Traveling Moons

By Mary Pauer

When Mary Pauer was seven, she became a cowgirl who sported a fringed skirt, matching vest, and a hat with a potato chip curl. Sixty years later, she lives on a small hobby ranch with a barn and horses. Although she has ridden in Africa, South America, Canada, Australia, and in the Rockies, Pauer is always soothed by the expanse of her fields and the rush of the wind through the grasses and trees. On the farm, she is more more herself than anywhere else. In a thoughtful collection of prose and poetry, Pauer candidly reflects on life in a rural setting as she crosses seasons, wanders the edges of fields, peers into nests and dens, admires the open skies, and explores the sharing and trust that permeates the community. Her writings passionately celebrate life on the farm while offering observations on nature accompanied by deep insights, witty commentary, and a lyrical appreciation of Earths bounty. Traveling Moons shares a delightfully honest view into one womans relationship with the natural world as she reflects on life on the farm.

Mary Pauer takes you by the hand and leads you into a literary world layered with heartache, sensuality, and the beauty found in the singular moment.

Jamie Cat Callan, author of Oh La La and French Women Dont Sleep Alone, and creator of The Writers Tool Box

A donation from each book provides financial support for

Kent County (Delaware) SPCA for equine rescue efforts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Aug 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781480850071

Mary Pauer

Mary Pauer, author of a fiction collection, Big Haired Women, and short fiction, Hubba Hubba, was awarded the 2011 Emerging Artist Literary Fellowship and the 2014 Established Literary Fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts. Her prose and fiction have won awards from the National Federation of Press Women, Delaware Press Association, Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild, and the Delaware Literary Connection. She has been published in Southern Women’s Review, The Delmarva Review, The Broadkill Review, and Foxchase Review, among others, as well as in journals of nature writing. Her work can also be read in several anthologies featuring Delaware authors, including an anthology supporting a raptor rescue center. She is a speaker for the Delaware Humanities Forum and facilitated the 2016 Pulitzer Prize discussion series. Her current rescue project is the adoption of an eleven-year-old quarter horse seized in an abuse-and-neglect case. Not all of the horses survived to find new homes. Five dollars from the sale of each paperback copy of Traveling Moons will be donated to Kent County, Delaware, SPCA, to offset expenses for the equine shelter.

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Copyright © 2017 Mary Pauer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Interior Image Credit: Katelyn Donovan

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5006-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5007-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017912218

Archway Publishing rev. date: 8/2/2017

For Neal,

always

Don’t Let Them Tame You

When I was seven years old, I became a cowgirl. I sported a fringed skirt, a matching vest, a hat with a potato chip curl, and boots that are still fashionable today. And, I wore a look of determination.

Now, sixty years later, I live on a small hobby ranch with a barn and horses.

I have ridden in Africa, in the high Andes in South America, at the tip of the Gaspe Peninsula in Canada, at different points in the Rockies, and across Australia. Always, when I return, I’m soothed by the expanse of my fields, the rush of wind through the grasses and trees.

I am more myself on my farm than anywhere else, even on the darkest day, in the loneliest night.

I drive more than twenty minutes to get anywhere from this remote place.

No delivery services or cabs will venture out here. My friends call the property Gothic.

Isadora Duncan said, You were wild once, don’t let them tame you. She also wrote of the concentrated effort to create one movement, to write one simple beautiful sentence.

I explore my wilderness and discover the simplicity in beauty the inspiration for that sentence.

Selections

Who Needs Another Poem about Nature?

Present Tense

Under Wolf Moon

We Do Dirt: One Woman’s Take on Life in Bridgeville

Winter Soil

Journey

Ice

One Is the Loneliest Number

Under Occluded Skies

A Poem for Winter

Winter Woman

Weary

Wind

Weather

Under Milk Moon

Bumblebee