The Outdoors is my home

I have always been most comfortable outside. Since I grew up among the
giant Sequoias in northern California, wildlife is more than just a backdrop
to my Website...it's part of who I am. The Pacific framed the comings and
goings of my family, and I loved plunging into its ice-cold (this is Northern California, remember!)
waters. The silence of the forest was a sanctuary for me, and I always imagined the animals talked to me.
This is still true.


The Stage was my dream

I wanted to be an actress in the worst way! In elementary school, I was crushed when rejected for the
lead as a princess in a school play, but I overcame that when, as a sophomore in high school, I auditioned
for the part of Princess Anastasia and discovered I could really act! (I was rejected for that role as well,
but earned a part in a comedy.) From that point on, there was no stopping me, and I earned more than a
dozen acting and speaking trophies during the remaining three years of high school. Eventually, I acted in
community theatre, and now I teach drama!

Writing is a natural outlet

I often tell people I was born with a pen in my hand-- that's how closely I identify with the writing
process. I do remember writing when I was about three years old, and I completed my first project --a
short story-- at the age of seven. It was only natural that I would find reporting, and eventually feature
stories, as an outlet for writing about people. I love people! I find character-driven fiction the most
intriguing form of story-telling.
Yes, I do have a life!
(Well, I try to)
Near my home
in Montana...
Bears were my
neighbors, not
necessarily my
friends! Watch your
step when
berry-pickin'!
About Cindie
Relaxing...
London Bridge
This famous
landmark is just
down the road from
my Arizona home.
The worst day on the
lake is better than the
best day on land!


                                          Meditation

If I close my eyes, I can bring it back in a second. Sometimes, a whiff of evergreen
or the pungent smell of the sea will serve as an unbidden reminder. Suddenly it’s
all there at the forefront of my mind, and it’s as if I was a child again, a child whose
playground is the towering redwood forests of Northern California.
I can see her now: Flag, the fawn who was my earliest companion. She is standing
beside me, both of us ankle-deep in the quiet waters of Big River. We stand
together, head to head, neither of us so different from each other that we consider
our friendship in any way odd or unusual.

Flag is an orphan. Her mother was killed by a poacher’s bullet, the bones stripped
naked in the shadows of the forest. I found her in the shadows of the redwoods,
her spotted coat barely visible among the ferns and rotted branches of fallen
trees, her eyes wounded and confused at the smell of blood and the gunpowder.
She stood beside the remains of her mother, silent and wary.
Despite the murder of her parent, Flag had come to me as if she knew I would not
harm her.  My mother taught me to nurse her, first with my fingers dipped in milk
warmed on the stove, then with a bottle which had a long, narrow nipple. From the
first moment of meeting, we trusted each other implicitly, perhaps because we
were both literally babes in the woods.

Flag’s ears stand erect, twitching above our heads as she observes the sounds
around us. She is my ear to the forest, and I am hers, for she is too trusting of the
world of man while I, a hunter’s child, know that deer are meant to be eaten. I stand
as her protector, even as she is mine.

She drinks — a long, thirsty gulp — and I watch, my hand on her shoulder and my
eyes on the shadows between the trees.

We are comfortable together. Above and behind and all around is the forest,  the
sound of it a cacophony of chattering birds and chirping squirrels and gurgling
water and breeze rustling through the redwood trees. I am little more than a
toddler, already wise in the ways of the forest. It isn’t unnatural to talk to the
animals, or to God.

It was a long time ago.