ALLISON MARTIN

With looming mountains, glacier carved valleys and endless stretches of snow-tipped trees, the beauty of the Yukon is breathtaking not because it’s loud, but so profoundly quiet. In that stillness is where my writing thrives thanks to a lesson from a squirrel.

Before moving here, I enjoyed nature in a childlike way. Beaches are fun, camping is great, mud puddles are epic. Growing up on a farm in the prairies meant outside was just a way of life. I also grew up in the generation of be home before the streetlights come on or I’m sending your father to find you.

But I don’t think I truly respected nature’s influence on my life until the Yukon and have been on a twelve year path of reconnecting to the earth, being humbled regularly, and finding my own creative energy lies within its stillness.

A decade ago, I saw these vast landscapes as adventure, excitement, and danger. Mountains to conquer, rivers to navigate, trails to eat up. Nature and adrenaline have become sort of synonymous in our urbanized culture. Nature is something you dominate before returning to your ‘life’ at home.

It didn’t take long to realize that up here, this far north, nature IS your life. It’s my life anyway. But I no longer associate adrenaline or extreme sport with nature. The Yukon is wild and exciting if that’s what you like, but I left all that behind when I discovered how soul-fillingly quiet it is. The slowness of nature, the patience required as the seasons shift was medicine for me. Integrating nature into my life was healing for my body and my creativity.

Allowing my stories to grow in their own time, to stop my frantic need to control the outcomes of my books, is all inspired by watching the seasons, waiting for the raspberries to ripen, and listening to a squirrel scurry along the same path every single day, repeating the same task with increasing urgency as the weather gets steadily colder.

Now I’m not sure if I’ve related to anything more strongly in my life. Because that’s what writing is. Word after word, travelling the same path again and again, stacking up the words each day so that you can later organize them and use them to fuel your livelihood.

Those not familiar with publishing believe it to be some glamorous world of limitless imagination and magic (maybe like backcountry skiing) when in reality 90% of it is a repetitive slog straight uphill (unless you can afford a helicopter how do you think those skiiers get to the top?).

So much of my creative process happens in the slow, wild, quiet sort of way when I lace up my boots and get to work, one step at a time.

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There are so many parallels between my writing, witchcraft and wilderness that I started a Patreon to explore it all publicly. I may regret it, but for now it feels exciting, so feel free to join me in this adventure.