About a year ago I embarked on one of the most powerful adventures of my life. This one didn’t involve exotic locations or single engine aircraft, or even a sailboat. It simply took the shape of a few books, a stick and my memory.
About a year ago I decided to start memorizing animal tales from around the world (but especially tales from the Abenaki culture of the American Northeast). I told these memorized tales to my preschoolers at the end of a day of play and learning in the forest; I told these tales to parents and their toddlers before a morning of play at the nature center;I told these tales to my summer campers during a thunderstorm when the lightning drove us indoors and the fallen trees knocked out the power lines; I even told them to the antsy little girl who couldn’t sit still in the dentist’s waiting room.
Along the way, I learned that storytelling is more than the story. It connection: connection with the audience, connection with the characters (in this case the animals in the story), connection with place, with the past and with the self.
So, I’d like to invite you long to expand your imagination, exercise your memory and make some connections. I’ll be posting some of my most loved stories here, and if you are in New England, join me for storytelling at Beaver Brook Association in Hollis, NH.
Earth Sea Sky 