Pond to the right, Pacific straight ahead…
If you made it to AWP and you’re still recovering, or if you didn’t make it to AWP and you also didn’t get a reiki session with Julie Haupert, I’ve got just the thing for you: a lovely frog serenade.
It was one of the high points of many high points from the recent Birds & Muses writing-intensive retreat on the Mendocino coast, in the tiny town of Elk, where each night we were serenaded by the invisible frogs at the pond we could see from our bedrooms (we could also see the majestic, roiling Pacific from our bedrooms, as we were retreating the same week as a historic rainstorm and hundred-year flood hit the Pacific coast, but that’s a story for another day…). I think every one of the nine of us went out to the pond at one time or another, trying to catch a glimpse of the secretive hiding frogs, but we never did see them. Only heard them, without fail, every evening. Thanks to writer Isabel Choi for the sound track!