Audrey Camp

Yosemite National Park

When Jonathan and I go camping, we like to be as far from the next campsite as possible. It has to do with staking out our own piece of sky in which to stargaze. The mountain night closes like a clamshell around us, finally sealing off the silhouette of horizon with nothing but a blue that is almost black. Our lone flame burns in the wilderness, and I feel self-sufficient, brave, and very much alive. But I must admit that I am overcome with comfort when I do, occasionally, see the bright, vivid speck of another campfire through the trees.

The comfort of that alien campfire is why I write, and why I write non-fiction in particular. Our civilization of almost 7 billion people covers the planet, and yet we fear our own individual insignificance. Each of us worries at one time or another that we are alone in our thoughts. It's never true. Writing has helped me to understand that more than anything else. No matter what I put down on paper (or on the screen) someone else exists who will read it and say, "Wow. Me, too."

This is why I write, to kindle a kinship with my readers, to answer their questions, all of which are also my own. I am rarely the first to attempt to answer, but writing helps me to organize my thoughts and to make sense of things.

My life has its mundane moments. Some days are bogged down in laundry or dishes. Some days are spent sitting or, worse yet, lying down. But those are the placeholders between the better parts of life, the things I strive for: trips to exotic places, climbs up dramatic rock features, conversations with interesting people, and personal victories that remind me how much I can accomplish. All of that inspires and informs my writing, and I record it so that it might inspire and inform someone else, too.

It all comes back around to community, the similar bones and blood that prop us up and keep us pumping. I want my writing to be like the echo of voices in a canyon as you're rafting down a river; nobody in sight, but proof of life in the excitement of strangers, the splash as they cannonball into the calm waters around the bend.

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