This incarnation of Heron Dance is now twelve months in. Two Heron Dance books are done. One went off to the printer one two weeks ago, one goes Monday. I’m in a little bit of a daze after the weeks of day and night work but wanted to offer some thoughts on what I’m learning, where Heron Dance has been and is going. 

The biggest surprise of the last twelve months: how much I’ve enjoyed working with all the art. I’ve missed painting as I’ve concentrated on writing and book design. That needs to change. I completed about 3300 paintings in the first twenty-five or so years of Heron Dance. About a hundred of them really excite me – the ones with abstract backgrounds and a loose, sketch-like quality. I need to develop that technique further.

What is Heron Dance about?

I’m fascinated by many things in life – wilderness and its relationship to the universe, creativity, meditation and the search for inner peace, journaling, adventure, the memoirs of people who have created unique lives. The lives of indigenous people who live close to the land and confront constant threats to survival. Even totally unrelated and contradictory subjects like military strategy fascinate me. Artificial intelligence. Music. Technology and its impact on creativity. Donald Trump and how he’s constantly able to intrude. upon the world’s consciousness. The lives and thoughts of the old backwoods wanderers – Thoreau, Muir, Emerson, etc. and the more contemporary author Sigurd Olson. The lives of Taoist hermits living in the remote mountains of south China.

Heron Dance probably bounces around a little too much.

Earlier today, I wrote in my journal: If I had to concentrate on just what subject, what would it be?

Immediately, the answer flashed into my mind: The dream world, the psychic work, the inner world underlying creative work and the creation of a unique life. Anything that feeds the work that is not actually doing the work. Doing the work is mostly discipline, patience, persistence, practice, tedium, showing up when you don’t really want to, and thus is not that interesting. What really fascinates me is the spirituality, the meditation, the journaling, reading, traveling, the sitting on the beach, sitting in the woods – the downtime, reflection and inner work underlying creative work.

Maybe I’ll grow up this year (I’m sixty-seven already) and focus.

Okay, if I was to focus on that, what would I do next? The answer immediately flashes through my mind: interview Maya Lin, creative visionary behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I wonder what her inner life is like. I wonder what the role of downtime is in her creative work.

Okay, well I guess that’s it. Random thoughts from an exhausted mind after twelve months of recreating Heron Dance. It’s been wonderful. Exhilarating. Joyful.

Heron Dance attracts wonderful people, many more kindhearted and beautiful than I actually am myself. Thank you.