Greetings from Brainerd, Minnesota! It’s so great to be back up here again! Design Camp is a fall staple on my calendar and every year I look forward longingly to the crisp, cold air all the quality time I will spend with friends. It’s a different world than the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The highs are in the 40s and 50s this weekend, and even this week, I was hanging out in triple digit temps. It’s a bit of a shock to the system, but as much as I miss Arizona, I’m happy to be here.

The drive up felt incredibly long. It started when I couldn’t find the boots I usually wear to Design Camp, so I just wore a different pair. It’s silly, but those boots with the crisp Minnesota air signal to me that its time for Camp. I stopped in Ankeny for Starbucks, but by the time I got to Ames, my stomach was a little upset, so I pulled off and got some Rolaids. I stopped in Clear Lake to take a bathroom break and stretch my legs, and then didn’t stop again until St. Cloud.

After being in Phoenix, I forgot that back up north, the seasons were changing. As I cruised up I-35, I noticed that the corn had officially gone from green to a faint brown, and the change in the seasons showed itself in the trees as I ventured north. The colors were distracting, and fall always reminds me of the living colors burning away to the winter ash, or the way forest fires burn the refuse from the forest floor, replenishing the soil below. I’m eager to see all the colors at Madden’s!

It’s been a pretty uneventful day, but I imagine the next two days will be a little more interesting. I believe the creative life requires some time in the doldrums of life. The mundane can be just as inspirational as anything else. As creatives we have to be intimately connected to the plain, the simple, the uneventful, and the profoundly boring. Everything we experience is another vein of connection that we open up with the people our work is made for.