Pamela Leavey

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Category: Creative Non-Fiction

Photo Essay: At the Water’s Edge

February 15, 2020

One early April day a couple of years ago, I was walking on the beach at the Sandy Point State Reservation located at the southern tip of Plum Island, Massachusetts. I’ve been going to the beach at Sandy Point since I was a young child. As I walked along the beach, I noticed a small boy standing at the water’s edge watching the shallow waves coming towards him. There’s something very special about watching children at play on the beach. If like me, you grew up near the beach, the vision of a young child at the water’s edge takes you back to your own childhood.

I remember standing at the water’s edge in that same way, looking at the water working its way towards me and then swirling around my feet. There’s a moment when we reach the water’s edge, no matter how old we are, that we stand pensively watching the water in a state of wonder. And then we look to one side or the other, and we start to move along the lapping waves, because we are curious why each wave disperses along the beach in a different way.

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Creative Writing and Finding Joy in Nature

January 21, 2020

In 2015, while working on my undergraduate degree in Digital Communications and Creative Writing I did an Independent Study in Nature Writing. During the class, I had substantial reading list (some of the books are listed below) that I worked my way through. However, I found that the most valuable and instructive time that I spent, while working on my independent study, was actually done outdoors in nature observing it in the area of the Merrimack River estuary lands where I lived in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

At the time I rented an apartment in a historical shipwright’s house on Pleasant Valley Road. All around the house there were woods and wetlands that are protected by the Massachusetts Division of Conservation Services. I needed only to sit at my desk to and look out the window in front of it to see bald eagles and blue herons fly across or even through the front yard.

One day returning from my frequent walks along the river I watched a sharp-shinned hawk dive from a sugar maple tree in the front yard into a yew shrub in front of my living room window (where my desk sat) and lunch on a sparrow.

Sharp-shinned Hawk
Sharp-shinned Hawk
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Reflections: Finding Comfort in Nature

January 20, 2020

To look for solace in nature has been a part of my life as long as I can remember. Growing up as a small child in rural Massachusetts, the youngest of older parents who had me as a change of life baby, I learned first-hand from my parents about the importance of the land and the wildlife around us, supported by the land. To walk the field next to my parent’s home, or better yet, skip down the dirt road just past our house, to the river, was pure bliss when I was a child. I watched my mother talk to the birds, and feed the chickadees in her hands, this was all part of my childhood and the impression it made has never left me.

Merrimack River
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Food For Thought: Wonder

January 3, 2020

Sandy Point, Plum Island, Massachusetts

Without the state of wonder that blossoms when graced with the vision of nature we would surely be lost, for as I feast my eyes each day upon the river that fluxes with the tides afore my eyes, I am touched by the grace of the universe. The greatest gift to humankind is the world in which we live, the nature around us. The rivers and the seas, the mountains and the beaches, the sacred places, are where we must all go to unburden and renew. Wonder is what heals us. Wonder brings us joy. Wonder, that sense of pure awe that touches us in the midst of nature is the primal conduit of joy.

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Food For Thought: The Bend at Eagle’s Nest

December 31, 2019

Here at the bend in the river, at eagle’s nest, is where the sun glimmers on the water casting its shimmering light in such a manner that it illuminates my mind with both queries and answers simultaneously, for that beam of sun is so brilliant that I am blinded by its presence.

A million words race through my mind ricocheting off the water and tumbling down the river, running off to the sea. It is here in this curve of the river that I let go of a little pain and let in the glorious glow that I seek. I stop, I soak in the sun, and I turn back, warm and renewed, lighter, and brighter. I know the words I spilled down the river will return to me on the page. For it is here, I draft the questions that need answers. And, it is here, that the answers come to me. The light converging on the water, even in its palest or darkest glow, speaks to me, all knowing.

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Tiny Tender Tendrils

December 30, 2019

Tiny, tender tendrils of trees reached tenuously to the sky in askance for love and light on a raw fall day. The wind blew fiercely shaking the tiny tender tendrils of trees all about me, as I walked along the river. There were layers upon layer of colors and textures laying beyond the naked trees like soldiers standing steadfastly along the river. I saluted the shivering tendrils shaking in the brute wind and I walked on, seeking the sun, where the tiny, tender tendrils of trees did not stand saluting the cadmium sky.

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Musing and Rambling

Sometimes I muse and I ramble because I can... I muse about life and things that matter to me...

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