"Wood Notes Wild"

Turning over new soil here.

A literary web log that I began (in the persona of a hunter of books) this spring has lain fallow for two months as my ecological self became absorbed by goings-on that could best be described as "green".

The inspiration for setting out this new project was a West Coast duende/friend who wonderfully intertwines her garden knowledge, activism, music, and all her explorations poetical/editorial/gastronomical in one walking creature with a soul of wild in her deceptively civilized skin.

From this starting point and my own desire to link with folk who devote great amounts of energy to improving the planet, even one tree at a time, came the serendipitous sortes libri (pace my latinate duende) in the pages of Kim Taplin's Tongues in Trees: Studies in Literature & Ecology, viz opening by chance to the section on Richard Jefferies, "Gates of Another World", and the opening reference:

"In September 1881 Jefferies jotted 'Wood Notes Wild' in his notebook as a projected title . . . ."

. . . . although the actual piece is not known to have been written. Jefferies is new to me, but instantly appealed because of the snippet appearing in this section from his A King of Acres, on the oak tree (therein lies another tale) and I was drawn to discover more about him and his writing.

There is of course an intersection of greenworld doings and writings about same. Today for example I received an exhibition catalogue from the British Library of its recent exhibit, The Writer in the Garden, making connections between the worlds of writing (and the creative imagination generally) and the doing of spadework either literally in the case of planting or metaphorically in the case of community-based actions to heal the world by keeping it green and healthy.

Here's hoping that the worlds of imagination and earthwork will cross-fertilize and be seeded with ideas and comments from others.