Saturday marked the start of rifle deer season here in Texas. It always seems as if the older and wiser (read: bigger) bucks can read a calendar, happen to possess one and tell the rest of their male counterparts that the hunters are coming. As a result, I get plenty of idle time in the stand. My favorite activity to pass the time and prevent the repetitive-stress injury of twiddling my thumbs is to pick up a good book.

On this trip it was Bird by Bird written by Anne Lamott. I have no illusions that my creative writing skills are anything but sub-par. Still, the process of creating an entirely new universe and telling captivating stories has been a background fascination of mine. I had heard from multiple people and podcasters that this book was the one. And they were right. Lamott gives her brutally honest and heartfelt account of what it takes to write something worth reading.

Near the end of the book, she retells a story of some harsh feedback one of her writing students gave to another. It brought to her mind a poem:

Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon.
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music, the noise
of failure growing beautiful.

• August in Waterton, Alberta by Bill Holm

The wind failed at its task. Nature and life alike don’t yield to our timing or control. Yet even in “failure” we can make something worthwhile, like the sound of the wind through the leaves. Not unlike what I was hearing while reading the poem, awaiting the “big one” that would never come. I was not the one in control, but sitting in that floodplain, surrounded by pecan and century-old oaks, I couldn’t help but feel awe as I listened.

Sometimes waiting is the whole point.

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