“When are you going to start writing your column for The Times again?” This question has knocked on my soul’s door so many times in the last few years through all the amazing humans who have told me they missed reading it since I laid down my pen.
I stopped actively writing a column in 2018 but even then, it was a slim and irregular submission. I had gradually slowed down and then I quit. By my best recall, I had been writing about my life adventures in The View from Here since the early 2000s and by 2017-18 I didn’t think I had anything left to say. My life had changed severalfold and I believed it was no longer interesting fodder. I can look back now and know that I was incorrect.
First of all, thank you to Josie, who is among the ones who spirited me back to the writing table. She was sitting with a bunch of other folk and meant to get my attention when she leaned forward from her seat after I had walked by. Her words warmed my heart.
“You know what I miss?” she said loudly so I could hear. “Your column. When are you going to start writing it again? I would be so happy to read it, and it would be good for you to start again.”
I smiled and turned back to reply, “Yes, I know it would.”
Since becoming a huge fan of the Netflix series Bridgerton, I have been dying to use Lady Whistledown’s calling card just once. No dissector of gossip and scandal will be found in my columns but let me tell you this, dearest gentle reader, we have a lot of catching up to do.
I remain firmly planted in my extraordinary neck of the woods to which my soul is tied. No place on Earth compares, as my column history will attest, and so remain the squirrels, skunks, oily-skinned, nocturnal, buck-toothed beavers and other wildlife creatures who upstage me here. And yes, I’m still after the squirrel that lives in the garage rafters and scolds me every time I walk to my garage from my house.
There has been a heartfelt changing of the guard in my world, as my feline companion King Louis walked into the Light last summer. He lived his best life here for 10 years. He was as loyal as they come, dignified in all ways, and a whiskered warrior at night when my partner and I would go for a walk around the farmyard in the dark. King Louis always showed up as our protector, rubbing his scent on his humans to scare off the wolves.
A regal photograph of King Louis hangs on the wall in my home. He now watches over eight-month-old kitten extraordinaire Earl the Duke of Here, who is the smartest cat I have ever known. But that’s another story.
I have also attracted two wise ravens that I spend a lot of time talking to. These beautiful birds wait for me in a decrepit long dead very high tree every morning after sunrise lights the yard. They say “grok” and I cluck.
I wish I could say they greet me each morning only to see me walk across the yard and be struck dumb by my beauty, but alas they are totally focused on the rations in my hand. They bring me joy and joy is good. I humbly surrender to their endurance all those deep-freeze mornings we had in January, when four skinny bird legs without wool socks showed up in the tree, faking it like they were living in Barbados.
Since I last championed this column space—and among other writable moments—I’ve travelled to wonderful places with my partner and made a habit of sitting by the barn with him on warm days listening to birds and watching clouds. I’ve watched my six grandkids and my partner’s three grow. I’ve been enriched by having all three daughters present. I’ve transformed an old granary into a workshop by myself and of my dreams, fell in love with kayaking, learned to garden like a champ, stopped using hair dye, lost 40 lbs, and blossomed into a baker of prized lemon bars and brownies. With all that and so much more to write about, it’s hard to decide where to begin.
But that’s another story.
