Welcome to the not-quite summer solstice edition of Enchanted Side Quests. Summer is arriving a little late hereabouts and we’ve only been spotting the fireflies for the past two-three nights, while off the coast, they’ve been out for weeks. I was relieved to see them, worried some unseen pollutant had disappeared them like so many insect populations you hear about. They’re an important source of magic for children and writers.

I am steadily plotting A Binding of Spellwork and Story, for which I received a grant from artsnb to write, and I know what you’re thinking, “Still?” and yeah, I am not fast at this. Plotting for me includes multiple notebooks filled and every scene broken down to the very best version of itself. I end up with a very messy not-draft of some 50 000 words, and then I get to writing in earnest.

I started taking photos of my plot board so I can SEE some progress beyond notebooks filling up. The one below is from a few weeks back and wow, it’s very heartening to know how much fuller it is already. And maybe I can sequence them all in a video for social media purposes? Like a time lapse of a slow motion plotter.

There is no rhyme or reason to the colours involved, I just like chaotic colour. What DOES matter is the order. Here you can see I have a lot of beginning, a bit of a middle, and some ending stuff.

Life is still chaotic and some family members are still in crisis, but I’ve forced myself to spend a few hours every morning working on my writing despite it all, and it’s helped a lot. My mental health is better and my anxiety lower, which makes me an all-around better parent and better equipped to handle the day’s crises as they come.

I felt a nice inner glow when I saw someone post about my book Care and Feeding of Your Little Banned Bookshop on social media with a caption that read “I think of this book whenever I see a little free library.”

Now I’m grinning again, thinking of all the little library magics in the book and outside of the book, like when a friend of mine took a copy of Bornstein’s Hello Cruel World that I sent them to put in a Little Free Library in Florida during a visit. That book plays a pivotal role in Care and Feeding, so this felt like making magic. I’ve also had friends buy copies of the book specifically to put inside Little Free Libraries, knowing how magical it would be to read this book if that’s where you found it.

Writers, I tell ya. We can’t get enough of that magic.

Which brings us to this month’s side quest: my chipmunk rescue adventure.

So. We all know (one hopes) that if you have a big tub to collect rainwater in, that you put a stick in it in case any critters or bees fall in, they can climb out. For some reason, I put in one of the kids’ snow shovels this year, thinking it would suffice. It didn’t, I think the plastic was too slippery for wet paws. This is important.

I was on the phone with my friend from BC (because I am old and still use the phone for such things) and outside because we tend to get loud and silly when I wandered to our rainwater tub. And there, floating, was a drowned chipmunk.

My heart got heavy with dread. (Please put a stick in your tubs if you haven’t already).

I put the phone down, cursing the shovel for not doing it’s job, and then I took the shovel to remove the small, furry corpse before the kids could see it, which is when the little fella blinked.

Shovel be damned, I scooped the little critter up in my hands and put him on the grass, where he lay there, shivering or maybe shaking with shock. I told my friend I’d call her back and picked him back up to hold against my chest in case he was cold and went around to the front door to ask my partner for help finding something to put the poor thing in.

The chipmunk was moving significantly more already, which was a really good sign.

Mike brought out a box with a t-shirt to hold him and the chipmunk immediately flopped over, probably from exhaustion.

Then came the internet searching of nesting material and food. The kids picked him some wild strawberries to eat while Mike found some clean sawdust and old grass. Little chippy was started to move more still, made himself a cozy nest to hide in, and rested.

Its hard to get closure with stuff like this, because it does have deep affect on the mind to experience this with a wild critter. Last summer I found a baby snowshoe hare in rough shape that we took to the wildlife vet and I still wonder what happened to her. This time, success is waking up to an empty box and a hope that our chipmunk returned to his forest home.

But when nature give you the opportunity to be kind, you also get the chance to rescue yourself a little bit, too.

It has been a WILD month. The hummingbirds have returned, the garden is planted and happily growing, and the critters are out and about.

You can imagine my shock when I was at my desk, working through my morning plotting hours, when I saw something dark through the window, out of the corner of my eye. Was that a bear?

I went around to the front of the house, going out into our mud room which has the only place with windows facing the direction the bear went in. Sure enough, there was the bear, sauntering over to our compost barrel. And then INTO our compost barrel.

Where he pulled out the remains of a half-rotten squash rind covered in coffee grounds.

He then lost interest in the rotten squash rind and compost entirely, choosing to saunter over the vehicles, give them a sniff, then wandered up the driveway and into the woods.

While cautious, I’ll admit it was exciting to be able to watch a young, wild black bear explore from a safe location. It was also a good opportunity to teach the kids some safety stuff and while I was worried we’d have to stop composting, the bear hasn’t come back a few weeks in. We do live in nature’s home, and big wild animals come with the small ones.

That said, I do prefer the smaller ones when it comes to my kids, who have asked to keep thousands of snakes and toads as pets so far this summer.

And with this flurry of pet requests, there is a small feeling of finally. THIS is why we wanted to raise them here, amid the fireflies and the toads and the sometimes bears. My youngest is terrified of snakes, UNLESS the snake is being held by my eldest, who has suddenly started channeling Steve Irwin for reasons unbeknownst, but welcome.

That’s it for this month’s newsletter, Enchanted friends. What adventures have you been having? Have you read any books I should add to my TBR?