Mary Oliver

I ran across this bit of poetic wisdom this morning. Mary Oliver is a favorite of mine, anyway, and in the same article she says when she was in High School, she was just as likely to run off to the woods for some reading time as to go to class... Me too... and the jungles of north Florida were my world of fantasy. I'd climb a wide live oak or lie under the lianas and palmettos with a view of the intercoastal waterway. Santa Rosa sound was home to a million shore and wading birds, diving pelicans and squawking gulls, there were the occasional snakes and lizards, but best of all were the Blue Angel practices that screamed low overhead... The school librarian asked "What are you doing with all these books?" I squinted up at her and said "I read 'em." "You read a book a day?" "Yes."

The following are quotes from Mary Oliver's book of collected essays, Upstream.

"When the high school I went to experienced a crisis of delinquent student behavior, my response was to start out for school every morning but to turn most mornings into the woods instead, with a knapsack of books." (Mary Oliver)

I had to walk a quarter mile through the jungle to catch the bus at five thirty in the morning... got home at five in the afternoon... Two hours from Gulf Breeze to North Pensacola. I read a mountain of books out there.

About poetry...

"But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple�"or a green field�"a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing�"an artifact, a moment of seemly and robust wordiness�"wonderful as that part of it is. (Mary Oliver)

For me, poetry is intellectual first and emotional second... but in either case explore the greatest depths of experience.

Vol

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

For the Blue Angels to fly over, you must've been near Pensacola. The woods are a magnet for many of us creative types, I believe. I loved going into nature when young, also, but had fields, streams, and dense forests of oak, hickory, cedar, pine and more. In that kind of environment, free of disturbances and responsibilities, our minds can do their best work.

[Vol]

Sam,
Hwy 98, two miles past the beach cut-off in Gulf Breeze, No neighbors, we were on our own!
Vol

[Samuel Dickens]

Sounds great. I would have liked that. The thing I found strange when stationed near Jacksonville, was that there were no rocks. I thought, If a dog comes after me, what can I throw it?

[Vol]

Sam,
I like Jacksonville, okay, except it seemed to me to be more business and less salt-life than any other place down there... I sold insurance there for awhile, but have no memories of good food or beach attractions...
Vol

[Joss Jeffrey]

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[Lorry]

The part "there were the occasional snakes and lizards" was the part I started counting your sanity Vol!😃
Though don't get me wrong, you are far from alone in enjoying a bit of a read amongst nature.
Where my garden ends, just down a couple steps a nature trail lives, which I really don't mind because it is a good neighbour and rarely keeps me awake at night.
But any time I plod along it (I used to stride but find plodding easier due to age and the fact the shock absorbers in my ankles are busted) I don't need to go far before spotting a nature bookie. What is it about nature trails that make people stop hiking and need to read? Answers on a postcard to the usual address and a winner will be picked at random....
Luckily for me most of them are of the female variety as well as being foreignese, judging by the Hola's and smiles received. (A sure sign of being foreignese is smiling, as Scots in general are too busy being cold to smile)
I just preferment reading venue too be way less "snakey" and would rather give up the adrenaline sport of reading than participate in much wordery (it is an adrenaline sport when snakes are added!)
But hey, I guess you're just a better reader than me! 😃