I went hiking today at Hall Ranch, an open space park a few miles west of Lyons. It was my third hike this week, and I like to think that I'm rebuilding some of the hiking muscles I had last summer and let atrophy to some degree over the winter.

Hall Ranch offers several different trails, and I chose the Nighthawk Trail because it excludes bicycles, and I could see from the number of cars with bike racks in the parking lot that there were a lot of bicyclists there today. Not surprising considering the lovely sunny spring weather with a high around 60 degrees. The Nighthawk Trail is a long one, and I had limited time, so I got only 54 minutes along the path, nearly all of it uphill, and was a little saddened to see how out of breath I was.

I normally prefer hiking at the end of a day of writing because it gives me time to digest. So I'd planned to think out some issues that I've been thinking about during the week, but I needn't have bothered. I let my mind wander for most of the time, and it was delightful. My schedule right now requires a lot of control, both mental and physical, and the unbounded freedom of hiking with nothing particular to think about was really enjoyable.

That said, my minds eventually wound back to the book I'm working on, Every Morning a New Arrival, what I've described as the "companion workbook" to Practically Shameless, containing much more detail about the archetypes and shadows and offering a variety of exercises.

I've been asking myself over the past week what thread I could use to weave through the topics I want to write about. Practically Shameless has a single thread -- my personal story of a shadow and its transformation -- and I worked very hard to follow that thread throughout the book, to (in the words of my editor, David Hicks) take the reader's hand and never let it drop, and in the process to explain the very challenging concepts at the foundation of Jungian psychology in a way that almost anyone could understand.

The purpose of Every Morning, however, is to be quite different: I want it to be a resource, of use in many life situations. My own bookshelf is populated with books that I refer to regularly -- on animal medicine, the Enneagram, Jung, the tarot, meaning in physical symptoms, symbols, etc. -- and I want to add to that shelf. 

A resource book may not be read from beginning to end; it may be read section by section and sometimes not in entirety.  The question is, then, does it need a thread to bind the sections together? Could the book be more like a collection of essays, each one ending in an exercise? My instincts say that some kind of thread is still needed, or at the very least, a compelling segue from one section to the next. 

Here's a portion of the Rumi poem from which the book's title is taken. What does it bring to your mind, dear reader?

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all . . .