasty sweaters! And there I was in the peace-filled outdoors, waiting for the fish to bite and hanging with Daddy.

Sometimes we need that, don’t we? We just need to get away from it all — the older sister who always seems ready to pick a fight, the messy room, the hum-drum of home. We just need to pack up a lunch, the tackle box and an ice-filled cooler and head out. Summer’s as good a time as any to go looking for solitude.

I’m finding I need it too at this juncture in the summer. I need to remove myself for just a little while from the active, busy world of blogging, camp out somewhere cool, and do what needs being done. In particular, I have two projects that are calling to me, urgently. The summer has started off well, and now I feel ready to tackle those projects. But I can’t do it if I am also thinking up the next blog post. So I’m going to pull back just long enough to get at those projects and feel like I’ve made progress on them.

As writers, we need to conserve our writing time. It’s hard-won at times. Writing well requires a lot of mental energy. I’m setting out to do that. When I return, I expect to come back revived and readier than ever to engage with the blogging community I’ve come to adore.

I think this break will be good for all of us. I’ll keep my comments open, and I might even come back now and again to post a photo or two. I’ll definitely post things like upcoming newspaper columns — need to keep the published material flowing along. But the regularly scheduled programming will change a bit, for a month or so, until I can’t stand it any longer and feel the strong urge to rejoin you all again.

Thanks for understanding. I truly hope you all have a wonderful rest of the summer. I look forward to the end-of-summer reunion!

Hasta luego (until later),

PGM

P.S. I am going to keep posting weekly on Peace Garden Writer, so if you enjoy reading my rants about the writing life, they’ll be available still on a regular basis, and I might even come back here with a little reminder each week if I think of it.