A few
weeks ago one or two friends were talking about reading this blog. I am always
embarrassed when people tell me that they have read what I have written. While
I am secretly delighted to know that people read my writing - I become
uncomfortable when I am told that they have. While my proofreading skills are
frequently somewhat questionable I, thanks to spell check, am reasonable sure
that my spelling is all right; my grammar is slightly better than adequate; my
thoughts are usually well informed and I have a reasonable vocabulary. But I am
never sure that what I have to say is really worthy of anyone’s time.
I write
because I like the process of shaping the thoughts that are dancing around
inside my head into some coherent message. I like the struggle to find the
right words, the right phrase, that right descriptor that paints the picture
inside my head. I write because of all of those thoughts and words and pictures
will continue to bounce around inside my head until I get them out on paper.
The fact that someone else might read those words is not always important to
me. Like so much of what I do - writing is for me an immensely selfish act. I
do it because it gives me pleasure. If however, it gives other people pleasure
or challenges their thoughts, I am truly delighted and yes a bit embarrassed.
For the
past couple of years, I have taken a month or two away from my playing with
wool to work on a book. I want to assemble some of the stories from my
hitchhiking trips back and forth across this country. I think it might be
interesting to at least a few people to read about those who have offered me
rides and the things that we have seen and talked about together. Most of the
stories are already written; they are either scattered throughout this blog or in
the four 80-90 page journals written before the blog was started. It should
have been easy to create a coherent narrative from the thousands of words I had
already written. Writing the book has
been a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I take a
few pages from my writing, find a place where those thoughts and conversations
will fit, write some connecting sentences and move onto the the next driver’s
stories. The next day I read the same paragraphs over again, realize how poorly
they are written and do it all over again. I rewrite a few paragraphs, massage
the words into some sort of readable English and think that I am well
satisfied. I come back to the same paragraphs and pages a few months later and
as I re-read those words that seemed so brilliant, now shine with all of the
light of a moonless night. So I edit and edit and edit again.
It seems
to be an never ending process, one that perhaps I need some help with.
There
are times however, when I re-read a paragraph and I am pleased with myself.
This is one of them:
“The
final reason to hitchhike is to see the country. I have been fortunate to live
in four provinces, sleep in ten (plus one territory) and to see bits and pieces
of Canada at various times of the year. I have travelled across the country,
both in the summer and in the winter a number of times by train and by car. I
have seen the Prairies in the depths of a drought with the carcass of a dead
pronghorn deer laying on the shoulders of a dried-up slough in Alberta and seen
the Fraser River at near full spring flood tearing its way to the Pacific
Ocean. I have seen countless springs gushing from the sides of mountains and
fields of wheat and barley ready to harvest. I have seen the magical fall
colours on hills surrounding Ontario’s highway 11 and watched the cherry
blossoms bloom in February on View Street in Victoria. I have watched the
mighty tidal bore in Moncton, fished off the shores of Newfoundland and the
Gaspe and camped on the beaches of Vancouver Island. I have crossed the
Mackenzie River, that iconic Canadian river that flows all the way to the
Arctic Ocean, I have used all three southern passes to get through the Rockies,
I have hitchhiked in daylight at 11:00 PM and tried to hitchhike with a
flashlight. And every one of those hundreds
of hours used to travel the 100,000 plus kilometres has been well spent.”
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