August Writing Prompts

Though August can be hot and sultry inspiring lazy days in hammocks, it is also harvest season. An ancient festival of first fruits is celebrated early in the month. All around us berries are ripening on bushes and vines, fields are beginning to overflow with zucchini and melons and various crops are coming to fruition. It’s definitively a time to feel gratitude for this bounty as well as for other abundance in our lives.

One of the things I love to do this time of year is gather wild foods and eat them on the spot…plump jeweled blackberries glowing in the shade of a cottonwood tree, warm and sweet. Near Northwest shores, salmonberries are ripe…in the mountains, huckleberries and wild currants. Exotic mushrooms reward the ardent hunter. If you’ve never enjoyed an entirely wildcrafted meal, this is the season to try it.

The price you pay for such a meal is adventure and exercise in the sun—such a deal! This sort of collecting kindles hardwired memories of foraging, of knowing exactly when and where each vine, each root, each bush would share its bounty. Of a faith in the earth so secure it has no name, no otherness from me. I remember precious wild strawberries trailing magically across sand dunes in June. I remember finding walnuts and acorns and all manner of green herbs, and being wise in the ways of preserving them. It was a time of abundance, of living in harmony with each inching of the wheel of the year.

What about you? Do you feel a primal stirring when you gaze out over a productive vegetable garden? Do you remember the first time you found wild food and ate it? Wasn’t that a special thrill? Perhaps you kept the site a secret, a sacred place to return to? This month as you savor the harvest, think about its deeper meaning in your life. Crafting poetry from your observations preserves the experience and allows you to share your sense memories with others. So please, try some of these prompts and see where they lead you, then share your 10s here for us all to enjoy.
Here are some prompts to get you started: