“How the Evening Wilderness Awakens the Writer Within”

It’s late evening now. The kind of late that’s still not quite dark, not in Southeast Alaska. The light recedes slowly here, like a shy guest at the end of a long gathering, lingering near the doorway before slipping out unnoticed. Above the forested slopes and jagged ridgelines of the Prince of Wales-Hyder region, the sky burns with soft fire—rose golds and dusky lavenders blending into a cobalt sea overhead. The sun has dipped, but its memory lingers, casting long blue shadows across the spruce trees, across the tidepools, across me.

This is the hour that often sparks something in me—the quiet ignition of an idea, a phrase, a scene I didn’t know was waiting. It’s as if the land itself is whispering: Are you ready to write now?

And it begins with sound. The world hushes in the absence of engines and voices. A raven croaks from somewhere unseen, its echo bouncing off the cliffs like an old drum. The breeze carries the faintest tremble of the ocean—distant, steady, like breath. And then there’s the intimate rustling of leaves, the kind that almost sounds like a conversation between the trees. The wind moves through alder and cedar, stirring branches like fingers running over old piano keys. Nature, at this hour, becomes composer and orchestra both.

The air—what a strange, wonderful thing it is. Sometimes in July, it holds a ghost of warmth, especially inland. But more often, as night sets in, it breathes cool across your skin, reminding you that summer here is always borrowed time. It smells like salt and sap and earth—like wet moss, like a tide gone out, like rain that hasn’t fallen yet. I close my eyes, and it feels like a sigh against my face, a promise of another morning just beyond the trees.

My boots press into a forest trail damp with dew, the ground soft but solid beneath me. I run a hand across the rough, flaking bark of a cedar tree—the kind of tree that has seen more sunsets than I’ve seen seasons. The moss at its base is thick and bright, spongy like it was made to remember the shape of your step. Stones along the trail are slick and smooth, worn down from years of storms and glacier-fed runoff. Everything out here holds history, even if it doesn’t tell it outright.

And then, there’s this one small thing.

A single wildflower—monkshood, I think—growing from the edge of a rock. Its hooded purple bloom glows like a secret in the fading light. Most would walk by without noticing. But something about it stops me. The way it leans just slightly toward the west, catching the last amber sliver of sunlight. The way it holds its space—fragile, maybe, but not weak. That’s a story, I think. Not the flower itself, maybe. But the way it stands alone, defiant and delicate, in the dying light. The way it refuses to be swallowed by shadow.

This is how inspiration works for me. It starts outside. It starts with watching and waiting and listening. It starts in the fading light.

What about you?

What places stir your thoughts into motion? What time of day helps you find your voice? Do you wait for silence, or do you write amid the noise of life?

Here in Southeast Alaska, in the stillness between the tides, I find mine.

And if you’re ever searching for yours, maybe come stand in the hush of this wilderness. The story might already be waiting for you.