Vacations are good. Vacations are our friends.

My just-concluded ten-day fly fishing vacation to Tennessee included a four-day backpacking trip into the Great Smoky Mountain National Park backcountry.

It’s gorgeous territory and vibrantly green this time of the year.

It’s also pretty unstable on the weather front, so when it started raining hard one morning — blowing out the river and making fishing impossible — I suddenly had two choices.

I could sit in the rain and try to groove on the concept of the water cycle. Instead, I hid out in my coffin-sized backpacking tent.

And wrote.

Eleven hours in a coffin-sized tent leaves plenty of time for words

It’s something I haven’t done for a while. Just scribble stuff. No product to sell. No blog to populate. No pitch to make. Just words.

I’d love to report finishing the first two chapters of next year’s best seller, but it was just thinking. Lots of words. Lots of ideas.

When is the last time you sat and thought about anything for hours on end?

Some would say the rain that day was annoying. At the time, I’d have agreed. Now I’d say the opposite.

Vacation in your plans? A rainy day?

If not, why not?

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

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