Linda K Sienkiewicz

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You are here: Home / It's Personal / To remain open and quiet in the fertile darkness

To remain open and quiet in the fertile darkness

September 17, 2018 By Linda K Sienkiewicz

 

path along paint creek trail
Path along Paint Creek Trail, Michigan

“You never know what’s around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you’ve climbed a mountain.”
― Tom Hiddleston

The urge to explore

Every path into the woods calls to me. When I’m riding along the Paint Creek Trail or Clinton River Trail, I often feel the urge to abandon my bicycle along they wayside to see where each path leads.

Path, trail, Michigan
At the top of a path along the Clinton River Trail, Michigan

Being in the woods takes me back to my childhood and my house in northern Ohio. We lived on an acre lot, with the back half being a wooded hillside. I spent hours alone in the deep cool shade, pulling up rocks, hunting for salamanders, walking through giant spiderwebs that made me gasp, and communing with chipmunks and birds. I built forts and hideouts. I dug traps. I climbed trees. I made my own trail.

Every stick on the ground was a snake. Every floating log in water was a crocodile. Trolls hid in hollow trees. “Bad men” lurked near the road that bordered our property at the bottom of the steep hill; my mother warned me not to go too far. I fancied myself as savvy for six. Any bad man was likely a hobo or bum; they would be hungry and I would offer them a slice of my poisonous mud pie… and that would be that.

When I heard my mother call for dinner, I clambered back up the hill to my house, with grubby knees, dirt under my nails, and covered with bug bites.

nature - the woods behind my house
Swinging out into the woods behind my house.

Solace in deep shade

I’m sure that’s why I enjoy bicycling along the canopied Paint Creek Trail. It energizes me spiritually and physically. I breath deep and absorb everything. I love the sound of the creek, birds, toads, and cicadas, the wind in the trees, crunch of leaves in the fall. I don’t understand why some people bike with ear buds, or blasting music. It seems like a rejection of the natural world.

“To preserve the silence within–amid all the noise. To remain open and quiet, a moist humus in the fertile darkness where the rain falls and the grain ripens–no matter how many tramp across the parade ground in whirling dust under an arid sky.”  ― Dag Hammarskjöld

stepped path along paint creek trail
Stepped path near the Paint Creek Trail

I’m that annoying bicyclist who’s weaving all over the trail because she’s looking everywhere else except straight ahead.

It’s pure joy for me. It’s like going home.

gated path along Paint Creek Trail
path to private property along Paint Creek


Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of the award-winning novel In the Context of Love, a story about one woman’s need to tell her truth without shame.

2017 New Apple Book Awards Official Selection
2016 Sarton Women’s Fiction Finalist
2016 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
2016 Readers’ Favorite Finalist
2016 USA Book News Best Book Finalist

“…at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey.” ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage, and critically acclaimed Once Upon a River,and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters

“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller, Deep End of the Ocean

Buy now: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | IndieBound



Publication announcement: Linda’s essay “My Horrible Celebrity Crush” is included in this new anthology from McFarland Books!

IDOL TALK: Woman Writers on the Teenage Infatuations that Changed Their Lives

In the midst of acne, social anxiety and training bras are the teen idols that make adolescent life a little more bearable. Whether their cutouts are plastered on bedroom walls or hidden behind locker doors, there is no denying the impact of these stars on young women. This collection of new essays explores with tenderness and humor the teen crushes of the past 50 years–from Elvis to John Lennon to Diana Ross–who have influenced the choices of women, romantically or otherwise, well into adulthood.

IDOL TALK is a great gift idea for a woman of any age!

Edited by Elizabeth Searle and Tamra Wilson, Foreword by Peter Noone
252 pages, 70 photos

Buy now: McFarland Books | Amazon 

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Filed Under: It's Personal Tagged With: bicycling, childhood, clinton river trail, nature, Paint Creek Trail, trail

Comments

  1. Rhonda Gilmour writing romance as Sadira Stone says

    September 17, 2018 at 10:00 am

    What gorgeous photos! Thank you for sharing these. Makes me want to go take a walk in the woods.

    • Linda K Sienkiewicz says

      September 17, 2018 at 1:51 pm

      Do it! It’s so healing. Thank you for your kind words. –Linda

About Linda

Award- winning writer, poet & artist. Cynical optimist. Super klutz. Corgi fan. Author of two novels, a picture book which she wrote and illustrated, and five poetry chapbooks. More here.

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