I always need some encouragement in fall…look at the bright side through the rain.

Love you, Annabelle

Your blog was highly recommended by Karen McCullough. Now I’ll be waiting with baited breath for the next installment. I do hope you some day publish the entire thing. It reads much better than anything from Walden Pond. (I’m guessing that you have read American Bloomsbury by Susan Chever. If not, you’ll probably want to.)

So many of your experiences rang out with memories or hopes of mine that I printed out the entire thing. Keep writing. Your poetry amazes me.

Here’s one I wrote after Johnny Winther cut many of his trees and left just a few that worried me.

Awakened by the storm
I watched,
wide-eyed,
terrified,
the tall trees
screaming and swaying,
branches whipping wildly
and wondered –
will they withstand this wind?

Sally Riemer
September 21, 2007

The Camp Island Memorial Day Campout sounds like it was terrific. One of these days I would like to join you there. I miss and need the wildness in my life.

I, too, have been trying to ignore the lists – no matter what needs to be done, I am trying to play my guitar each day. But I don’t put it on a list. It happens in spite of the list. Or maybe to spite the list.

Today, when I came home from school, after a day of following numerous check lists (some of my own devising and some handed to me by others), I ignored everything that I “should” have been doing and plunked myself next to one of my beehives and just watched and listened to the bees for an hour or so.

It was very soothing and lovely.

The sky is blue, the westerly wind is making waves through the orchard grass, the birds are singing and thousands of bees are coming and going.

I hope these first days of summer are finding you well – you are probably out on the water somewhere.

Say hello to the ocean and the mountains and the trees, and tell them that I miss them.

Love,
krister