(Ma-ree-nah O-zoo-nah), nee’ Sheryl Studley

I grew up believing that elves and fairies were as real as the children on my block.   The Giant Golden Book of Elves and Fairies, I took to be an encyclopedia, and my parents, career schoolteachers, did nothing to dissuade me.  Indeed, I was lucky in that both my parents believed in the importance of moments, and the car would come to a halt for a particularly stunning view, the wonder of does and fawns under a stand of apple trees, or a hawk perched on a pole.  To this day, I cannot drive without counting hawks.  The quality of the mileage I consume, is daily measured by the quality of magic moments or wilderness friends seen, and counted.  Many is the shaft of light hitting just so, I have pulled over to acknowledge.  Many the moment I have collected.  Somehow those moments of nature’s magic, and the hidden kingdoms of elves and fairies, fused seamlessly over the years, into a lifelong kinship with Nature in all her many guises.

I was born in Austin, Texas, where Dad was stationed after service in the Air Force in Korea.  Both he and mom grew up in New York State and shortly after my birth, we returned there, then on to Vermont, and Rhode Island.  My earliest memories are of the picturesque, small college town of Castleton, Vermont, with its main street lined with ancient sugar maple trees still then tapped every spring for syrup, the mapling houses, trout fishing in the creek, trails through the grasses, and the barn next door.  Many is the woodchuck trail I followed through those grasses, convinced that there would be a leprechaun waiting, if I were only quiet enough.  Many the dish of milk I made my long suffering mother leave outside for the leprechauns, like any good  household.

I was blessed to grow up when there was still innocence in childhood, and the ability to run free and form a relationship with land and trees, rock and rill.  My dad grew up spending his summers camping in the Adirondacks – just he and a buddy.  From the time he was 12, his mother would put him on the train to the mountains, and expect him to return at a certain date to resume school.  I think my father thought of nature as merely another, and perhaps better, parent.  Despite, far closer supervision, he accorded me a similar privilege and I am grateful for it.

Having entered grade school in Rhode Island, I was accorded more independence.  It was perfectly normal to take off after coming home from school, go wander through the woods a twenty minute walk to friends’ houses a few miles away, by myself, trusted to show up in time for supper.  Rhode Island was Tippy, my beautiful,  black and white English Shepherd, with yes, a dashing white tip to the end of his tail; the stream; the heirloom iris garden; (still to me, the most beautiful flower) the rhubarb patch and blackberries big as an adult thumb; making endless dams in the meadow and spending  hours up on the bluff in the pine grove planted above our odd stucco house; skiing on  barrel staves, then my first set of real skis, and eventually night skiing with Dad’s high school ski club, learning all the nations of the Iroquois confederacy, and how to climb trees.  All in all, an odd and assorted collection of wonders that probably still defines who I am more than anything else.

Not only did my father interact with nature as if it were a family member, but he also firmly believed that the legacy and lore of those woods and mountains had been ceded to us, albeit unwillingly by her native custodians.  I think I might have been the only blonde six year old not living in New York State who was quite cognizant of the fact that the Finger Lakes were named after the Iroquois tribes; could and still can recite their wonderful rolling names, like drumbeats at sunset; and who was reminded, often, that in fact, the U.S. Constitution was heavily influenced by the structure, rights and responsibilities of the Iroquois Confederation.  “Just another thing we stole without giving them any credit,” my father would rail.   Thus grew another strand to my soul’s innermost braid of magic, and  woods -- justice.  A fascinating heritage from a 6' 4" redheaded English/Irish Korean War vet grade school gym teacher.