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Taking Inspiration from Nature

© Roxianne Moore

Remembering Anne Morrow Lindbergh
June 22, 1906 - February 7, 2001

As a teen, two of my favorite books were Gift from the Sea and Bring Me a Unicorn These two books, more than anything else, propelled me into becoming a writer. My first efforts were clumsy and stumbling compared to my role model's, but at the time I aspired to write like Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Bring Me a Unicorn, a collection of letters and diary entries covering the years before her marriage, came out in 1972, and I read it a couple of years later while I was still in junior high. I devoured the book again and again, trying to absorb not only the life of this woman, but her writing style and grace.

She began keeping a diary at the age of ten, a practice she continued all her life. This alone is an inspiration. I began keeping a diary about the time I first read Unicorn, but I can scarcely say I've made my entries faithfully over the years. Were I to collect my own letters and diaries, several years-long gaps would be evident.

With her aviator husband, Charles Lindbergh, Anne gained a new perspective on the world. Her vantage from the air provided her with insight into changes taking place on the earth below, changes that disturbed her. For the first time, the extent of the devastation of forests and lakes throughout the world were visible. In 1969, she published Earth Shine to help protect and preserve the land. What Anne would think now, with acres of rainforest disappearing every second, is hard to imagine.

Her death in February, at the age of 94, has robbed us of one role model we would do well to emulate. From her poetry to her essays, Anne's love of nature was woven into every word. For Anne, nature was not just an inspiration, it was her life's breath, the core of her creative self. Even in the depths of her grief for her eldest son, kidnaped and murdered in 1932, she continued to write.

I am content. I sit down at my desk, a bare kitchen table with a blotter, a bottle of ink, a sand dollar to weight down one corner, a clamshell for a pen tray, the broken tip of a conch, pink-tinged, to finger, and a row of shells to set my thoughts spinning -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in GIFT FROM THE SEA, 1955.

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