This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

While Kevin was off hiking on his own...
I treated myself to something special.

I boarded a little red plane...

And we flew to Denali. Click on any picture to embiggen.

We flew all the way around Denali.

We flew low over glaciers.

We flew so close to the peaks!

Did I mention I got to sit in the cockpit? That's Chip flying the plane.



Then guess what we did?
Some hikers needed a pickup...
So we landed in the Ruth Glacier Gorge.
We landed on a glacier!

The plane landed on skis.

It was silent, except for the occasional avalanche. It was HUGE.

A day like this called for a snow angel.

Thank you, K2 Aviation and Denali National Park, for this unforgettable experience. There are no words, so just click on this picture.

Sleep-deprived, I got to the tiny Bromma airport at 7 this morning (a little Stockholm airport for short-distance flights), then learned my flight was delayed 2 hours. Two hours I could have been sleeping, if only there were prescient people who could warn us when a plane is about to go on the fritz. Such is life. I played some chess, read a little, and tried to knock things over in the terminal with my mind.

Finally we were allowed to board the plane. I fastened my seatbelt, closed my eyes, and sat there, tired and grouchy. Then I heard the sound of the propellers revving up. From that point on, I was completely happy.

I love airplanes.

At midnight ET, when this post is set to publish, I will (presumably) be in the sky, flying to France. You know what was invented in France? The flying trapeze! Obviously, this calls for a trapezey post.

Warning! To those afraid of heights: this is a trapezey post!

(Hello. Those of you who've been reading this blog for a while know I get a little batty before trips, right?)

(Bat: another thing that flies! See, there's a THEME here.)

Okay, *ahem herm* let's get serious. The flying trapeze was invented in 1859 in Toulouse by a Frenchman named Jules Leotard. Guess what he wore? Instead of a net, in the beginning Leotard used a swimming pool. I bet a soaking wet leotard is clammy and cold.

And that's all the history you're getting, because I'm about to leave for France and I haven't packed yet and I DON'T HAVE TIME.

So, I've got two videos for you today. The first is a little local news piece about my trapeze school. I can't seem to embed it, bu…

The Spanish cover of Fire, published by Roca (click to enbiggen) ----->

I always feel just a little bit sad right before a big work trip. I think it's because of Bitterblue, or whatever my WIP is at the time. I just want to write her, and it's hard to imagine being able to write her during so much excitement. During my domestic tour last fall, I managed to cliff-hanger myself right before I left, by which I mean that I was able to time it so that I left just as I was getting to a big, exciting, fun-to-write scene. That made it a lot easier to get writing done while on tour, despite all the distraction -- and to get back into writing full-time once I got home. But I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that this time. I seem to be bogged down in a muddy section. We'll see what happens.

I also get nervous before a trip like this, and so I do a little meditation and imagine myself floating above the earth, and then out into outer space, outside the solar syst…

(Recently overheard in my household, pronounced by a person who had lost the bucket)
If I could only bottle the way I feel when I'm driving to the airport at 4am, I would never be afraid of anything. The day before I travel tends to be a misery. I read The House at Pooh Corner and weep about how hard it is to grow up. I have never understood what the hell my problem is. I suppose the anticipation of travel stirs up some sort of resistance to change, the fundamental fear of death, except in my case, it isn't the fear of death by falling airplane; it's the fear of death by what if I forget to pack Q-tips? Or my chapstick? Or my cheese-avocado-egg sandwich?
Anyway, once in the car or the cab or the subway or whatever, I always feel so much better. On Saturday morning at 4am I was in the car driving to the airport listening to "Your Love" by the Outfield and Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings and cheerily contemplating my dreadful clutch and kind of wishing …

So, Lynyrd Skynyrd was at my gate at the airport on Friday morning. This did not make up for the fact that Delta was in an enormous snafu such that all flights were delayed and I couldn't make my connecting flight and there were no seats on any later flights that could possibly get me to South Bend in time for my cousin's wedding party on Saturday. Even if I flew through Cincinnati instead of Atlanta. Even if I tried my luck and flew standby. Even if I went home and came back later. No flights. Nada. Nichts. Niente.
I was somewhat astonished -- I've had long delays and reroutes before, I've been stuck in Chicago due to blizzards, I was stuck in LA once due to a volcano in New Zealand, but I was always able to go where I needed to go eventually. But not this time. So I left the airport, got back in my car, and drove home, because there was nothing else to do. I went to the bagel store and got the bagels I'd failed to get on Wednesday. I went to the grocer…

On Wednesday I was feeling a bit melancholy, and I'd also run out of bagels (possibly related). So I went for a walk to the bagel store, listening to sad Ani DiFranco songs on the way. When I got there, the bagel store was closed, so I walked to the grocery store, where the bagels are less stupendous, but acceptable in emergencies. On the way home I wore my sunglasses and my sun visor because the light was blinding, and I crouched under my purple sparkly iridescent umbrella because it also happened to be pouring. Just your normal summer day in north Florida.
The sad thing about summer here is that the pelicans on the broken-down pilings in the river go away -- maybe they go out to sea? But recently, a single blue heron has been spending a lot of time on the pilings. A solitary blue (for you Cynthia Voigt fans out there). I stopped to commune with the heron for a few minutes; and then, closer to home, I stopped to commune with a couple of the neighborhood's less skittish …