What You Don't Know Can Inspire You
by Hayley
I recently heard a short history of
Ohio's Wayne National Forest. Did you know that beginning sometime in
the 1800s, for a duration of about 100 years, the forest was
systematically denuded for lumber sales and to clear the land for
farming? Think of the Lorax, right in our own backyard! It wasn't until
the Depression in the 1930s that the land was re-seeded in an effort to
create jobs as part of Roosevelt's public works project. As I watched a
video on this history and listened to the ranger at Lake Vesuvius, an
image of a young girl formed in my mind. She is a farmer's child who
once delighted in the woods surrounding Ironton, Ohio, until, over time,
they slowly become "the bare hills." She is an elderly woman who lives
long enough to see both the destruction and return of the forest and the
amazing cultural changes taking place beyond the hills. Did she exist?
I'm sure of it. Do I know anything else about her? Not yet. But I hear
her voice and she inspires me. I think she wants to be part of an
historical young adult novel -- or at the very least, a book of poems.
I am currently basking in the afterglow
of the first reading/lecture of the 2012 Athens Spring Literary
Festival. Tonight, Susan Orlean, author, most recently, of Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend, encouraged
would-be writers to not be afraid to "bring people to something that
they otherwise wouldn't know about" to "make their worlds grow." Orlean
believes "there's no story that isn't worth telling," and her words
inspire me to dig deeper into the life of that young girl, that elderly
woman, who is calling to me from deep within the history of the forest.
What in the world is calling to you, demanding that you
pay attention to the call, whether or not you recognize the voice that's
calling? Orlean claims that the "greatest stuff [in writing] is the
unexpected." When was the last time you followed an impulse that
led to surprising results?
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