A short walk in a southern wood

I sit down to write the book, and nothing happens.

It's summer out there. I'm working at an office desk in a ranger's hut close to a visitors' center by a glacial lake, and I'm a long way south of home. Being here's a gift, part of a prize I won for writing something else. And I want to spend my time here well; I want to spend it writing this book. If I don't, my publisher might kill me.

Though it's summer, it fell below freezing last night, and I was cold in my bed. But the morning is warm and still and clear. There are black peppermints standing up in it and black currawongs crying their guttural cry, and there's a light as clean and a sky as blue as any you're ever going know. I've come here to write a book; I walk out into the morning to find it.

And it's on the gravel track to Fergy's Paddock at the edge of the lake that my book comes to me. Between steps, it occurs to me (though not for the first time) that to write is to make sentences, and out of them to make a story or an argument, a business case or a poem.