She encouraged me to write about the things I could not understand but only feel. Why is a giant, solitary white cedar, four-and-a-half-feet in diameter almost sacred? Why did I spend hours sitting with my back against its trunk looking through the gnarled, red-brown branches toward the sky? Why did I sense wisdom from this centuries old tree? She taught me that some of my most powerful writing was about what I felt rather than what I thought I knew.
She read and commented on over a hundred of my blog posts. Sometimes with questions or comments that forced revisions. Sometimes her comment provided topics for future posts. She preferred posts about place,
not ones that merely told how to identify a plant or an animal. With each post, I felt as if I was back in her classroom, handing in an assignment, seeking her approval. Luckily, she never offered a grade.
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