Where We're Going

A few updates all at once:

• For one month starting in early June I'll be traveling through London, Switzerland, eastern France, and southwest Germany. Why? Twenty-five or so high school students. I'm chaperoning the German trip. Yes, I know. But I think it's going to be great fun. And the stories, my friends, THE STORIES.

• A new essay about my father and me and our fishing exploits is up over at The Backcountry Journal. Check it out? Here's a little tease:
• "Water. A boat or a bit of shoreline. A rod, bait, maybe a net. That perfect fish. I'd place my bets that you're already seeing it, that time when you pulled a slick, silvery body in. That time a surge that felt a lot like love came up with the end of your swallowed line. Your fishing story. And the people you turned to first to tell it."   [more]

• Some publicity folks asked if I might like to review the BBC's most recent nature documentary series Frozen Earth. Since they promised free DVD packs of the film for two of my plucky readers/followers/subscribers, I said hell yes with an iceberg on top. Watch for that review and giveaway.

• And here's what I've been soaking in for a month: The Loft Literary Center is hosting it's first annual Nature, Outdoors, and Environmental Writing Conference this September just north of the Twin Cities. Good enough news all on its own, right? I could hardly believe my down-the-road luck. But what's more is that I'll be presenting there with a handful of talented writers and thinkers, including Scott Russell Sanders. It was Sanders' essay "Writing From The Center" that first got me thinking about flyover country, flyover fiction, place-related words, all of this.

          Yeah.

• So where I was motivated before to put together a great presentation, now it is what I think about. And since my talk's topic will be blogging--how it can both enrich your connection to the natural world and your writing practice--I want and need to be 100% transparent here. I will keep posting on what inspires me, when it inspires me, of course. That's been the whole point from the beginning, and that's probably why you've stuck around. But in the next several months, I'm going to need your help, friends. For experience's sake, I'm going to try some new things (giveaways), reach out to other networks (guest blogging), curate and edit an online newsletter (Nature-Talk), and ask you, dear reader, some basic nature/blog/photography/writing related questions. Any feedback you'd care to share with me will be gobbled up with heaps of appreciation. I'm planning to create a Prezi that includes names and links and a whole mess of goodness. I'd love for your voice to be a part of the mix. 

• In the mean time, if you have books or articles I should read, questions I should be thinking about, or whatever, please let me know. We're one big community, right? If I've learned anything from this bloggy venture, it's been that the world really is small after all.

To the road!