And... The Rest of The Story....

My last blog I wrote about my quest for the Painted Bunting...  an unbelievably colorful bird that I was in search of for several years before finally seeing.  I kind of added some background stuff about how I got into birding.

As I wrote, my Mom had bird feeders and had her favorite birds.  She loved the mockingbird for it's song, and the bluebird, because it signified happiness...  but her favorite was the little wren.  So drab and unassuming...  always busy with making a home for it's young...  I think she kind of related to her "Jenny Wren".

But she also was a reader....  the book mobile came to our neighborhood when I was really young and we lived in the country... later we lived just a few blocks from the library.  So, not only did we have access to whatever "borrowed" book we wanted, we had all kinds of books in our home.

One book my mom bought was things to make from "nature".  I made terrariums from those huge pickle jars...  I collected rocks, bird egg shells...  any and everything.  I came home with my pockets full and my mind full of questions....

I took my first biology class in 9th grade...  really excited about learning about it all.  But, as it happened, a classmate told our teacher that I was spreading rumors about her.... which was untrue.  My biology and English teachers lived next door to each other and were very close friends....  I never got above a C in either class all year.  As much as I loved biology I never took another class until I was in college.

Move forward a few years....  married...  2 kids...  stay at home mom.

My sister gave me a book....

Yep!  The very book Cynthia gave me in the early 1960's

My introduction to the world of nature writing.....

I read Thoreau...  John Burroughs, John Muir...  read about Luther Burbank...  found books about living off the land...  bought all kinds of field guides....  I could go on and on and on and on.....  This genre was fairly new on the bookshelves back then, but I managed to find all manner of reading material.  Until we had a water leak in our storage area, I still had these until a year or so ago...  I haven't had the heart to see what's still there.

Yeah... I bought and read the rest of the books in Edwin Way Teale's series...

(They may be 50 years old...  but they are still among my favorites...  if you look real close you'll see that they cost $2.25 each).  I have several other of his books and treasure them all.

I even wrote to this author (and got a hand written answer!) telling him how much I enjoyed his writing.

I read a lot of blogs....  many of them about birds, nature, and the like.  I have no idea how those writers got interested in birds.... whether it's been a life-long interest, or a new love affair....

But I love carrying around Cynthia's gift to me all those years ago.  I re-read parts of it now and then....  who knew, way back in the 1960's that I'd be travelling many of those same routes... seeing some of the same sights and hearing the same bird songs that I read about 50 years ago?

Frankenstein....  my fellow "bird-watcher" here at Celeste's.

That's All For Today!