Writing into the Unknown

"How will  you go about finding the thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"  

- Meno

What does it mean to venture into the unknown?  Do you have the ability to find comfort moving forward without quite knowing where you are going? Are you willing to discover openhearted fun as you go in search of mysterious and impossible?

Wilderness is not an extravagance or a luxury, it is a place of original memory where we can witness and reflect on how the world is held together by natural laws. 

--Terry Tempest Williams

Writing about nature requires awareness and observation of interconnections. Often founded in science, the focus always returns to the writer's questions and observations. 

The challenge of the writer involves bringing the reader into the natural world. Nature writing evokes all the senses and delves into the possibilities regardless of the tragedies in the world. This writing puts hope, faith and possibility into concrete words and imagery. 

The unknown territory always looms. The idea or the story lurk somewhere in the desert, on the prairie, high on a mountain, or in the backyard of the mind.

Writing lives at the edges of the mysterious.

Where do the boundaries of the self extend? 

Creativity and the resulting writing require the permission to be lost. In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit explains, "One does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography." She continues, "That thing the nature of which is totally unknown is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost."

Wander without a map or compass.

Venture into the unknown and write about it.