Brainstorming Notes

When I do not have a set topic for my twice monthly column in the Methow Valley News, I take a drive along the lower valley and look for inspiration. Here are my notes and images from a recent story hunt:

Mountains

Folds ragged peak tops growing softer reaching to river valley floor

Cloud layer blanket

Moving along the blackened stands of tree skeletons

Scar little bee quote

 “On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived.”

-Chris Cleave, Little Bee

Orange green blue

Sun glistening of river

Fisher men ducks geese

Rapids smooth                      

Rocky cliffs surrounding orchards, secret and unexpected

Twists and turns of canyon

Narrow creek channels

Frank Weiglein, TriCities, Steelhead

 Tony DeRosa and his Roman Soldier of snow