Patrice Vecchione has no trouble recalling the Centrum writing workshop she joined in Port Townsend three decades ago.
She also remembers feeling her hackles rise.
Vecchione was listening to poet Mary Oliver, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Hypothetically speaking, Oliver asked the workshop participants: If a poet has just one book left to write, what should it be about?
Then she answered her own question. The natural world.
This made Vecchione, a New Yorker by birth, highly ticked off.
She was, at this point, in her early 20s and believed that ultimate book shouldn’t necessarily be about nature, but instead explore what’s in the poet’s heart.
Vecchione has come around since then. At 57, she’s just published her fourth book, one that suits the season on the Olympic Peninsula.
Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life explores all kinds of feelings. Fear, doubt, sorrow, loneliness — one can find balm for each in the outdoors. For Vecchione, the sweet relief awaits on a path through the forest near her home in Monterey, Calif.
The months she spent writing this book were the happiest of her life, Vecchione told the Peninsula Daily News. And those long-ago days at Centrum’s writing workshop, along with walks on Fort Worden State Park’s trails, provided the first inspiration.
In the slim book, the poet, memoirist and collage artist delves into how nature feeds the senses and, just as important, the imagination. She sings the praises of solitude, of returning again and again to the same paths through the woods.
“I’m not dogmatic. I don’t think I can prescribe what someone’s last book should be,” Vecchione added.
Yet she agrees with Oliver’s premise now and adds an assertion of her own.
When she was younger, Vecchione said, she didn’t have the relationship with nature that she does today. Her personal relationship with the forest, the beach, the wildlife, she said, is paramount.
Yes, climate change and environmental disasters loom high in our minds, at times threatening to overwhelm and exhaust.
For Vecchione, it works to choose one place to protect. Her piece of hallowed ground is Jacks Peak, a wooded park near her home.
Some time ago it was under threat: A developer wanted to put in a zipline. Vecchione was part of a group of about 35 people who fought it.
They were small group — but “really determined,” she said. They circulated petitions and enlisted the help of a politician who was running for office.
“We won. There’s not going to be a zipline, ever,” she said.
Step into Nature is Vecchione’s fourth book, following Writing and the Spiritual Life: Finding Your Voice by Looking Within and her two books of poetry, The Knot Untied and Territory of Wind. She also gives writing workshops for children, teens and adults around the country.
Step into Nature isn’t her last book, at least not if she gets her wish.
“I want to write a book about the value of art in everyday life,” she said, and then pen a sequel to Step, this time especially for children.
