Postcard from Ragdale #4: The long look back

Today is my last day at Ragdale--tomorrow morning, a driver will pick me up and take me back into the world, back to O'Hare, where I'll board a plane and be with my family before it's time for dinner. I've missed them all, of course, terribly, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone. Still, it's hard to want to leave this place.

Last night I sat on the Blue Room porch and watched the sun set over the prairie. One evening the sunset was a bright, electric pink; last night, it was a softer peach . I'm wondering how many other colors I might see, given another week. The autumn light in Illinois feels very different from the light this time of year in Texas--and I suspect it is, given the difference in latitude.

But being here by myself, in this light, has helped me remember what it felt like to be young, single and childless, consumed by my writing. That wasn't always a happy time. But I do remember it as a time when writing was often all I really wanted to do, when I spent more time in the world inside my head than I did with the people who actually live out here with me. (Maybe it's healthier to keep the focus out here, but given the shape the world is in, I'm not so sure.) And it was important to remember how it feels to want to write--not just to know you need to do it, because it's your job and you're on sabbatical and people expect things from you, not to mention what you expect of yourself. This was the first time in a long time when I sat down in front of my computer with my brain full and thought, This is going to take all day. And felt pleased.

Today I went for one last long walk on the prairie. I tried to remember all the things I'd noticed yesterday, when I went for a walk without my camera. Something happened over this past weekend--whether it was a change of light or a change of temperature, I don't know. But everything was different, suddenly: the trees are going yellow and red in big patches (and there's a shade of red that belongs only to fall, it's nothing like the red hibisus that's probably blooming in my back yard right now); the grasses are drying gold and orange; the milkweed pods are just about to split open and release the cottony stuff that carries next year's seeds to the ground and catches on the grass to keep them from blowing away. I hadn't forgotten that fall color happens-- but I had forgotten the overwhelming sense of nostalgia that comes along with fall's arrival.

There are many things I want to remember about my time here-- like the way, very briefly, when you're out in the middle of the prairie and there are no airplanes flying overhead on their way to O'Hare, when you're far enough away from Green Bay Road that you can't hear cars passing by, you can almost imagine you're hearing what the first pioneers heard, and seeing what they saw, as they whacked their way through the tall grass prairie. I want to remember the excitement of hearing fresh work from the writers who read last night, especially the one who was brave enough to share a few new pages from the story of a kind of a grief I can't begin to imagine.

Too often, I think about my writing very casually. I make up stories. It's something I do when I can find the time. Last night was a good reminder that writing can, sometimes, be the thing that saves your life.