I do a lot of writing about nature, and I suppose there are a number of reasons for that. One is that I lived in the country. I grew up in a natural setting in northern New York State. The Adirondack Mountains are in my backyard really truly. And my grandfather spent a lot of time in the woods. He was a lumberjack as well as being a Native American and would always take me into the forest.
So, I felt that connection from a very early age. I was writing little stories about animals. I was collecting plants and bringing in animals and keeping them as pets and then releasing them. And when I went to Cornell University, I went as a major in wildlife conservation. For three years, I was a wildlife conservation major and then I took some courses in creative writing and switched my major.
And I think that background has made it seem very natural for me to always have that as a component of my reality, that natural world. In fact, the 90‑acre property that belonged to my grandparents and great‑grandparents is now a nature preserve where my son, Jim, created something called the Ndakinna Education Center. Ndakinna means “our land” in Abenaki.
And on that nature preserve we teach animal tracking, wilderness survival skills, we do storytelling, we bring in Native and non-native speakers on nature and on our traditional culture, we do language immersion classes, and we do what we call the arts of life, which brings together body and spirit and mind and emotion to try to make a more balanced life.
