Quote of the Day: I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of the world. I’d have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister—anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me.

-Jim Burden, My Antonia

My Antonia. A classic Willa Cather novel.  A story of nostalgia and love, untenable because of time and distance.  A story of longing set against the backdrop of an unforgiving prairie.  A story of seeing life and love through nature, and nature through life and love.

In Antonia’s Gaze I hope to explore the themes of  life  and the vicissitudes of love through the lens of nature.  In doing so I will draw from some other sources of inspiration who incorporate the same thematic presences into their work; Barry Lopez; Edith Wharton; Thoreau; Whitman.

To go outside in order to go in, to understand oneself relative to all that surrounds us in nature; to see love in the rising sun or beauty in the hard cold of a fall rainstorm.  Through the medium of this blog, I hope to channel the questions in my heart and mind into understanding and peace using as a tool my relationship with the natural world.

Here goes nothing.