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By Jeanne Watson

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Summer is so many things that inspire us. Blue skies, warm oceans, blooming flowers, fields of vegetables, gentle breezes and lazy days away from our normal routines.

It is also the most serendipitous of seasons.

It is during those quiet walks down country roads, those reveries on city benches and those moments of solitude we call our own that ideas pop into our relaxed state. Unexpectedly, these same ideas transform themselves, suddenly and without warning, to something else.

George Ballas could attest to that. One fine summer day he pulled into a car wash looking for a means to clean the country road dust off his car. Sam Harrison, in a great little book called Ideaspotting: How To Find Your Next Great Idea recounts what happened next when serendipity hit Ballas.

As he watched spinning nylon bristles scrub his car, he started to think about something else. He rushed home, punched holes in a can and inserted fishing line. Then he removed his lawn edger's blade and attached the can. The Weed Eater was born.

There were many other great inventions that came to people while they were exploring something else. Sir Alexander Fleming spotted penicillin while exploring innocuous bacteria. James Wright invented Silly Putty while looking for silicone substitutes for rubber.

John Barth, writing in The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor, noted: "You don't reach serendipity by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings serendipitously."

Summer is the time for setting out for somewhere and ending up somewhere else.

There's something about the warmth and the sunshine and the endless days that foster ideas.

Sir Horace Walpole actually coined the word serendipity in reference to a Persian fairy tale called The Three Princes of Serendip. In the story, three siblings are sent on a journey by the King of Serendip, their father. In the course of their trip, the young princes make a series of accidental discoveries, none of which they were seeking in the first place.

Where do we go in our part of New Brunswick to find things that would delight the ancient King of Serendip? Many have great experiences when they truly open their eyes to nature.

By sitting and watching the water flow gently by, da Vinci was inspired to create an intricate system of channels to link Florence to the sea. Frank Lloyd Write said he went to nature every day for inspiration for his creative work.

"I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain," he wrote.

Spend time to look, really look at stones, seeds, fruits and vegetables. Take hikes and observe the colour schemes offered by nature and imagine how they can work into our everyday lives.

Let your imagination get an airing, just as we open the windows to our homes and cottages.

I think sculptor Andy Goldsworthy summed up the idea of expanding our minds through serendipitous excursions when he wrote, "When I work with a leaf, rock, sticks, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the process of life within and around it."

It's just something to think about during walks around our towns in the summer.

Editor's Note: Jeanne Watson is publisher of The Bugle-Observer. Her column appears each Tuesday. You can reach her via e-mail at watson.jeanne@thebugle.ca or by regular mail sent to The Bugle-Observer, 110 Carleton St., Woodstock, NB, E7M 1E4.