Saturdays are bear down days.
I captured this view of Pikes Peak on a morning walk.
During the week, I have a full-time job, so Saturdays are get-serious-about-writing-even-if-you-don’t-feel-like-it days. Being a creature of habit helps tremendously with this.
If I stay home, though, it’s easy to be distracted by everything that needs doing, so my Saturday routine is to go to a coffee shop in the morning and produce one chapter. Then I go home for lunch, maybe run an errand, throw in some laundry, pull a few weeds, take a walk in the sunshine, or whatever. By now it’s midafternoon and I head to the public library for another chapter.
At the back of the library is a bank of high and wide windows that look out on the Front Range of the Rockies. It’s not just a mountain, but an entire range.
I like to go there and find a seat that lets me look out. I do eventually write another chapter, but the afternoon involves a fair bit of staring and wondering.
Even on day of fog or swirling winter weather, the view from the back of the library offers a depth that just doesn’t happen in the four walls of my home office. While I see Pikes Peak from my yard or out my front window, just half a mile a way the view is wider and deeper and broader and wilder.
When I sit there and look out, my fingers poised over the keys of my laptop, I see history. I see mystery. I see beauty. I see time. I see courage. I see an artist’s palette. I see inspiration. I see adventure. I see rest.
We all need to see beyond our own worlds–or those we create.
The view from the library is not unencumbered. I see people in the park, and houses are all around. Life is happening at the foot of beautiful greatness.
But the mountains rise above all that and give a surpassing context to the ordinary, a reminder of what is real and true. When I write with that view out the window, my work falls into perspective.
