Welcome to my new blog, Small, With Great Love These are my depth years. My question in later life is: What remains? Although I no longer can range widely, what I am challenged to do is to go ever deeper into my surroundings. And, even as I learn the hard lessons of aging, what a rich life I am finding. Always, I am grounded in nature, my true home. Expect to find: My experience in understanding, and healing from, the …
My Lost Woods The Lost Woods I have never forgotten nature writer Edwin Way Teale’s remembrance of an Indiana woods he encountered where he was surrounded by “great silent winter trees—oak, beech, hickory, ash and sycamore.” As a small boy he had travelled there with his grandfather. Then, while his grandfather loaded stove wood on their bobsleigh, he had wandered through “gloomy aisles between the trees. Branches rubbed together in the breeze with sudden shrieks or mournful wailings and the …
The Comfort of Fire Fire’s Burning, Fire’s Burning, Draw nearer, draw nearer. In the gloaming, in the gloaming. Come sing and be merry. (Girl Guides’ Song) Although I always longed to heat my house with wood, it wasn’t until we moved to Singing Meadow that this was possible. Eighteen years ago we believed this also was an environmental choice, although sadly I know better now. All the same, I will never forget the thrill of watching our wood stove …
Woman, Watching, Merilyn Simonds’ Exciting Biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Merilyn Simonds’ fine new biography, Woman, Watching is a labour of love which not only opens a dialog into what a biography can be but also about how naturalist and author Louise de Kiriline Lawrence should be remembered. This compelling story touched me on many levels. Louise and her nature books have been special to me since the days when one of my publishers, Barry Penhale, used to slip …