Empowered by Nature
Empowerment was a very real force when I studied at Oberlin in
the 1960s. But only after I left did I fully extend that theme
to the world that touched me the most deeply: the natural world
and its nonhuman inhabitants.
Just as Oberlin's gray climate shunts students into the library
to study (or so we were told), so Iowa's corn-dominated landscape--my
home for the past 20 years--forces nature lovers to be open to
opportunity. When recently offered the chance to review for a
local newspaper an outspoken, long-dead, female ornithologist's
republished book, I grabbed it. I became enthralled, not only
with the description of an empowered life focused on the same
Iowan environment that entrances me, but with a woman who, like
me, was obsessed with this landscape and its creatures. Imagine
my pleasure when I discovered that this woman, born nearly a century
before me, had also been an Oberlin student.
Althea Sherman: fellow lover of nature, fellow activist, fellow
woman and kindred spirit. She leads onward. The circles, as they
continue to tighten, allure us with their gifts of delight.
--CFM
Just as Oberlin's gray climate shunts students into the library
to study (or so we were told), so Iowa's corn-dominated landscape--my
home for the past 20 years--forces nature lovers to be open to
opportunity. When recently offered the chance to review for a
local newspaper an outspoken, long-dead, female ornithologist's
republished book, I grabbed it. I became enthralled, not only
with the description of an empowered life focused on the same
Iowan environment that entrances me, but with a woman who, like
me, was obsessed with this landscape and its creatures. Imagine
my pleasure when I discovered that this woman, born nearly a century
before me, had also been an Oberlin student.