Follow Your Bliss

Follow your bliss.  I am lucky.  My parents provided me with good books when I was a child: Pond Life, Kipling's Jungle Book, books about Native Americans.  There was not much money growing up but my dad knew how to carve a willow whistle from a willow tree and he carved spinning tops from wooden spools when the thread was used up.  He taught me about the workings of nature and brought home a pair of guinea pigs, tadpoles that grew legs and turned into frogs, moths and butterflies that visited the zinnias in our garden.  He was a scientist and he took me to his lab and let me play with the test tubes.  He could change liquids to many colors.  I saw the dissection of a chicken.

So I have followed my bliss.  I met Native Americans: Tarahumara in Copper Canyon, a Kiowa in Aspen Colorado named Scott Momaday, two Cree shaman, people still understanding living close to nature and following traditional ways.

I have followed my bliss by writing a book about the ever changing Great Lakes systems: The Dynamic Great Lakes.  I have written three books of poetry: The Wilderness Within; Sophia's Lost and Found; and Between Sweetwater and Sand.

I paint.  Here is a tree I liked in South Carolina.  I follow my bliss by writing and painting.  It's a great life.