Writers are always talking (read complaining) about how to make money and still have some energy left for writing, family, friends, etc. I’ve been thinking on this for a long time now, but River’s arrival last summer put a new pressure on me to figure out what I’m actually going to do.

Last fall I was in the thick of job applications with nothing panning out. I was lucky to have a fellowship to help me through the rest of the MFA and I requested a forward of half of my small grant from last year. Just as that money about ran out, I received an email from the lovely and ever talented Rebecca Hoogs of Seattle Arts & Lectures, asking if I would be interested in a residency at Children’s Hospital (I wrote about that experience here and here and here). The week that residency ended I began my second annual stint as an associate editor for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Quick, busy and good. The week that position wrapped up Rebecca Hoogs surprised me again with another email out of the blue offering me a new residency at TOPS, an alternative public school in Seattle. So, for the rest of the spring I’ll be teaching poetry to 8th graders once or twice a week.

I know it doesn’t always happen like this, but somehow it feels as though the world has conspired to make life possible for us in our new role as parents. Of course, the work is hard—very hard—most of the time, but it is good work. It’s the kind of work that asks me to grow and engage with things I care about—poetry and people. So, even when I’m not making a living off of poetry alone, I’ve been surprised to find work that encourages the time required to write (i.e. chase poems from the shadows).

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In other news, I was recently invited to Ink Node, an online journal with a unique attitude toward publishing. The journal is “virally edited” as the founders of the mag put it, meaning that one must being invited to publish, but with that invitation comes the chance for the author to invite five new authors on board. It is this last piece that has me most excited. I’ve been able to connect with a number of wonderful writers online and these invitations have allowed me to engage in that community to an even greater degree.

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I’m so glad to have Elle and River back from Arizona. Life just doesn’t work so well when they are gone. With that said, my to-do list is growing out of control and I need to get serious and go in with the mind of a machete. Which reminds me of the time I carved a bowl from a log in the back country of northern Saskatchewan during a 33-day canoeing expedition mainly using a machete. So much can be learned from the pleasure and focus of a day spent sculpting something smaller and more precise from something larger. I need to be reminded of that simple approach more often. Onward.

Now that we’ve crossed the invisible border into parenthood, we can see some things a little more clearly. So many people said, “it changes everything.”  I didn’t—and still don’t—like that phrasing.  The ambiguous article and the top down causality of the phrase.  I prefer the subtler, “everything changes.”

It may seem that there is no difference in the second sentence, but it feels, to me, much more joyful and full of possibility. And then I can agree.  Everything does change. Priorities, schedules, reasons for worry and reasons for celebration.  Our former lives haven’t been emptied, but this little River has carved a new canyon—one we welcome and could never avoid.

An old friend who is a little further into this parenting thing made a very astute observation regarding an earlier post about my yearly trips into the wilderness:

Perhaps you are not in the woods, but the first couple months with a newborn force you to focus on simple living much the way that being in nature does- “Return to a simple life where each day is laid out before me: rise, eat, break camp, paddle, eat, paddle, eat, rest.” This is, in essence, life with a baby. You plan all that you can, assemble a good team and then it is a physically exhausting trek that is often very different than you could have anticipated.

How true. And gracious of her to point it out to me.

So the next few months will be a different kind of expedition, full of the challenges and rewards I’ve known in the backcountry.  We’ve got a baby to feed, a chicken coop to complete, a writing shack to construct, a mud-oven to mold and a move in the works.

It’ll be a busy, glorious time.

Last week we had to put down our long time family dog. Dickens was nearly fourteen and I’d seen him grow quiet in the past year as he started to lose his hearing and vision. We knew he wouldn’t be around forever, but that’s an easy thing to know until your are face to face with the day that forces you to make a decision.

I got the call from my mom and raced out of the house to get stuck in traffic on an 70 degree day, with the gas tank nearly empty. I was so worried the car would die halfway across the 520 floating bridge, I cut the AC, turned off the headlights and radio, and opened the windows. I tried to have the mind of a dog—nowhere to be but where I was—sticking my head out the window, looking at the cloudless sky, smelling the occasional cool breeze. I thought about the last time I saw Dickens at home and how I hadn’t let him outside with me when I watered the garden. And now, all I wanted was to give him that slow time in the grass, where he could take the world in and roll in it. But I was creeping toward something much harder than that.

In the vet’s office, my family was already gathered around Dickens, Thom and Andrew on the floor, both of my parents leaning close from their chairs. They had waited for me. We sat around him as he looked up at us and I couldn’t believe how calm he seemed. How these were our last minutes with him.

The vet, a long time family friend, came in with the needle and said it would be quick, but we asked for another minute. How strange to be sitting around a living part of our family, believing we could stay in that moment until we knew we could not. Something sharp and uncomfortable about that knowing. And when the vet came back we watched as our world changed in two seconds flat.

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Our baby’s due date was Monday. It’s Wednesday and still no baby. Elie went to our midwife, Erin, this morning and found out her blood pressure is high for the first time in the pregnancy. Elie has already been working with every natural inducer possible for the past couple weeks: walking several miles everyday, drinking raspberry leaf tea, using evening primrose, eating pineapple, getting acupuncture, and other forms I don’t need to mention here.

But now that her blood pressure is high, it won’t be going down before the baby comes and Erin wants to move quickly. If things don’t change within the day, Erin could insert a catheter, creating pressure that would have Elie in labor within hours.

And suddenly this thing we felt we had no control over requires a simple decision. And for the first time I’m afraid we’re not ready to have this new life, this delicate little body that has been only an idea, a constellation of small parts pushing against my wife’s stomach from the inside.

A simple choice to nudge things along. The hardest decision to make.

My lovely bride and bright young boy have left me all alone in the great sunny February of 2010. While they are enjoying the dry heat of Arizona for a week I have blazed through 1,200 novel pitches, sent off applications to the NEA, Breadloaf, Wisconsin fellowships, and 4Culture, I’ve eaten a bunch of frozen pizzas, shivered on the white sands of Golden Gardens as the sun set behind the Olympic Mountains, paddled with otters in Mercer Slough and generally felt oh-so-lonely.

My list could go on, but it really only stands to show that my days can be full of to-do-ness and the weather can be gorgeous, but without my people I feel pretty empty.

It’s nice to have this missing forced on you once in a while because there is no taking for granted a small boy’s laughter when there the house is utterly quiet. I do quite alright on my own, but my family is really my rock and when they’re off rocking elsewhere I’m boundless in an unsettling way.

So here’s to being unsettled. May it make appreciation come easily and linger when family returns.

One year ago I was in the final stages of planning for a 45-day canoeing expedition in the far north.  I had spent three days swimming in frigid Minnesota rivers for a Swift Water Rescue Course, three days renewing my Wilderness First Responder certification, two days of shivering through Wilderness Water Safety and several days in the buggy rain of a training trip.

Aaron—my co-leader—and I had been looking at maps for months, talking to our six participants, paddling a lot, reading logs of previous expeditions, repairing gear, menu-planning and more. We had narrowed in on a route that left from Northern Saskatchewan, moving through the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to the small Inuit Community of Baker Lake.  The route gave us a mix of lake and river travel, starting in the Boreal forest, moving through the taiga and swiftly onto the tundra, following the Dubawnt, Kunwak and Kazaan Rivers.  We knew the route had been traveled—we had the logs to prove it—but not much.  Just a handful of canoeists in all of those thousands of square miles of wilderness.  It was a quiet we were longing for.

The trip brought surprises: like finding Dubawnt lake still frozen in July.  Dragging our canoes across miles of ice in shorts and t-shirts, jumping over leads and plowing through miles of jigsaw break-up.  The trip was as amazing as we’d hoped. And that’s not saying much.  I could write a book (and maybe should) on my northern travels.

But for the first time in 15 years, I don’t have that kind of adventure before me. It’s okay. I know that’s just part of life. But I have this feeling—guttural, instinctual—that says it’s time to pack a couple changes of clothes, a journal, a book and head north.  Return to a simple life where each day is laid out before me: rise, eat, break camp, paddle, eat, paddle, eat, rest. Of course there are the amazing conversations and silences, the empty space and awesome landscapes. But the spare quality of that life carves me back to my core, reminds me what I hope to do and who I hope to be.

I can get there without the woods, but it’s a lot harder. My trips north, both as a participant and leader have been the best anniversaries. A time to sit still and remember the good story that has been my life.

Went for a hike today. First one in a long while. I wore River in a backpack sling as is the custom these days and it seems staying awake is just too hard when the rhythm of walking feels like sleep. We chatted the whole way up Tiger Mountain, greeted those passing by and once he was out there was no disturbing him.

Up top, River emerged as if from a cocoon and suddenly, he was a little boy. A person. In my lap. He looked up in a daze as a tame scrub jay landed nearly on my shoulder. He sucked on an apple slice and devoured his special rice cakes. He had missed the hard work, but still seemed pleased to be there with us on a rocky outcropping in the surprising heat of mid February.

On the way down he stayed awake for a good while, his head cocked back like a bobble-head doll, staring intently at the outline of the canopy against a backdrop of sky. At a couple points I joined him in the gaze and understood the why of the pose. It was beautiful and strange to be passing constantly under the cut shapes of the sky as it appeared and disappeared between the trees. So much to learn from such a small boy.

It reminds me of the title poem from Todd Boss’ debut collection, Yellowrocket, when the poem offers: “the kind of sky / in which a small boy / drowns.” I love that sense of expansiveness, both in terms of physical space and in the overwhelming limitlessness of possibility that innocence provides. It is good to be reminded of such things and I am continually more grateful to have such a child who calls me to consider the world as he sees it.

Damn, I love that boy.

I’ve been a bit distracted lately. First it was the thesis. That’s moving along nicely now, though other busy-ness has arrived. Not all busy-ness is bad, however, as I’ve joined Toadlily Press as a contributing editor. I’m helping to facilitate their ongoing Conversation as Muse, which engages their mission of creating a community of writers and readers. I’m adding new content to the blog each week which has given me additional excuses to neglect this space.

Then I’ve got my own work—sending poems and the book ms. out to quite a few places. Beyond that I’m an associate editor for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. I did this last year as well, reading around 1,000 novel pitches and rating them on originality, overall strength and writing quality. It’s a busy few weeks, but interesting to note the trends out there.

Beyond that interior world it has been amazing here in Seattle. Incredible blue skies, leaves unfurling and cherry blossoms popping out all over the place. It feels a bit earlier than normal, but I haven’t heard any complaints. River continues to be my favorite part of life and Elle is well.

I plan to start writing interesting things again here soon. I promise.

I had the pleasure of attending a benefit for Copper Canyon Press last night, a reading that honored W.S. Merwin and featured Erin Belieu, Ben Lerner, Valzhyna Mort, and Matthew Zapruder. Besides my deep respect and appreciation for the Press, the poets were fantastic. They kept their readings fairly brief, which was a nice tease, and allowed Merwin to hold the spotlight.

His reading did drag on a bit, but I feel that way about nearly every reading I make it to. It’s just too hard to savor the individual gems when you hear too many poems at once. A single line or thought can tug at me and suddenly three more poems have past without my noticing.

I ran into my high school poetry teacher, and around the room sat  a handful of the most accomplished poets writing today. The crowd glowed as Merwin read on and I was glad to be there.

Seattle was recently named the most literate city in the country and I’ve known it to be a great center of literary activity. The fact of the couple thousand people in the audience affirmed those ideas with a physical proof to admire. It made me even happier to live here.

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This morning I woke up to a bit of good news: My work was selected from over 1100 entries to win a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. I’m honored and very grateful for the writing time that money will allow. The fund, set up to honor the late Dorothy Rosenberg, awards around $200,000 each year. What’s even more amazing is that poets can continue to submit until their prizes reach $25,000. So, yes. I will keep sending them my work. Onward.

The nature of language is one that shifts continually according to context. This happens regionally, in different social and socioeconomic settings. And it happens in the Home. In the past year Elle and I have somehow absorbed nautical terminology into our conversations. Specifically, we find ourselves speaking about how we might navigate the guesswork of parenthood or the give-and-take of the long-term relationship. The word arrived randomly, almost surprisingly, but we hardly look up at hearing it now.

Navigate or navigation comes from navigare “to sail, sail over, go by sea, steer a ship.” While we live in a region endowed with a great deal of water (it comes from the sky, trickles underground, lakes, ocean—ubiquitous is the only word for it), our use of the word can only be metaphorical. It would be too easy to diagram that metaphor here, and a bit cheesy I’m sure, but it’s not the only time we talk about our relationship as if it were made of water.

For years (yes, I can say that….we’ve been married for almost five), we have talked about riding the waves.  Crests and troughs. And yet, we hardly think of it. It’s no accident we named our boy River. Water is everywhere in our relationship.

I believe the language we use shapes the possibilities for our lives. When I think of who River might become, I think of how rivers start and transform. They trickle, burble (he’s a pro), grow wider, deeper, calmer, and they torrent, fall and carve out a path—however slowly—on their way into that bigger body of water. (So much for avoiding extended metaphors).

Our chance upon the words of water give me great hope, however. In the word there is a boat (navis, “ship”), and there is the chance to guide its route (agere, “to drive”). So far, I think we’re doing a pretty damn-good job of steering this ship together.