On June 23, moosebait.com hosted the Cabin Fever Writing Workshop Adventure. Five writers took the trek up Coxheth Hills to Pitman Lodge where they would spend the day writing, exploring, and exercising their brains with short writing activities.

The following are a few of the pieces which came out of the event.

~Steven Rolls~

The area looked familiar but it had been nearly 40 years since I had come this way with my father.

There was less water in the brook then I remember but I was certain the small log over the waterway was the one I used to cross as a young child going fishing with my dad. the log didn’t look like it would hold me now that I was an adult but that didn’t really matter because the stream was only about three feet across.

I cinched down the straps on my backpack to make sure its valuable contents didn’t get jostled when I made my leap.

“Over the hill and past the giant oak” Dad always said.

I looked around trying to remember what it used to look like; it was not too different. We had travelled this way every week that summer. The summer after my mother died.

“It’s places like this that I feel closest to her” my father would say. “where the wind blows through the trees and the birds sing, she loved to listen to the birds sing.”

The trees opened up into a clearing overlooking a shaded pool in the stream, the very stream I crossed earlier. This was the spot, the spot where we used to sit and cast our rods for hours on end not saying a word.

I placed my pack on the ground and carefully unzipped it. Reaching in, I took hold of its contents and removed it from the pack. Taking a deep breath I slowly lifted the lid, inverted the urn and watched as the ashes started to float down the stream.

A bird sang above me as I took a moment to remember my Dad.

“He’s singing for you Dad, for both you and Mom.”