Pleasure Reading: Woodswoman

I was never much of a reader. I think I didn’t have the patience or didn’t want to waste my time. In school I’d just read the book jacket and never a whole book! That’s why I have boxes of old newspapers and magazines that I didn’t read, saying I’d read them later. I don’t want to throw them out because I think I’ll miss something. One day, about 11 years ago, I started to read a newspaper and always the obituaries. 

There is where I met Anne LaBastille, a “woodswoman”.  She died in 2011 at 77, had written several books and was featured in the Conservationist magazine several times. After reading that obituary, I had to read those books and actually couldn’t put them down!  One was Woodswoman, about her life working as a teenager in the summers at a camp/lodge on a lake in the Adirondacks and later into her adult life. She ended up marrying the owner, divorcing, buying property down the lake and building a log cabin by herself, except for the roof. Anne was an environmentalist and nature lover. She had a degree and wrote for National Geographic. She later earned her PHD by studying and trying to save the Giant Grebes from Guatemala, who are now extinct, writing another book called Mama Poc. 

It tells about her journey to Guatemala to a certain lake and working with the President and natives to save the grebes and their habitat for about 25 years. According to the book, if there are 25 or less of a species, it is considered extinct. This was fascinating reading and if I can read it, you can too!  On another note….. on a trip to the Adirondack Museum, I found that they had dismantled Anne’s cabin, about the size of a single car garage or smaller, and put it back together to display in the museum! Happy reading!