My first memory of walking in a forest was at the ripe age of twenty three, when my new husband and I hiked through the Shenandoah Mountains. We found an old-growth hemlock forest and left the trail, traipsing across the tender needle-carpeted forest floor and marveling at the immensity of those towering trees with their short, soft needles and their dainty, miniscule cones. The softest diffused light poked through the tallest branches, and the only sound was the gentle whooshing of the wind as it swept through the high boughs. The forest was magical and quiet and serene, and I wanted to take it home with me.
I suppose I captured an image or two on my little point-and-shoot camera, but images alone rarely bring something back to life in the same way it was experienced. Words are much better at recreating images and sounds in the imagination; words are much better for breathing life into old memories.
I fell in love with the power of words when I was very young. From Dr. Seuss to Laura Ingalls Wilder to Jane Austen, I was mesmerized by the worlds I encountered, the people I met, the moments that transformed me. I filled notebooks with my own poetry and prose, wrote greeting cards and advertisements and stories, and kept all of it hidden away. I hadn’t a fraction of the talent of those esteemed writers, I thought. Even when I did receive encouragement from my teachers – the only people who ever read my words – I was too shy and filled with self-doubt to pursue writing as a serious career. Instead, I became a teacher of English, and tried to share my love of the written word with others who might become so much more than I.
The debut of this journal marks the first time I’ve ever presented my writing to the general public. It is, in many ways, a birth, borne of those quiet and serene places – the forest and fog – that live deep in the writer’s mind, deep in the memories of words well-loved.
I suppose I captured an image or two on my little point-and-shoot camera, but images alone rarely bring something back to life in the same way it was experienced. Words are much better at recreating images and sounds in the imagination; words are much better for breathing life into old memories.
I fell in love with the power of words when I was very young. From Dr. Seuss to Laura Ingalls Wilder to Jane Austen, I was mesmerized by the worlds I encountered, the people I met, the moments that transformed me. I filled notebooks with my own poetry and prose, wrote greeting cards and advertisements and stories, and kept all of it hidden away. I hadn’t a fraction of the talent of those esteemed writers, I thought. Even when I did receive encouragement from my teachers – the only people who ever read my words – I was too shy and filled with self-doubt to pursue writing as a serious career. Instead, I became a teacher of English, and tried to share my love of the written word with others who might become so much more than I.
The debut of this journal marks the first time I’ve ever presented my writing to the general public. It is, in many ways, a birth, borne of those quiet and serene places – the forest and fog – that live deep in the writer’s mind, deep in the memories of words well-loved.
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