Instructions for Catching Salamanders

or being creative, take your pick.

Most children who grew up in Appalachia can tell you how to catch a salamander. 

It’s an undeniable art form most don’t have the patience or use for. Some might even call it pointless, seeing as how the only thing we’d do with the slick little creatures once they're caught is put them in a Solo cup full of creek water for observation and then turn them loose. 

For me personally, there’s not a definable use for catching salamanders, beyond learning patience and the chance to see something miraculous for a brief moment before it’s out of your hands. 

Catching salamanders is a lot like being a writer.

In my life, writing isn’t what most would call a necessity. I don’t have a contract or professional deadline I’m under. Half the time, when I sit down to write, I don’t even know what to say. I just know I want something on the page. There’s a need deep in my DNA to get up close to beauty, to hold it—however fleeting—in the palms of my hands. 

Yes, creative work needs structure, purpose and intention. And it needs room to breathe, play and delight at the same time. I’m learning to embrace the discipline of making myself actually sit down to do the work and rejoice in the ability I have to do so. It takes both. 

Finding the words I want to convey feels like when I was a child wading through mountain streams looking for salamanders. Those quick-footed amphibians had a nearly magical ability to disappear into the mud no matter how carefully you try to capture them. But that didn’t stop me from trying. 

It’s the same with trying to land on the right words. 

I’ll delicately sift through my thoughts, experiences and emotions, trying to unearth a few cohesive lines and paragraphs. If I get impatient, everything muddies, the words wink out of sight and I have to start all over again. 

Catching salamanders is all about moving slowly, paying attention and not minding when your hands get dirty. Instructions are as follows: “find a shady, shallow part of the creek with movement (put not too much movement), take your shoes off and step in. It’ll be freezing at first but your body won’t mind, seeing how blazing hot it is outside. Start by kneeling down so your butt is in the swirling current and your face is near the emerald-gold surface of the water. Now slowly, slowly, lift up large rocks within your arms reach and pay attention.”  

Where I grew up, salamanders were the exact hue of the creek bed—mottled brown mixed with dull green, i.e, the color of mud. They’re so well camouflaged, you almost never spot them unless you're completely still and they aren’t. Even then, most of the time what you see is decaying leaves or some backwards darting crawdad swirling through the current. But if you look closely and move slowly, occasionally you’ll get what you’re there for. 

Writing can be a tedious process. You have to sit down and stay put. You have to ease into the uncomfortable current of your own thoughts. And, more often than not you have to squat there and keep lifting rocks writing until something miraculous emerges. 

Then, there’s the business of actually catching the critters. They’re impossibly fast and slicker than an oiled hog. The stream is their home turf, their fortress. And here you are, this bumbling giant squinting in sunlight bouncing off the amber ripples trying to outsmart a creek dweller who is practically the creek embodied. 

Writing out what I’m feeling in a way that impacts others feels a lot like bumbling around trying to hold on to my elusive creativity. Anyone else?

But usually, if I stick it out, something will emerge. I unearth a sentence here, a paragraph there, pretty soon a whole essay strings together. I stop to admire my work (at this point it doesn’t even feel like mine). Where’d you come from? I think. 

Sometimes my writing feels like a beautiful thing I stuck around longer than everyone else to discover. Maybe that’s what makes a good salamander catcher..er…writer. You just choose to sit in the creek longer than everyone else. 

But why? What keeps me returning here, to the cold reality of a blank page and blinking cursor? Why do all this work for such a small gain?

To those questions, I pose a return one: have you ever spent an afternoon catching salamanders? It’s glorious. 

Bare feet. Water encasing moss covered stones in polished eddies and bubbling swirls like living glass. Light filtering through dancing laurels and rigid oaks. Leaves turned temporary boats that sail over tiny kingdoms of minnows, crawfish and salamander coves. Flat stones turned sunny-side-up and there! A flash of a speckled brown tail, your hand darting quickly, but gently, into the water to scoop her up. And suddenly curling in your palm is the black-eyed child of the creek bed. You admire her, both of you breathing together for heartbeat, before you submerge your hand back into the current and she flicks back into the water so quick you wonder if she was ever really there. 

Catching salamanders is less about how many you get and more about being present with things worth paying attention to; the mundane, the ephemeral, the sacred dust of living. If you’re a writer—or a creative of any kind for that matter—you understand what I mean. 

Or, you want to.

Because if we learn to be present, we can bear witness. And if we can bear witness, we’ll have stories to tell—with our words, with our photography, with with our art. 

But no one ever caught a salamander without first paying attention. 

What can you be present for today? Even if you don’t catch what you’re looking for, you can sit awhile with something beautiful, something worthy, something miraculous. Maybe you’ll get the chance to hold a story in your hand. 

I don’t know what creative “thing” you feel led to make time for in your life. Maybe it’s not something most would call needful or profitable. Maybe it’s just something God gave you to delight in and worship Him while you’re doing it. And I’m willing to bet you’re reading this and thinking of it right now. 

Perhaps today is the day you spend some time trying to catch your own salamander. 

Go for it. I dare you.