There are wonderful works awaiting me in the forest of books this week. . . .A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman
The Litany of the Great River, Meinrad Craighead
Little Big, John Crowley
Already Home: A Topography of Spirit and Place, Barbara Gates
Moonwise, Greer Gilman
Wind Cloud, Martha Glessing
The Little Locksmith, Katharine Butler Hathaway
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
Widening Circles: A Memoir, Joanna Macy
Solstice Wood, Patricia McKillip
Sacred Contracts, Caroline Myss
The Shambhala Warrior, Chogyam Trungpa
The Open Space of Democracy, Terry Tempest Williams
The Woodwife, Terri Windling
The Nevada Barr mysteries which I mentioned last week are still downstairs, and they have been supplanted (temporarily) on the library table by a whole lovely box of books by Alan Garner rediscovered a few days ago. It has been many years since I rambled happily through Alan's work, and I am looking forward to reading it all again this week, starting with the incandescent memoir entitled The Voice That Thunders.
I have vivid memories of childhood days spent sitting under a big tree and reading Alan Garner's work for the first time. What a wondrous thing that was! Under my summer tree, I discovered magic, folklore and mythology and felt for the first time the strong clear presence of the numinous and liminal in our mundane lives. A child has no words for such wonders, but the rhythm, cadence and sheer music of Alan Garner's work have remained with me ever since. It would be a happy thing if there were even small echos of his incandescent gifts in what I have written (or thought about writing) since reading his creations, just faint echoes of his music and dancing lights. . . .
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