It wasn’t anything as organized as a diary, more a collection of random thoughts and feelings, and sometimes news clippings. But peppered throughout the entries were little flashes of inspiration, things I thought were as powerful as a wildfire, and just as temporary. I felt I had to put them down on paper, else they’d become ashes, flavorless and without meaning, only the echo of something that had once burned hot within me. In looking over it now, I saw a lot of those flashes, all of them written in an urgent, slashing hand, like I was trying to carve them into the paper. Yet it pained me to realize that nothing of the desperate need that prompted me to write them down survived. One passage read: This morning, through the fog and the clean, brisk smell of the Vespers Creek, two deer. A mother and her baby. Must tell Connie about this, when she’s older. Nature can be kind and beautiful, too. Death is not all there is. I could only guess at the emotions that prompted me to write that, for I no longer had them readily on tap.
