For nearly seven years, I wrote and read “WildLives,” a weekly nature of life commentary on public radio in southern New Mexico and West Texas. Then my late husband and I moved home to a small town in the rural Southern Rockies, and with no public radio station nearby, the commentary became a long-running newspaper column.
I enjoyed writing the column, but I missed the magic of telling my stories. So Richard, an economist and sculptor who never met a design problem he couldn’t solve elegantly and efficiently, designed and built me a recording desk–it may be the world’s tiniest recording studio!–for my office. I started recording commentaries for our community radio station.
A few years later, just weeks from the end of my mom’s life, when she was in the hospital in a city a couple of hours away, I had the idea of collecting my favorite commentaries into a CD she could listen to whenever she missed the sound of my voice. As with so many good deeds, it was not quite as simple as I thought. It quickly morphed into a Big Deal, and ended up an actual commercial production. In the process I got me hooked on audio again. (And yes, I did finish it in time for my mom to listen to it!)
WildLives, Celebrating the World Around Us
Music composed and performed by David Tipton
Terraphilia Productions, 2010
150-minute MP3 containing 28 commentaries
$9.95 from CD Baby or iTunes (search ‘Tweit’)
Winner, 2011 Colorado Author’s League Awards
Magic! –CAL judges
After finishing WildLives, I was approached by an audiobook publisher interested in acquiring the audio rights to my memoir. I said I’d be happy to sell them the rights if I could read it myself. They agreed, and I began reading… and re-reading… and reading again. That project took nearly a year, and it allowed me to experience my own book–my own story–at deeper and more intimate levels than simply writing it had.
Walking Nature Home, A Life’s Journey
Illustrations: Sherrie York
University Audiobooks, 2011
Audiobook edition (Read by the author! Click the link to listen to a sample.)
It’s a lovely, brave, inspiring book…. Sometimes I think the highest praise you can give a book is to say that it helped. This book does that. –Barry Lopez
My recording desk sits unused right now, but lately I’ve been thinking about a children’s book idea, so I may be plugging that mic into my laptop again before too long…
