In her wonderful books on nature, childhood, creativity and memory, environmental psychologist Louise Chawla writes about “ecstatic experience,” what she calls the “radioactive seeds of memory” that we experience in childhood and throughout life, seeds that become photos, stories, books, poems, quilts, blogs, paintings. These often come through nature, or are brought by our magical helpers, the animals in our lives. These sees are planted in our imaginations and live and grow.

I love Chawla’s writings, she has, I believed, captured the beauty and power of the creative process. More than anything I’ve ever read, she has caught the creative process for me and described it beautifully. Great ideas come inside of your head, they do not shock you, affirm you.  Radioactive seeds of memory might have been planted by a yearly trip to the ocean, a walk alone in a park, time with a pet, a hike in the wood, snow on a mountain, an animal grazing. These seeds are implanted in our consciousness and if they are nourished and allowed to grow, if they are freed and opened up to the world, they become our creative sparks, our impulses to create and share our creations with the world. They become our words and thoughts and the images we make and capture. This is the essence of creativity, it is in every one of us, not just the chosen few.

I realize that Maria is my ecstatic experience, every day she offers me a seed of memory, something I take in, something that grows and deepens and stirs my imagination. She is a radiant and loving spirit, and that is my ecstatic  experience, my seed, my soul food. The animals see it in her, the camera sees it in her, sometimes before I do.

But ecstatic experience often comes away from the human spirit. It  can be the love of a dog, the eyes of a cat, the attachment of a donkey, a storm in the sky, a soft breeze, mists in the morning. Ecstatic experience is my fuel, it feeds my soul, how lucky I am to find it and to know to nourish and love it and set it free. A gift to me, a gift to you.