I think my muse first came to me when I was a small child. She has been a presence in my life since I placed that first small plastic animal into dirt and imagined a whole miniature world around it. I often lived there completely and happily.

I almost lost her for a while in my teens and twenties and she could only sneak into my dreams when I wasn't preoccupied with other areas of my life.

She came back to me in full in my thirties when I got a glimmer again of what I had forgotten from childhood. How to find a world in a mound of dirt and remembering that dreams are real, too, on some level.

Now, in my forties, we are dear friends and if she says a river adventure is in our future I no longer question ... I just ready the raft and go.