The Tawny Tracks of Storytelling: Guest Post for Women Writing the West

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“Why,” my editor asked me, calling from New York after she'd read the first complete draft of my first novel several years ago, “do we need the mountain lion?  It’s not like she’s supernatural or mystical or anything.”

True, the lion in Shifting Stars was only being a lion.  But she was linked by the land to a destiny greater than any of us could understand, and it was her destiny that was linked to Turtle Woman’s, and to mine.  No, not supernatural, not greater than nature, yet every bit as mysterious as nature.

How, I wondered, does a writer find her way into the heart of a story without following the tracks of the animals?  How does a woman find her way through life without these animals to guide her?

This month, my story is posted in full on the Women Writing the West website.  Please continue reading by clicking Follow the Tawny Tracks.   Thank you. 
An advisor for the Rocky Mountain Land Library and member of the International League of Conservation Writers, Page Lambert has been writing about the western landscape and leading nature retreats in the West for twenty years. Founding member of Women Writing the West, member of Wyoming Writers and Colorado Authors’ League, Lambert’s writing can be found inside monumental sculptures at the Denver Art Museum, online at Huffington Post, and inside the pages of dozens of anthologies. Page designs and teaches graduate writing courses for the University of Denver’s University College. Recent published works include “Not for Sale” (Langscape Magazine and “The Rural West,” included in Fulcrum’s new book, The Light Shines from the West. Forthcoming are 3 poems in DoveTails: Writing for Peace. Page writes All Things Literary/All Things Natural from her mountain home west of Denver.

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