Category Archives: Nature

Greetings From the Edge

riverinfall

When we say frontier, we’re not talking about the Alaskan bush (although one of our contributors actually lives there), but any natural place that requires skill and harmony with the environment in order to survive.  Whether you’re raising horses in Eastern Washington, running a coffee plantation in Hawaii,  living rurally in the Midwest or in a hut on a mountain top, you have to live by your wits. You rely on them for your survival. Frontiers are actual places, but they are also spiritual and psychological.  The point is, when you’re on an edge, you’re alert and learning and that’s what this blog is about.

This blog is for and about adventuresome & spirited women…

…living at the edge, improvising, learning how to sustain ourselves and thrive.  It’s for women who love dirt, animals, the open sky; who love, and learn from, Nature (Mother Nature and human nature) in its splendor and harshness.

We are women living into a clearer, elemental and closer-to-the-bone kind of life. We live at the gateway between the past and an unknown future and relate to all life as if it is connected and it matters… because it is and it does.

In a very real sense, we are pioneers and here is space to share what we’re learning, what we observe and to give voice to what we think is worth passing along.

We hope you’ll join us.

Mottle’s World

I asked Mottle, the dainty little, mostly-feral tortoise shell cat that has lived in my backyard jungle for 7 years now, if I could write about her.  She agreed — but only if I didn’t divulge her true location on any given day.  She prides herself in being illusive.

Mottle came to live in my compost when she was young and so skinny that she disappeared when she turned sideways.  She loved the compost (it was warm) but was hanging out with a new boyfriend (an unsavory looking fellow) and wouldn’t be lured into shelter until she was full of kittens and autumn was on its way.

I named Mottle after a cat in Timothy Findley’s book Not Wanted On the Voyage which is a dark comedy and fascinating retelling of the old story of Noah and the arc.  In that story, Noah is portrayed as a quintessential patriarch.  His wife, who has no other name but Mrs. Noyes, has a cat named Mottle and both of them can only just barely tolerate the old man (he’s mean).  In preparation for the voyage, Mrs. Noyes brews gin, bottles it in quart jars and hides it in the rafters of the arc.  Once the rain begins and the voyage is underway, Mrs. Noyes and Mottle sneak down to the animal deck each night,  crack open a jar of gin and spend the evening teaching the sheep to sing. I loved that.

So when I told Mottle how she got her name, she chuckled and murmured under her breath as she strutted by on the way to the raspberry patch….”I love to sing!”