Peri McQuay

Peri Phillips McQuay is the author of Singing Meadow: The Adventure of Creating a Country Home, The View From Foley Mountain, a book of nature meditations on her experiences living for 30 years at the Foley Mountain Conservation Area and A Wing in the Door: Life With a Red-tailed Hawk is the story of her adventures with Merak, a human-imprinted hawk, who lived free but saw McQuay and her family as her special people. Also Peri has written numerous essays, articles, book reviews and a weekly column, published in the Kingston Whig-Standard Magazine. Her credits include Country Journal, Harrowsmith, Bird Watcher’s Digest, The Snowy Egret, Seasons, The Fiddlehead, Herizons and Brick.

Life is Hard

Life is Hard This is a story about deer. But it doesn’t begin like that. Long ago, I was visiting my teacher son Morgan’s grade two class, setting up a weaving exhibit for the children on the tables at the back of the room. Meanwhile, on the rug at the front of the class he had his little ones sitting in a circle around his chair While I unfolded my portable loom at the back of the room,. Their attention …

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Gifts of Foley Mountain

THE GIFTS OF FOLEY MOUNTAIN The interview was almost at an end. It had been an intense hour of revisiting the 30 years my husband had been Supervisor at the Foley Mountain Conservation Area overlooking Westport, and where we and our two sons had lived in the little supervisor’s house there.“So, what is your most treasured memory of the time you were at Foley Mountain?”How to choose? It was an impossible question. Memories swirled, some too private to talk about.But, …

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Starting Again

A Fresh Start Today I am writing about a new beginning, a fresh start. Eventually I became strong enough to begin to reflect on what a new life without my husband of 47 years might consist of. Just as Singing Meadow, my story of how we came to leave Foley Mountain and build a new home near Bobs Lake had been due to released, Barry became seriously ill with a fast-moving cancer. When it became clear that it would be …

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