From the time I was about seven years old I have been quite an avid reader. My grandmother, my fathers mother, would always send me books for birthdays and Christmas.

Grandma sent me ‘Alice in Wonderland’, ‘Mary Poppins’, ‘Great Expectations’, ‘What Katy Did’ and some Enid Blyton Books. At 7 I read lots of Enid Blyton ….all the ‘Magic far away tree” books, the ‘Secret Seven’ books, all the ‘Five’ adventures and the ‘ naughtiest girl’ series. and then I read ‘Ann of Green Gables’ and ‘Doctor Dolittle’ and many more.

When I was about 10 or 11 I read “My Side of the Mountain” and I was enthrauled by it. I hung on every word and imagined myself as the young boy who left home to live in the mountains and fend for himself. I caught fish with him and raised his Peregrine falcon and taught it to hunt and lived and played with the wild animals. I think that because of all the moving I did as a child, I was never worried by being by myself. I had plenty of imagination and with books I could be any where or anyone.
But, that book ” My Side of the Mountain” is one I always fondly remember, and is maybe why I seem to gather stray birds and animals from time to time, and why my mountain views are so special.

the pictures Sis posts often make me think of that book, the wild things and the snow and the green in the summer…scenes from my imagination and “my side of the mountain’