How nice of me to announce I'm back, then disappear again for a few days! Sorry about that, but I have a good reason. I finished and submitted my new book, Observations of an Earth Mage, to my publisher!  I can't help it; I'm more excited about this book than my novels and writing books combined.

One of the things that has me excited is Vanilla Heart agreed to run photos with the stories. I took my time, picking out good photos that would convert well to black and white--pictures like my black bear in Sequoia and my grumpy chipmunk in Yosemite. We were aiming for about a dozen photos.

But in a tremendous leap of faith, Vanilla Heart came back to me yesterday and said we could do at least double the number of photographs--and rather than black and white, they will be in full color! My nature writing book will be illustrated with my nature photography in glorious, full color! Is that a dream come true or what?

You know, I have many of you guys to thank for this. Your positive comments and eagerness to read about my exploits in the great outdoors is what prompted Vanilla Heart to suggest I pull together this book. So, many of you guys...thank you.

The print book should be available late February. Of course, I will keep everyone posted!

And speaking of nature writing, I want to congratulate our friend Bricker for being the latest Xangan whose writing has been accepted for Vanilla Heart's Earth Day Anthology, Nature's Gifts. He wrote a terrific poem, and joins John Glaze and Mooncat Blue in representing Xanga in the anthology.  That one is set for release late March or early April, in time for Earth Day.

Now, back to my photo files. I still have to select a few for Observations of an Earth Mage. Everyone have a terrific weekend!

I'm leaving in the wee hours of the morning for my father's funeral. I was able to delay leaving long enough to see my beautiful daughter Robin's opening night as the star of the stage play Metamorphosis. I look forward to that, in just a few hours, as much as I dread getting on the plane in the morning to go back to the Midwest.

I will be saying a few words about my dad at the service. I hope I have the strength to get through it without breaking down. This is what I've written for him; some you may recognize, some is new:

            When I was a child, my family did not travel to exotic lands or travel by air or ship when we vacationed. Rather for several weeks every summer, my parents would haul us all over the country in a dusty green Ford station wagon, loaded down with four kids, sleeping bags, a tent, various tarps, an axe, a canvas army surplus hammock that smelled like our basement, and a box of widgets and grommets whose function was known only to my father.

            We traveled east, to Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Parks. We splashed in the Atlantic Ocean at Rehobeth Beach and explored earth’s hidden wonders at Caverns of Luray and Mammoth Cave. 

            We traveled north, to the upper peninsula of Michigan, where we picked up agates on Lake Superior and, once, watched a gray wolf strut purposefully across the road in the middle of an ancient pine forest.

            We traveled west, where we stood on the rim of the Grand Canyon and looked down, and at the base of the Great White Throne in Zion National Park and looked up at some of nature’s most magnificent wonders. We watched herds of elk graze peacefully in the Rockies, and a grizzly bear discover a used disposable diaper is not something good to eat in a picnic ground at Yellowstone.

            My dad planned these incredible adventures without the aid of Google, Mapquest, or a GPS system. Only when I became an adult myself did I realize what a complicated and ambitious undertaking planning these trips must have been for him. Yet he did it year after year, decade after decade, because he wanted his children to see the world and experience all the glories Mother Nature has to offer.

            Dad was blessed not only with a sense of wanderlust, the urge to roam, but also a sense of wonderlust, that driving urge that makes a person constantly ask, “I wonder what’s over there/down that road/under that rock/around the bend?” And this urge, this wonderlust, was his biggest gift to me.

            I moved across the country last year, far away from family and friends in the Midwest. When I missed my dad, I would head outdoors to a place of exquisite beauty and wonder, and think about the grand adventures he took us on each summer. I’d recall my family singing hiking songs like We’re on the Upward Trail and The Happy Wanderer in six-part disharmony, and I would break out in song, a solo voice where once there were many. Yet even while I would sing alone, I would hear my dad’s booming bass and my mom’s sweet soprano singing along, as well as the voices of my siblings. The songs live on.

            I learned of my father’s death while I was in Nevada doing research for my next book. My husband drove me out to Red Rock Canyon the following morning. While this was not one of the places my family visited when I was growing up, it is a place of exquisite, stark desert beauty. Dad would have loved Red Rock. In the wee morning hours the day after his death, I walked, alone, into the desert, among the creosote and Joshua Trees, and said goodbye to my Dad. I thanked him for instilling in me my deep reverence for nature, my appreciation for bears and hawks and wolves, and also for bumblebees and earthworms and beetles, creatures that are perhaps less glamorous but yet are no less precious to the Creator. I thanked him for gifting me with wanderlust, and wonderlust, and the realization that a night spent sleeping under the stars high atop a mountain is a sacred experience. My dad was a fabulous preacher, but his best lessons didn’t come from the pulpit. They came from those fabulous trips in our dusty old Ford station wagon.

I'll be back next week. Thanks again for your love and support.  Smoky