Still, in 2001, I began
worrying that I was losing my ability to order my thoughts in a way that
permitted me to communicate with others. Though I could think abstractly better
than ever I was becoming an awful word-groper. Also, maybe around that time I
was beginning to miss being part of some kind of human community.
Consequently, each week I
began issuing, via email, a newsletter. The idea was that this weekly exercise
would make me think in patterns of the kind needed for regular conversation.
Before long I felt my talking powers returning, plus I was gratified by how
many people subscribed to the newsletter. Gradually a nice little
cyberspace-based community crystallized around the newsletter.
In 2003 I had to leave the
plantation, but a newsletter subscriber invited me to move onto his unoccupied
property a few miles east of Natchez, adjoining Homochitto National Forest. I took my trailer there
and continued my work and issuing the newsletter as always. The next year I
left there and began spending my winters in Mexico's
Yucatan Peninsula
and my summers in various places -- California's
Sierra Nevada mountains and the Bluegrass Region of central Kentucky, so far.
Therefore, the following
essays were written at different places. Usually
you can't know where they
were written, but that's OK, since nearly all the essays deal with topics that
are not geography based. In fact, at this publication date I don't see that
having the following essays in alphabetical order in any way violates the
book's integrity. Basically I'm saying the same thing again and again, just
with different words.
I'm saying that all of
Nature is a blossoming, and I'm here inside the blossom watching it, agog.
You can find current
information about where I am and what I'm doing by clicking on my name at my
main web site at http://www.backyardnature.net.
As I always say to my
newsletters subscribers, I appreciate your interest in what I have to say, and
I hope you keep paying attention to the world around you, too.