My Writing and the Wild      

Since I can remember, I have had a passion for the out of doors.  I have always loved camping and hiking and swimming or wading in any stream or pond that I could find.  As a graduate student, I discovered the Adirondacks and writing. Through both discoveries, I found an outlet for many of my thoughts and ideas about life, love, and relationships.

As I migrated through the mountains and read mountains of books written by other women who loved nature, I found my home in writing creative nonfiction.  Since that early beginning, I have written many essays about my experiences and other women’s experiences in the out of doors.  I have been fortunate enough to have had the time and the pleasure of reading and then going to some of the places I have read about.  Being in the same places as some other women nature writers such as Paulina Brandreth , a woman nature writer of the 19^th century, has made my experience of these places richer and deeper in a way they could not have been had I merely gone there on the recommendation of an acquaintance.

Since I am a writer, reader and nature lover, I see metaphors every time I go outside.  I see the farm fields down the road from my house go from green stubble to fronds of swaying rye.  I think about how our lives grow and evolve over days and decades.  I watch as  three

pilliated woodpeckers, two male and one female battle around white pine trees climbing, leaping, up and down over the circumference of the trunks, and then flying  to another pine a few feet away, starting all over again.  I think of love and competition and battles wisely or unwisely fought.  I think of territory and hormones and passion.  I think of beauty and the prehistoric.  As I migrate from one metaphorical place to another, my breadth is widened.  Using my essays as models for writing from the personal to the universal has hopefully shown my students we can find great ideas in small experiences.  Metaphors are all around us.