Volcanic, Universal Inspiration
Sometimes, all you need to do is open your eyes and ears
The semester had just ended in the late summer of 2023, and my wife and I were visiting Mount Rainier National Park. For the first time in a long time, I was able to breathe. I mean, there was some minor trouble due to the high altitude, and there was that moment when I froze for what felt like 10 minutes to let the mama bear and her two cubs cut in front of us on a trail, but figuratively speaking, man, could I breathe. It was as light as I’d felt in a long, long time. There were wildflowers, trees abounding, and just the pure, absolute magic of a giant, snow-capped volcano towering over us.
After a couple of days of wonder, we got in our vehicle, taking our memories and photos with us, but we didn’t go home. Not yet, at least. Instead, we began our drive, with the music of Tyler Childers surrounding us, to Crater Lake National Park.
As if the visit to Mount Rainier hadn’t given us enough beauty to last for the rest of the year, the drive to Oregon tried its best to rival it. There is an image I’ll never forget from that drive: We are on a two-lane road. No one is around us. It’s green. The kind of green that is so pure and deep that it doesn’t seem real. There are hills everywhere, and empty pastures and fields.
Here’s the thing: There are also volcanoes in every direction. They are surrounding us as if they are doing the aesthetic work of clouds, and it is, again, magic.
I am a writer. I’ll never get tired of typing those four words. I am a writer, and back in August of 2023, I hadn’t written any substantial fiction in several months. I was looking for inspiration.
In that moment, driving among the volcanoes, I knew I had found it.
Once the trip to the Pacific Northwest was over, I brought a volcano home with me, and I sat with it. For days, I sat with it. For weeks. For months. For half a year. I had found part of the new story I wanted to tell. I just hadn’t figured out all of it.
I would type some well-intentioned words. The curser would barely blink once before I deleted them. I’d go for walks. I’d talk to my dog. I’d cuss, like I’m prone to do. What I finally did was the answer. I listened. That’s right. I rolled my desk chair back, and I listened.
I opened that app that supplies my music, and I clicked on the playlist I go to often — the one titled simply “Tyler.”
As the music began, the very song that I consider the song of my life, which is Tyler Childers’ “Universal Sound,” began to play. In a single line, Childers plants us in a world: “Up in Pocahontas, near the Cranberry Glades.” There is no question throughout the rest of song, which feels beautifully personal and inviting, that this world is both his and ours.
In “Universal Sound,” there is “tobacco juice and Mason jars of ‘shine.” There is a prayer that “the stars will shoot her all the wishes she can hold.” The world Childers gives us is entirely real, and that realness stems from how the song is full of life and peace and grace and connection—and love.
My reaction to “Universal Sound” can best be summed up like this: Each time I listen to it, I feel at home, no matter where I actually am. For me, there is no greater success a song can grant us than this feeling of closeness and comfort.
I sat with the song for a while at my desk, and my inspiration epiphany finally struck me. Yeah, I had brought a volcano back home with me, but I needed to place it at home home. It needed to be in my own Cranberry Glades.
My book needed to be on a cattle farm. The land needed to be populated with creeks and minnows. It needed gardens full of watermelons and tomatoes. There needed to be a volcano giving shade to a house with a front porch, and that porch needed a couple of five-gallon buckets of purple-hull peas spilling from its brim. The story needed good people trying to do the best they can do. It needed the kind of quietness that only the natural world can grant us. It needed all of these things because, for me, they are the qualities I associate with the truth of home.
My first book, which is a collection of short stories, took almost eight years to write. My second one, another collection of stories, took a full MFA program. My new one — my upcoming The Volcano Keeper, which won’t be out until the fall of 2026 — took two months.
When I was lost in my writing, as it turns out, all I needed to do was open my eyes and my ears. Inspiration was all around me.
Copyright © 2025 by Bradley Sides. All rights reserved.
Bradley Sides is the author of two collections of short stories, Those Fantastic Lives and Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. The Volcano Keeper is due in 2026. He teaches writing at Calhoun Community College and was an instructor at Humanities Tennessee’s Young Writers’ Workshop.
