Woods and brooks, cows and books comprised so very much of my childhood years. Although many decades have passed since then, I still love them all.
For all my childhood years, I lived beside the most delightful stone library one could ever imagine. To me, it was an enchanted place where I could engulf myself in stories of every kind, discover new worlds, and let my imagination run free. Being a rural library, it was open only two days a week, but how I looked forward to those library days! On every library day, I would rush home from school, grab my snack, and dash across our lawn before opening the library door and stepping into what was for me an oasis of ideas and contentment. Not until the librarian called out for final check-outs would I leave my reading corner and head back home – usually with an armload of books to tide me over until the next time the library doors were opened and the enchanted stones worked their magic once again.
My sense of adventure was first sparked from wonderful books that I read. It then grew from my real-life childhood experiences: running wild in the woods, playing in our backyard brook, camping, hiking and canoeing, to mention a few. That same sense of adventure then carried me from my childhood home in Massachusetts to schools in Minnesota and California, to a year living in Morocco, and eventually to Vermont for my master’s degree. Since that time, I have married, taught literature and poetry classes for elementary and middle school students, and shared life with my husband and three children. I am now enjoying being a grandmother to eleven grandchildren.
Random Bits About Me
- I have raised and trained a team of oxen on my farm.
- I have a bit of an obsession with teapots (and tea!)
- My earliest memory is that of being awakened in the middle of the night to watch Sputnik. (I had imagined something more dramatic, and was terribly disappointed as a dot of light silently passed overhead and disappeared out of view.)
- I am exceedingly happy when I am building miniature succulent gardens and filling them with pixies, dragons, grouchy trolls, friendly frogs, hedgehogs, and other creatures of fancy.
