The Best Ideas Are Shy

Microseason No. 4, February 19-23

Invention, it must be humbly admitted,

does not consist in creating out of void,

but out of chaos.

—Mary Shelley

polypore fungi made more beautiful on winter’s sparkling canvas

Dear One,

I've been thinking about Ideas lately—the kind that peek out from behind trees and then vanish when I turn to look at them directly. Like the deer that roam in my neighborhood, the best ideas require a certain kind of sideways attention. A gentle noticing that doesn't startle them into flight—bounding off with their white-tail flags flying.

The best thoughts don’t like to be pursued. They need space to hover, to land when they’re ready, much like an owl’s flight through the forest: elusive and graceful.

Writing on her wise and compelling Breccia, psychotherapist and geologist, Ruth Allen, describes the process of trying to clarify the central theme of her next book. Ruth brings us along to observe how the idea is slowly forming, as she skis—deep in thought—along the serene blankness of the Finnish countryside in winter.

She writes:

I am content with this sort of wandering

across the open fell and the open page.

I am what is always melting.

—Ruth Allen

Have you ever experienced this? The way a thought-seed plants itself in the dark soil of your mind, and you have to trust its slow unfurling? We can't rush it any more than we can rush the emergence of the Trout Lilies that will (soon!) be pushing up through last autumn's leaves. We have to make way. To yield, like the humus layer of the forest floor, we offer shelter and softness for a growing idea that’s slowly taking shape.

lichen emerging from melting snow

I remember when I was a young nurse, how the recognition of a patient's declining condition would often come to me first as an uneasy feeling, a subtle shift in the atmosphere of the room. Only later would the clinical signs become clear—the change in breathing pattern, the trending drop in blood pressure. The knowing came first as an intuition, then gradually assembled itself into clear medical evidence. I had to learn to trust this early feeling.

Ideas, I'm finding, have their own ecology. They require certain conditions to thrive: quiet moments, unstructured time, space for wandering. Like a shy woodland creature that won't build its nest too close to human paths, our deepest insights need their own protected habitat.

But isn’t it interesting how once an idea finally shows itself fully, it's as if it's always been there, obvious as the sun. Suddenly you see it everywhere, the way you can't stop noticing the kind “eyes” of the Beech trees once someone points them out. The world rearranges itself around this new understanding, like iron filings aligning with a magnetic field.

Beech trees are the sweet gentle eyes of the forest.

Last week, I found a feather on the trail, its barbules separated and frayed. As I smoothed them back together with my fingers, I thought about how ideas work the same way—scattered fragments that need to be gently realigned before the pattern becomes clear. You can't force them. You have to let your fingers do the work while your mind wanders elsewhere. Occasionally, dentistry can be like this, too. Or any skill—like driving. You have to stop thinking so much about it, and just do it.

It becomes a kind of beautiful obsession then, doesn't it? The way you start collecting evidence for your idea like a bird gathering twigs and moss. Each new example, each fresh connection, adds another piece to the nest you're building. It's not the frantic obsession of anxiety, but the steady, joyful attention of someone who has found a new lens through which to read the world.

I think of Jane Colden, who spent years observing wild plants without ever getting the recognition she deserved. Or Darwin, watching earthworms for hours in his garden. Their ideas needed that long germination and patient cultivation. They had to learn to track their shy ideas by looking for traces rather than trying to spot the end result too early.

The mind, I'm discovering, is a lot like our forest creek after the snow melts—sometimes muddy and turbulent, other times running clear as glass. We can't always see to the bottom, but we can trust that the sediment will settle if we give it time. The idea we're seeking might be like a beautiful stone I found last month, half-buried in the creek bed—it reveals itself only when the waters run clear and the light hits it just so.

While removing specimens from my plant-press, I realize that this too is how ideas mature—under gentle pressure, in quiet darkness, until they've transformed into something that can be handled without crumbling. Something that preserves the essence while transforming the original material into a more lasting form.

my desk is always filled with idea seeds

Sometimes I worry that I'm not doing enough with these shy ideas of mine—shouldn't I be chasing them more actively? But then I remember the Luna moth that once rested on our screen door all day. If I had tried to capture it, to pin it down too soon, I would have destroyed the very thing I wanted to preserve.

So here I am, learning to create space for these wild thoughts to approach on their own terms. Like leaving out seeds for winter birds, I'm discovering that the best we can do is create the right conditions and then wait patiently, attentively, with open hands.

I wonder, my friend, what shy ideas are taking shape in your own mind's forest?

What subtle patterns are you beginning to notice in your daily wanderings?

I'll see you in a new microseason,

xo Ann