I have a T-shirt given to me by my partner-in-life as a joke that has Elk-a-holic printed on the front. Until two years ago, I never knew this about myself, but it turns out that I can sit for hours and watch elk graze and chew and wander from one side of the meadow to the other. I guess this use of precious time is a bit excessive in our fast-paced, driven world, but something about seeing them in their natural environment gives me a sense of peace.

I never gave elk a thought until I moved to Colorado. Of course that’s probably because I had never crossed paths with an elk before coming here. But now I see them all the time, sometimes hundreds at a time.

To support my elk-a-holism, I have attended nature talks on elk behavior and been the recipient of all sorts of trivia facts about elk. For instance, did you know the antlers of a bull elk can hold up to ten bowling balls on each side? Of course it concerns me how experts know this.

In the service of my addiction, I have also been reprimanded by a park ranger when I got a little too close in my viewing practices. (My closest scrape with law enforcement so far.)

Not to mention that one of my fondest memories to date is of having to stop for an impromptu elk herd crossing while hiking.

Perhaps we all have things we could learn from the “wild” among us. In my more philosophical moments, I wonder if elk have entered my consciousness because they have something to teach me about how to be in the present moment. As far as I know, elk don’t dwell on the past or question themselves about their future. They don’t have an agenda to make money or strive for excellence. Nor do they worry about gas prices or the crisis on Wall Street or how the current election will turn out.  They simple are…elk.

Since living in Colorado the last two years, I have spotted a total of 20 coyotes. Some have been within Rocky Mountain National Park, others on the outskirts of our suburban neighborhood in Fort Collins where they’re so close, we can actually hear them yip at night. 

They are beautiful animals known for their cleverness and resiliency. To their credit, they have learned to adapt to an ever more human-populated landscape. Coyotes have been spotted in Central Park in New York City and one reportedly walked into a Quizno’s in Chicago. They are masters at adapting to a world that increasingly sees no value in them.

Sometimes I wonder if artists—whether writers, painters, dancers or practitioners of other art forms—are in the same predicament. At times it feels like we live on the outskirts of society, doing whatever we have to do to survive. We give piano lessons, teach creative writing at community colleges, freelance edit other people’s manuscripts, and perhaps go on the lecture circuit, when really all we want to do is let our creativity roam wild, and have it be appreciated, protected and valued.

As it is now, artists need to be clever and cunning about whom we share our creations with, especially when they are just starting out and too young to be released into the world.

Predators lurk in writer’s groups, in art departments and in publishing houses. Some of them well-meaning, yet biting in their criticism, inadvertently destroying the vulnerable and the weak. Or perhaps we are guilty of killing off our own babies because they are not good enough or because we are afraid of the criticism we might receive.

Artists must learn to be resilient, cunning and clever. We must keep both eyes open, to avoid the inevitable dangers, as we roam this wild urban landscape. As we continue to cultivate these traits, I hope that we, too, will thrive like the coyotes.

I was with a wonderful group of people last weekend who came together for a house-warming. A circle of friends, new and old, gathered around a large dining room table to talk and warm this space. On the table sat a landscape blueprint for the large backyard that the former owners of the home had left undeveloped.

Throughout the afternoon all of us, at one time or another, picked up the 11 by 17 inch piece of paper and studied the collection of circles and squares that would be lush vegetation and an ultimate oasis in the sunny, hot Colorado summers. We seemed to know all the work that would be involved to turn the current “blank slate” to the plan on the paper.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” I said at the time, “if we all had this kind of design for our lives.” People responded enthusiastically; “Sign me up!” a few burst out.

What if life could be designed and drawn out for us? Not only the places where we would find shade and comfort, but also the places that would be hard and require a lot of weeding and persistence. How much easier these places would be if we knew it was all just part of the “design” of our lives and that even the labor-intensive things would eventually lead to something beautiful.

When I started writing over ten years ago I would have never put in my design that I would self-publish a book. To me, forgive me for saying this, it meant that I had somehow failed. My quest has been for all these years to not only learn to write and write beautifully, but to publish the books I write with a traditional publisher, the bigger the better, to fulfill my desire to be a “legitimate” writer. I’d be a writer who daddy Zeus, the publishing god, approved of, and paid handsomely. That may still happen. In fact I have a literary agent who is certain of it. But it hasn’t happened as of this writing.

The book that I am introducing in this blog, Seeking Sara Summers, is a story that I have worked on for 8 years. It came close to being bought several times by different publishers, big and small. And all along I have been revising and rewriting (the constant “weeding” of the writing world), honing in on the best story I could possibly write.

It is my illegitimate child, if I look at it in a traditional, patriarchal sense. But it is still a child that I love dearly and one that I have devoted many, many hours of my life to. Now it is time to put this creation out into the world and let it go and reach whoever it is meant to reach. Perhaps it will be someone who is searching for a more authentic life, like the main character is, and the book will encourage them to go for it. That would be my hope. To write something that both inspires and encourages.

I am convinced that Life has a much bigger imagination than we do. It is designed, in a way, that we can’t begin to comprehend. Our jobs, it seems, is to simply trust the process.