Taking Inspiration from Nature

I had the privilege of walking into nature over the weekend.  I saw Yellowstone National Park.  I viewed colors, vivid colors I have never seen elsewhere in nature: blues, rusts, greens, aquamarines, yellows... sights, sounds, and odors I never smell anywhere else from the smell of evergreen to sulfurous mist blowing in my face.  When walking through such natural beauty, there are many ways to view it all.  Some of the people I traveled with found these unique natural vistas exciting to begin with but then dull and familiar after a time.  Some people view such things as an opening to adventure, a place to hike and take risks.

  

As a writer, I could see it as something else again: a source of material, a muse.  The vivid colors could spin my thoughts into a world of vivid intensity, a magical portal into a place of imagination.  As water explodes into the air, I could turn that geyser into a water dragon and that one nearby into a wizard bent on taking that dragon down.  Or as I look at the twisted, tortured trees that fought their way through the harsh environment to grow out of rock then failed and fell when the sulfurous blasts got too toxic, I could envision a landscape like that and ponder what else could cause it, some malaise or curse upon the land.  The wild titles of those geysers and pools could spin my thoughts with red dragons' maws and churning cauldrons.

If my style tends toward the less fantastical, I could still imagine a couple meeting among the geysers and finding love.  The couple who got engaged to the blast of Old Faithful while I was there could inspire a tale of love and tragedy among the geysers.

If my imagination suits the world of science fiction more, I could envision a fleet of aliens that start their invasion over a field of geysers and on shaky ground, only to meet misfortune on every side as one ends up in a hot pot, another crashes through the crust, and yet another is gored by a moody bison.  That invasion could be defeated not by men with technology but by mother nature herself.

Or I could write a western in which a mountain man or early settler and his family faces the unknown perils of a side of nature never before seen by their people.  I could write about a Native American tribe's relationship to the park itself, including one brave's voyage of self-discovery.  I could write poetry about the intense feeling of looking straight into the eyes of a nearby bull elk or engage in nature writing about my experiences with the park.

Or I could blog about how the park fills the imagination and invite other writers to go out and seek their own adventures in nature that could act as their muse in their writing.  See the world of nature in a fresh way.  Make it new.