I adore the log cabin scene on my home page, and I picked it because it perfectly suits my personality. I could totally imagine myself retreating to it at various times, though I would spend far more time outside the cabin than in it. (Unless there were bears around. Which there probably would be. Bears live in the mountains. Not sure how I would handle the bears. But I digress.)

I’m too suburbanized, these days, to settle into a cabin indefinitely. When I was younger, though, I think I could have spent 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days in such a place (as Henry David Thoreau did at Walden Pond). As a teen, I was inspired by Thoreau and his exploration of a starkly-simple lifestyle, and being a lifelong nature lover led me to do some rather quirky things. I was definitely not your typical teenager.

One of the quirkier things I did was to set up a small laboratory (complete with jars of formaldehyde and dissecting tools) in the walk-in closet of my bedroom. There, in our tiny apartment, I would dissect creatures that I’d found dead along my journeys. I would find an assortment of specimens around the creek near our apartment, but I wasn’t opposed to going on longer nature quests far from home (being completely unafraid in those days). I longed to live in the woods or on a farm, and it wasn’t until I was an older teen that I convinced my parents to let me have a small menagerie of pets (whatever would fit in our apartment). That amounted to an assortment of goldfish, turtles, and a parakeet named Eli. Turtles and birds, alike, were given great freedom to crawl/fly around our quarters as often as I could manage it. My good friend, Bella, introduced me to a British author and naturalist by the name of Gerald Durrell, and I couldn’t get enough of his books. To this day, “The Bafut Beagles”, a story of one of Durrell’s earlier expeditions to collect wild animals for his zoo, remains my favorite.

Well, a lot has changed since my youth, but my love of nature hasn’t. However, my appreciation for both flora and fauna – everything sea, sky, and land – deepened immensely when I came to know, in my thirties, the One who created it. I don’t think I ever fully bought into the randomization of the evolutionary theory but, after studying (and I do mean studying) the Bible, in addition to observing and studying the incredible design factors of the “natural” world, I became convinced that these things could not have happened by chance. My Creator has an incredible imagination! Furthermore, any design similarities humans share with animals is a result of sharing the same designer, not the same biological history. Thus, my fascination with nature makes my heart beat even faster, these days, than it did long ago.

I assure you, I used every excuse in the world to teach the wonders of nature to my own children during our homeschooling sessions, and pass on the legacy. (Oddly, my own parents did not share the same interest in wiggly, squiggly, or cuddly creatures that I did!) In case you’re wondering, now that my children are grown, I still go exploring, even alone, and keep a journal of the things I find along the way. Sometimes I bring these things home. My husband drew the line at a dead skate I wanted to collect off the beach – I had to settle for a photograph. Also, in case you’re wondering, although we have hosted several animals in our home in recent years, the only pet I currently own is a snail named Naomi. I am hoping to change that. Please pray for me.