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Yesterday I got my new book ready for the editorial processing to begin. The publisher said, "do these things and my editor can begin." So with those things done, I rest until questions come in. When I'm awake in the night, the words flow through my semi-conscious state like poetry, but then I wake up and struggle to reclaim what I'd just seen.

Last night I dreamed of a leaf standing on its lobes and walking deliberately along the forest floor with as much intention and purpose as might move a spider or a mouse. The spirit of life, it seems, infuses all, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. That spirit of life exists even within those things where we've no skilled senses to discern it.

When Rosie and I go out in the morning she'll stand at a pile of leaves, breathing it in, just as I might stick my nose deeply in the New York Times. With a nose 15,000 times more discerning than mine, she sees and understands things to which my own nose and eyes are blind. There's a real world out there folks, and it's alive.

A friend had asked about my new book, whether I had a model from which to find inspiration. I named Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac" for its poetic qualities and for its impact. As all authors do, I want the book to change the world, how people think, what people do, and how we relate to each other, but these days we read so much and do so little with what we've read. Like Rosie standing at a pile of leaves, we soak ourselves into the realm of words and leave the pile relatively unchanged. I hope for just a bit more than that.

In the wood shop I'm making a new bathroom vanity for our guest bathroom. It is being made of birch plywood with a facing, doors and drawers from ash. It helps to have balance in one's life. The concrete and the abstract. And its best when we build from the one rather than from the other.

A successful novelist employs the reader's senses to create a sense of reality in the framework he or she has created. Much of my new book is about that.

Make, fix and create. Assist others in learning likewise.