Birds

Mel Shaw’s Love Affair With Foley Mountain

Leave a Comment / Animals, Birds, Deer, Foley Mountain C.A., Inspiration, Retirement, Simple Living

Mel Shaw and His Love Affair With Foley Mountain Overlooking Westport From Foley Mountain I wanted to interview my long-time friend, Mel Shaw, not just because his intimate nature photos please me, but because he is a good example of someone who enjoying retirement. (Some of you may know him from the attractive calendar he and his wife Rose Ann designed and sold the past two years as a fundraiser benefitting the Foley Mountain Conservation Area.) Recently, I sat down …

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Fog Forest

Leave a Comment / Birds, Nature, trees

Fog Forest [Recently, I was fortunate to live for a week within the power of the tides and fogs, and even now I remain haunted by a week where all was movement and change.] Slip off the twisty coastal road in Maine and you will be heading for the sea. Your excitement is mounting. It is the distant tolling of a bell which is drawing you through the dim light of a narrow lane which is surrounded by a magical …

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A Gift of Wings

Leave a Comment / Animals, Birds, Books, Nature

A Gift of Wings Merak’s feather, beautifully beaded for me by my friend Mireille Lapointe Long ago, through the Ministry of Natural Resources, my husband and I were given the gift of caring for, and hopefully rewilding, a young red-tailed hawk, whom we called Merak. I wrote about this remarkable adventure in my book A Wing in the Door, Life With a Red-tailed Hawk. As it turned out, two year old Merak was completely imprinted on humans, and in spite …

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Nature Writer
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 […]
Wonderful
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 […]
Begin Again
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, […]
Mel Shaw’s Love Affair With Foley Mountain
Mel Shaw and His Love Affair With Foley Mountain Overlooking Westport From Foley Mountain I wanted to interview my long-time friend, Mel Shaw, not just because his intimate nature photos please me, but because he is a good example of someone who enjoying retirement. (Some of you may know him from the attractive calendar he […]
So, This Happened
So, This Happened So, after Christmas, this happened. And I am still at a loss to explain to you why it happened. Nevertheless, I have to confess that the completely unreasonable arrival of the yellow Kitchenaid mixer on my kitchen makes me very happy. Even still, though, this shocks me. In fact, this mixer is […]