The only way out of a hole is to climb out.

Music. I could not go without that. My mind would not let me be without music. I hiked the trail in 1995 - before there were iPods or music on our cell phones or even cell phones. So I was truly out there with just my thoughts. After a few days there was a continuous loop of songs playing silently in my mind.

Writing is part intuition and part trial and error, but mostly it's very hard work.

I grew up in northern Minnesota on 40 acres of wooded land 20 miles from the nearest town, and so the wilderness was home. It was not an unsafe place. I had that advantage. But there are so many representations of the wilderness being dangerous. You know, depictions of wild animals attacking people. It's like, "No, we kill those animals in far greater numbers than they kill us."

In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.

I am an advocate of honesty and openness, and I think deceit is a dangerous seed to plant and let grow in relationships.

But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?