Sometimes I sit in my log cabin as in a cocoon, sheltered by swaying spruces from the outside world. From traffic, and noise, and liquor, and triangles, and pollution. Life seems to have no beginning and no ending. Only the steady expansion of trunk and root, the slow pileup of duff and debris, the lap of water before it becomes ice, the patter of raindrops before they turn to snowflakes.

Then the chirp of a swallow over the lake reminds me that there is always        a new beginning.

—Anne LaBastille, Woodswoman

• about “The Woodswoman Project“