Monday, March 16, 2009

My Curious Adviser...

This is my back woods Alaskan Adviser...Lynn Twigg. His motto that he likes to remind me every so often is: "I always remember to keep my mouth shut and seem a fool... rather than open it, and remove all doubt" recounted every time with a chuckle and a glint in his eye.

In truth, Twigg as he's known, is an 86-year-old very smart trapper, woodsman and pilot who plays a wicked piano for brilliant spontaneous music, and is really quite famous in these parts for his bush plane antics saving many a life over the years since he came to Alaska when it was still just a Territory back in the 1950's.

He's got one adventure after another to share... and whenever he comes and asks me what I'm writing... we get into some pretty good conversations about the nature of creativity and change for what he deduces at the end of each conversation "to be simple common sense." And then I remind him, that he is a very unusual person with an enormous gift of impeccable "common sense!" Not only can he tell the entire story of activity in the woods on any given day just by what he sees on the ground, but he can track any animal, knows every foot print, has walked away safely from numerous plane and car crashes, flies around one of the world's largest mountains and generally is a person who can survive just about anything in the natural world.

So... I say, "Twigg, you do get it I'm sure, because you are quite the exception to the rule as a person who is tremendously tuned in!" And then I remind him that my writing is for regular people who have probably never dreamed of the exceptional experience he's had in his 86 years... To which every time, he laughs with a grin.

He's always taken by how much I get such a kick outta talking to him... so today I shared that it's just that he is such a "great channel"... that it's like "whatever God needs to say to me, it just starts comin' right out of Twigg's mouth" when he walks in the door!

It is a gift to have people like this around... I don't need much... in fact most of why I'm presently in the back woods of Alaska is because I need quite stillness to write and produce... But I sometimes need a bouncing board... and that is often best when the person can "stay outta the way" and allow "the flow" to spill forth through them... Certain people are really good at this, seems like they "check themselves at the door" when they come to see me, and all that comes out of them in my presence is just pure gold! The perfect reflection I need in that moment... to move things along, get the right clarity, or spark a new idea.

So I am very grateful for this time and space... to be here in this place where I have great friends like Twigg and his dear wife Connie, to nudge me along on my way!

It's all good fun out here in the shadows of Mt.McKinley... where people are people and good instincts are the good fruit that is grown!



by Sharon L. Corsaro
Learn more at www.growing-gold.com

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