It’s cold in Cleveland Heights during the month of January after one of the first significant snowfalls of the season. Businesses are shutting down again due to a surging COVID variant and your pillow seems to stare at you with puppy dog eyes, begging you to stay in bed. You’re restless though, unable to lay around any longer. As you make coffee on autopilot, wandering through your kitchen along the familiar footprints of your daily routine, you realize something. You’re bored. At this point, you’d rather be frozen than bored. Fortunately, you signed up for a haiku hike and you own wool socks.

When you arrive at the nature center, a group has started congregating indoors. Your guide, Ray is there entertaining everyone as they assemble and make sure they’re prepared. There are some tips he has to offer and background information that should prove useful during the program. Everyone has pens and pads to write with. They’re taking quick notes as Ray mentions how haiku is simple, succinct and subjective. Avoid like or as, leaving the reader to make their own associations. Write in the present tense, marking where you are in nature onto the page. Before long, you’re out in nature immersed in the present, gathering your bearings and doing your best to write them down.

Interestingly enough, even after a preliminary discussion about what to look for and how to get the most out of this program, you and your group rush forward talking amongst yourselves until asked to stop. Ray’s laughing at you all for walking right past so many great writing prompts. Twittering flicks of bright colors, like candy from a pinata fly back and forth from the trees to a hub of feeders. You wonder how they usually seem so frantic to you and yet now they can be your inspiration to slow down. As a matter of fact, you can let yourself stop. Easier said than done, but the hike is just beginning. You get the urge to move ahead and explore more, but Ray points out some snowberries. At that moment you realize you could probably write in this spot for hours if you would let yourself.

Hiking is part of the experience though, so the group proceeds in due time. Stopping every here in there when inspired, you point out the sights and sounds to one another like the dry creaking of a split tree as it sways in the wind. Bubbles froth under the ice of a stream where wet sparkles carve a serpent along the forest floor. You struggle to figure out how you’d write about that or the seedpods you’re staring at without using metaphors.

Even if you have a hard time with writing, this turns out to be an adventure and a great way to get out of the house. When the group warms back up inside the nature center, there are poems about every stop you took along your way, adding interest to all of those shared moments.

If this program sounds as fun to you as it was to experience an blog about, you still have one more chance to join us in April for the spring session!

Some haikus from the hike

Richard Ferris