Courtesy of Mel Shaw How I Became a Nature Writer Originally published in A Wing in the Door I grew up surrounded by a small woods and, because of my artist parents’ solitary life, the trees became more my kin than people will ever be. But alas, for all its charm, my woods was threatened on all sides by exploitation. Looking out from the profound shade of lacy hemlocks, I saw a world now bereft of trees and found no …
Wonderful Recently, in an effort to dodge all my Facebook wannabe suitors I decided to replace my portrait there with a representative image. Rummaging through 20 years of my own pictures, I was arrested by this blurry, long-ago snapshot of Merak, the human-imprinted red-tailed hawk, who flew free at Foley Mountain, but saw me and my family as her own. Two clicks and success. My Facebook/Instagram portrait changed from human to hawk. It amuses me that I do find this …
Begin Again Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and afraid. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground. Rumi “I can’t do this!”It’s early morning, and, yet again I am trying to move ahead with some of the work which matters to me. But right now I can only stare …