Writing and Sketching in Nature
Have you ever walked along a river, perhaps taken a break to sit beneath a tree and breath in nature’s freshness? If so, do your surroundings evoke a creative response? Perhaps you want to draw or write or just sit and soak in the rejuvenating ambience. The urge to create comes to me as a feeling of excitement. Energy moves through me, inspiring me to write or sketch.
Writing and sketching while camping at the Cascade River are two of my favorite past times. Along with my watercolor box and ink pens, I carry my beautiful Italian journal. I write poems that I’ll later send out to the August Poetry Month list. Some of the poems are snapshots, some philosphical, some playful in nature. Next to a poem I sketch lichen or trees, and the river.
Recently, I was chosen by Writing the Land as poet to pair with the Whatcom Land Trust’s property, Todd Creek. See the article published in Whatcom Talk here. Most of my poetry is still in rough draft form, as my tenure is a year long, ending in May of 2023. I will have three poems ready for the Writing the Land website at that time. Below is an example:
Sticky silt surrounds blue shields where
floating logs settled on new cedar seedlings.
Overhead in an old maple, an eagle peruses the land.
Side currents eat away at the bank, swirling around
a logjam as big as sawmill. Swallows flit
through and over the layers of logs. Roil of river
will break the bank again with coming storms.
Let me know what you’re up to? Where do you walk for inspiration? Do you write poems? Do you sketch? Let’s have a conversation! Best, Nancy Canyon
Nancy Canyon is published in Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, True Stories, Raven Chronicles, Water~Stone Review, Fourth Genre, Floating Bridge Review, and more. She holds the MFA in Creative Writing from PLU, coaches for The Narrative Project, and paints in her Fairhaven art studio. Nancy’s poetry collection “Saltwater” and novel “Celia’s Heaven” are available through villagebooks.com. More at www.nancycanyon.com
