I had time today to stop by a local library and while browsing books to read, I came across two books to check out, tonight. I am beginning this one tonight:
Arlen, Alice (2000). She Took To The Woods: A Biography and Selected Writings by Louise Dickenson Rich. Rockport, Maine: Down East Books.
Here's an excerpt from the Introduction to this biography about wilderness writer Louise Dickenson Rich (I read it on my way home tonight by train and I'm already hooked):
"My acquaintence with wilderness writer Louise Dickenson Rich began years ago in the midst of research I was doing for a book on traditional Maine sporting camps. I heard her name and glanced down the "Carry Road" (originally a canoe portage trail) leading to her place by the Rapid River in the Rangely Lakes region of western Maine. I also took note of a log home occupied, I was informed, by Louise's longtime friend and neighbor, Alys Parsons. At that point, though, there were places to go, people and a deadline to meet, so I moved on.
My sporting camp book came out and I started recieving mail from readers. Several petitioned, "Please write a book about Louise Dickenson Rich." A librarian from the Midwest was very specific:
"We Took to the Woods (the 1942 best-seller that launched Rich's career) is still checked out on a regular basis. There has never been a biography written about her and I feel you are the person to do it."
I started to pay attention.
Soon I was stumbling into Louise wherever I went..... " (pp. vii).
Alice then goes on to talk about how she finally won the support of Louise's brother, Ralph, who sent Alice to see his sister, who eventually gave her a bag of notions belonging to Louise. It's going to obviously be a riveting account of LDR's life and times in the wild's of Maine; but to become more intimately aquainted with who LDR is and her style of writing and what she wrote about, years ago, is toward the back of the book, which includes titles, such as:
Fogbound, Wish You Were Here, First Monday in March, Written in the Stars, Grandma and the Seagull, The Red Slipper, Can't Find My Apron Strings and more. Then, the reader is treated to unpublished writings belonging to LDR and a conclusion which is followed by an expansive index (appendice).
I'm looking forward to snuggling down with this particular book over the next few nights and into the coming weekend.
ps/ the photo below was taken last night by an photographer who is native to my home state of Oregon: It's rare for us to even witness the Northern Lights in our area, but he took this picture on the high desert, on a lonely road outside of Bend, Oregon. It's already snowing in our 'neck' of the woods (winter is here).
