Freelance writer and editor: Adventure travel,

International Business, Politics and Culture

LIFE'S LESSONS SELDOM come at us straight on and whole, they come in fragments, often years apart, and when we least expect them. Personally, I have a closet full of unmatched pieces that I dare not throw out. Two of them came together recently, and made me smile. The first was a vivid memory of riding my horse through the Connecticut woods, so I must have been fourteen, the year I got Tara, my beloved companion in adventure. I remember how sunlight and shadow dappled the trail ahead, and how I held him to an impatient walk. There was a debate going on in my mind, although I can no longer remember the context, and I made a brilliant retort out loud, something I often did.

I said, "I'll just have to do it myself," then laughed. The line belongs rightly to the Little Red Hen, that virtuous fowl who single-winged sowed, hoed, harvested, threshed, and ground the wheat to make bread for herself and her chicks.

The second piece is a memory from the summer John Swinehart came to the farm. He was a graduate student at Cornell, a lantern-jawed rugby player, and he kept snakes--a pair of big shiny Blacks. I had Painted turtles that I had captured in a cow pasture. He taught me to handle his snakes, and how important my turtles were in the big scheme of things. Every word was magical. One day, he let slip that he had written about his snakes for publication. His snakes were not toys like my turtles, they were scientific data, something to tell the world about. It made such sense; it seemed such an adult thing to do.

Today, I travel and take pictures and write about what I see and experience in ways that are distinctly my own. I have a diverse collection of academic degrees and work experience in research, teaching, and business to enrich my writing. If you have a writing project, I would like to hear about it.