I have found to keep a back pocket notebook is essential for capturing the fleeting ideas for songs and art. I make it a point to always carry a pencil and one of the five or so sketch/note books in progress with me everywhere.All the more so now that I'm in a season of song writing for my next album. I collect couplets of rhymes off the top of my head while sitting ,walking, dreaming or even driving. The immediatecy of recording these ideas is imperative for they come quickly and fly away just as fast. I find if I put off jotting them down for the least amount of time they are swept away by an invisible current on their way to the sea of forgetfulness.Last weekend I was hiking on a very hot day down in a ravine of a cool dark forest .There was still a little water flowing in the stream on this dry summer day and I followed it's winding course leap frogging from stone to stone.The almost full notebook I carried having a life of it's own must have escaped my back pocket during my jaunt. It was like losing yet another precious brain cell. Laying lost on the woodland floor or adrift on the brook were the secrets of my of heart revealed in this little book of big ideas. I was back at the fort when I discovered it missing but by then darkness had fallen. Too late to organize a search party I could only pray those private pages would not fall prey to the wild raccoons...those voracious readers that inhabit that region.They would most certainly devour the entire volume in one sitting and after digesting it's content would publish it abroad. As it were I was unble to return until 48hrs. later. I prepared for the worst fearing I might find a mangled body of work or a drowned manuscript. After twice retracing my hops from stone to stone I had all but given up when a turquoise angel doubling as a stellar blue jay yelled at me to look down now!And there floating face down in the shallows was my notebook.Halleluyah, I whispered to the Spirit always nearby.I pulled the soggy pulp ashore and applied CPR blowing air between the pages.It finally started to open up and breathe.It would spend the next 12hrs. lying on my car's dashboard recuperating in the sun. Upon closer examination I noticed the text was blurred but still spoke the words first written.On the wilted pages a lot of the ball point ink had bled into a beautiful blue wash as though it had been sumi brush painted by an anonymous nature artist. Some of the pencil sketches of animals had floated off the page and dissappeared. I imagine those line drawings weaving their way down stream to the sea and coming to rest in tide pools where children would capture those critters collecting them on to little pieces paper thus starting the cycle of little back pocket notebooks all over again.