About the Author

Isobel Noble

I grew up on the sea with the sound of ocean-birds and surf in my ears.

From Montauk Point to Block Island, north to Mystic, Stratford, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, around the Sound to Gardener’s and Plum Islands, back and down to Port Washington and Roslyn Harbor, I know the waters like the back of my hand. I could take you in a dense fog with nothing to guide us but currents and the noise the ocean makes when it comes close to the land, so different in every way from the long uninterrupted swells of the deep. I can navigate by stars and sun, use compass and sextant to plot a course with a chart. I know where the blue fish are biting and when, where to find the biggest stripers and porgies and snow-shoe flounders.

I departed the sea and the shore to emigrate here, to the Berkshires of Western Mass. There were recurring dreams, you see, of waves growing taller and broader and crashing farther up on the beach, until there was nothing I could do to escape them; no way to elude their frothing grasp. Now I walk mountain forests with a wolf-like dog, filled with atavistic feelings rising up from my hind brain suggesting another life when I must have done similarly, but dressed in furs and bearing a spear or club in my hand. The pine-needled paths cushion our steps and we roam in silence, connected by glance and gesture, the dog attuned to me and the environment as canine partners have been to their human halves since the days of the cave.

Stories and lines of poetry sweep across my inner landscape during my walks, motivated, I am certain, by the mantra of motion that when combined with Nature becomes a private meditation shared between me, my dog, and the Wild. We three become one, joined in all ways, never to be separated so long as the world spins on and life on planet Earth remains possible.

I’ve always loved the quiet times merging with the Mother, whether on the sea or in the mountains, whether swimming oceans the world over or scaling rocky promontories while clinging to Her granite skeleton. Our relationship runs deep, connected by the beat of my heart and the pump of my lungs, as well as the basic fact that our molecules and atoms are derived from the same sacred stuff. In balance, I listen for my body’s signals which mimic to perfection the rhythms of rain and avatar air, before setting off in new directions, trusting the Universe to guide my multidimensional journey.

Such is how you find me; traveling my true path, aware and alive, bound to and towards the Earth that is my center, seeking ever for the Infinite, and always heading home.

Isobel Noble, 2/13/06
North Egremont, Massachusetts

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