March Quotes #30

Into the Woods

Photo taken by Jeannie Chambers. Image created using CanvaPro.

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) was a writer and poet. She grew up enjoying nature, taking nature walks, and reading. She started writing at age 14. In her career, she won many awards and honors, including a Pulitzer for *American Primitive and the National Book Award for [New and Selected Poems. ](https://a.co/d/fxOzTKi)*She also received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Marquette University, Tufts University, and Dartmouth College.

Her works have been compared to Emily Dickinson in that many of them had an introspect of darkness but also held a sense of joy.

Mary Oliver was a very private person and didn’t grant many interviews. I found a quote from one interview she gave to The Christian Science Monitor about her formative years in Ohio.

***“It was pastoral, it was nice, it was an extended family. I don’t know why I felt such an affinity with the natural world except that it was available to me, that’s the first thing. It was right there. And for whatever reasons, I felt those first important connections, those first experiences being made with the natural world rather than with the social world.”

• Christian Science Monitor, 1992***

Photo of Mary Oliver from Wikipedia

Undoubtedly, Mary Oliver’s close connection to nature helped shape her life. She had the ability to connect words, feelings and nature. Her solitary nature walks produced countless phrases in her mind. I read that one time, she got a little beside herself because she found she needed to write something down on one of her walks. (As writers, we have all known that feeling, like Mary Oliver of having a thought only to have it washed away with the tides of life before you can get to paper and pencil.) She started hiding pencils in trees. She often carried a hand-sewn notebook for her writings. Some of her favorite poets were Rumi, Hafez, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats.

Going into ‘the woods’ has been special to me all of my life, too. There’s something about going into an untamed place that allows for humbleness but at the same time, a sense of wonder and kinship.

I have been lucky that almost every place I’ve lived in has been some kind of untamed area where I felt I had the freedom to roam. When I was young and before it wasn’t cool anymore to traipse in the woods with my father, he would take me to a place that we called the country. “I’m going to the country tomorrow. Do you want to go?” Nine times out of ten, I’d jump at the chance. The country had been my Daddy’s homeplace. There wasn’t a home there anymore, just remnants of an old goat pen and part of a rock foundation of a house. The drive took about thirty minutes, felt like an hour, and there was nothing there but woods. We car-camped there once when he had bought about a thousand pine tree seedlings that we planned to plant. Our family was not the camping type, whatever that was. My mother was not the outdoorsy type, so if she came along, our trips to the country were mostly just to drive through on the dusty, red dirt roads. That was enough country for her, but I loved to get out and roam the woods. I miss those years and those times, but they are etched in my mind with such love and grace; some of the sweetest of my memories.

The image I used for Oliver’s quote is about 150 steps from my front door. I have no idea how much more time it will remain untouched. Some of the property around us is beginning to be sold off and homes will be built there one day, but as long as I can, I will continue to traipse the untamed woods.

Thank you for reading today's quote, the 30th day of March.

march #marchquotes #qotd #maryoliver #intothewoods