Step Into Nature by Patrice Vecchione

Two weeks ago I was in Santa Cruz, California, surfing twice a day and visiting with an old friend. I heard a woman writer being interviewed on the local public radio station one afternoon and felt moved by the tone of her voice so I turned the volume up and sat and listened more carefully.

Patrice Vecchione is a writer, painter, collagist, poet, and storyteller. Her most recent book, Step Into Nature, is my current inspiration. She writes about a six month period in which she walked in nature every day, then came home to her writing spot in front of her fireplace and created. She opened herself to the creative, generative, spiritually-charged geology of the Monterey Peninsula in California and followed that muse, creating from there. 

She encourages me to surrender to the chaos of nature and the "wilderness" of the creative process— to embrace and celebrate the ever changing, continuous flow of life, to accept disorder, the fickle nature of the Muse, especially those times when it lies dormant. 

She is comfortable with the messyness of nature and the beautiful jumble that it is. She seems to take it as permission to follow her own seemingly messy, chaotic creative process, allowing herself to make mistakes and to create for the sake of creating. She allows her pen, her brush, her scissors and glue to move the way they want to. She follows her creative urges and feelings to take her to more authentic expressions while sitting at the feet of nature - the original teacher and, original artist. 

I highly recommend her book. In reading it and reflecting on her ideas I have become more sensitive to Nature and find myself longing for more teachings from it. I am a more apt Nature Pupil, having read, reflected, chewed and swallowed some of Patrice Vecchione's ideas and words. 

Good, nourishing creative Food.