PREFACE BY MELIA SNYDER 25
My ancestors’ connection to the land was intimate, a relationship that
was raw and real rather than pastoral or idyllic. My own relationship
to nature has long been my deepest source of nourishment, providing
daily sustenance and medicine in these times of spiritual poverty.
I am thankful to have grown up in a time before cell phones and
computers, to have spent long summer days swimming and playing
outside until dusk, to have walked with my father through the woods
behind our home, to have fallen in love with the Buffalo River in
Arkansas on our annual pilgrimage to this wild and scenic waterway.
In this landscape, I became a collector of stones and bones. The
trees and animals taught me how to pay attention and became
the wellspring of my writing, poetry and imagination. The tornadoes,
snakes, scorpions and fire of my childhood called for respect and
cautioned against romanticizing the Earth. Relationship with the
natural world became my first practice of presence and process that is
the foundation of expressive arts.
My undergraduate education was in psychology and Spanish—
my exploration of the inner landscape of the psyche buttressed by my
exploration of the outer landscape of farms, caves and the ancient
mountains and rivers where I lived and visited. After graduation, I
spent a year teaching writing and poetry in South Louisiana’s public
schools, and saw firsthand the intersection of poverty, race and
environmental abuse collide in the vacant eyes of my students. There
was an epidemic of seizure disorders in my classroom, likely from
the proximity of offshore oil drilling poisoning their water, food and
recreation sources. This was a time of despair and helplessness on my
part but also a time of awakening. I saw firsthand how my love of
the Earth was intimately connected with the wellbeing of the people
whom I also loved. I elected to opt out of the K-12 educational
system and to answer the long call of the Appalachian Mountains
that had been calling me “home” since early childhood. I spent the
next several years living, learning, working and teaching outdoors
in summer camps, wilderness therapy schools, outdoor education
programs and community mental health programs. Nature became
the primary teacher in my work, and I the midwife.