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1 November ~ 2007

I love my home of 21 years, surrounded by the oaks and ashes that I planted, and the apples and pears and peaches that the lady who built it planted, and the old apple trees that have been here for a century.

I am grateful for the community I am so actively inolved in - all the children and their teachers and parents who walk with me as I tell my stories about the Ponderosa Pine and Mountain Lions, Coyote, Fox, and Bears, and who share a sense of fascination with wildness as we examine elk and fox tracks, and watch the lone buck deer wander away through the trees.

And I am proud to be one of the community of people who share the silent bus ride to work in the morning, or the ones sitting reading and writing at the bookstore, and among the regular crowd at the dance hall on Saturday Night. The smile and joyful embrace of the ladies at the Rose who seem to love to dance with me is truly a blessing.

But my greatest strength and peace arises from walks through the familiar cottonwood groves, from the sound of the river in the cold months, in the leaves turning and dropping from the trees, in the silver frost over the meadow, in the silhouettes of branches in the fading light.

There I find Divinity in nature and wildness, and become aware again what a gift and great joy it is to be alive.

(to see a 700 pixel wide image of the above collage, click here; to see a 1400 wide pixel image of the above picture, click here.)