Oregon, December 2008: I brought all this paper. Crazy. But this residency was such a precious time, I wanted to do it all. When I arrived at the Sitka Center on the Oregon coast, it took me hours to unload and arrange the bushels of writing drafts, reference books, computer equipment, and office detritus I had brought with me for a two-month residency. My plan was to complete my novel, finally-and put together a poetry manuscript-and make progress on a book of essays. I dithered with my stuff. Where to begin? By then it was night, through the window I noticed the full moon, and I stepped outside.

Standing in the velvet gloom of the Sitka spruce forest that surrounded my writing house, I remembered a moment years before at the Root Feast, the Native version of Thanksgiving I had witnessed at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, two hundred miles to the east. The drums, the dance, the singing-and then the feasting-all took the better part of a day. But there was one moment that came to me under the moon at Sitka. The drumming before the feast had suddenly stopped, and an old man had stepped to the microphone before the seven silent Washat drummers.

"I went down to the corner," he called out, "to see if there might be a song-waiting to see if anyone could hear it. I have heard it! I would sing it for you." And he began to sing, in the Sahaptin language, the song that had come to him, as the drums began again behind him.

As I remembered that moment, I realized there might be a song waiting for me that night. It occurred to me I needed to leave my papers and my plans, and be here, this night, this chance.

At Sitka there is a forest path that leads up the mountain, through dense forest, and then west, across open meadows, to the peak of Cascade Head that fronts the sea. With my little flashlight and notebook, I started up the trail. As I churned up the steep climb, turning where shadowy trees gestured large against my light, the city receded from my mind. Modern time ebbed away. My intentions dwindled. And I began to remember immediate things.

I remembered how the Salmon River, at the foot of the headland, flows north out of its estuary, and then makes a bold turn to the west where it meets salt water. I remembered that Sitka spruce trees, being carbon structures, are made of air, literally built of the sea wind they inhale. I remembered seeing the salmon in Crowley Creek, just below my residence, thrashing in shallow water to build the redd of gravel where they would then spawn and die. I remembered the vocation behind all my plans: to be a citizen who writes for the healing of the world.

Then, steaming from the climb, feeling my age, I was at the trail's farthest western point, where the Pacific spreads out hundreds of feet below, glittering in the moonlight, where the surf beats its plush rhythm in the cove. The far, amber lights of crab boats glowed dim in the dark. Behind me, an owl called. Then the world was so still, I could hear my heart. And then I heard the song.

I am not talking about inspiration, magic, the muse. I am talking about the way a simple song is waiting to be heard outside frenzy and plans. It started with syllables from the place: River turns...wind returns...tree tangles...sun shines, deep and fine...vagabond salmon, home again...leave your bones among the stones and travel in your dream....

I felt like an otter, frisky with thought, calm with plenty, not knowing time as a monolith to design, but as a fluid, ever-present river to explore and to savor.

When I stood up and turned from the sea, it was after midnight, and I had the bones of a song in my mind, and a few lines scrawled in my notebook. My family, in the city far away, was sleeping. My boxes of paper, and my loom of computer cables, were poised in the dark house at Sitka. My residency stretched before me. And beyond my residency, a creative life to be kindled in a new way.

I have to believe there will be songs, also, in the city, waiting to see if anyone can hear them. And perhaps I will hear them. But my doorway to creation in everyday life has been opened wide by my time at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Thanks to those who made this be. And thanks to the river, the owl, the path, the moon-and the song, waiting.

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Listen to the song