What the Blazes? Reflections on my TAG, part 4

So there I was, hiking the Paisley Trail through the Ocala National Forest, about four miles from Lake Clearwater and not a soul around. Only an inch or two of water still sloshed in the bottom of my bottle, the windbreaker tied around my waist was covered with sandspurs, and my back had begun to throb with each step I took through the loose sand of the elusive path. Nevertheless, my spirits were high, as was my voice: inspired by the tracks of a large carnivore, I'd been singing at the top of my lungs for about half an hour, mostly in Hebrew.

What the Blazes? Reflections on my TAG, part 3

After two hours of climbing through burned-out longleaf pine uplands, I was covered in burrs and sandspurs, had consumed half of my water, and was no longer appreciating the lesson in path-finding. So I decided to take a mental break. Translation: I worked on my latest novel, the sequel to Brothers.

Last summer, I hit a snag in the plot about the same time school started; the only writing I've done on the book since August is the "frame story" (prologue, interludes, and epilogue), which you can find published elsewhere in this blog under the title "Temptation." But the novel's main plot line stalled out completely while Yisu was dragging one of his brothers across Samaria,

What the Blazes? Reflections on My TAG, part 2

So there I was, hiking the Paisley Woods Bicycle Trail, which had ceased to be a broad, friendly road and had become a (potentially) snake-infested, elusive, uphill-through-tick-country line in the grass. Here's that photo again in case you've forgotten:

What the Blazes? Reflections on My TAG, part 1

Last week I went off on my semi-annual TAG Retreat. (TAG stands for "Time Alone with God." For a while I was calling it "Get Away with God" but that acronym really didn't have the same connotation.) I chose Lake Clearwater in the Ocala National Forest for this year's excursion into creation because we nature-people feel closest to God in the great outdoors...the outer, the better. But my roommate worries if I go too far into the wilderness all by myself (and since watching 127 Hours, I've been more sympathetic to her concerns), so I compromise by choosing the most remote campsite in a regularly-patrolled campground and then making day-long forays into the woods on clearly marked, well-traveled hiking trails and kayak runs.