"'The year I turned fifty-four,' writes Barbara J. Scott, 'my stations at Still Creek emerged. It began like this: For two days I thought my husband was dead.'

"Scot and her husband, Jim, have climbed many mountains together, and for her, mountain climbing has become the metaphor that defines their long marriage. The shock of Jim's brush with death in the H8imalayas releases a deep need in Scot to reexamine her own life's direction, both as an individual and in her marriage. Because the physical limitations of middle age are making themselves felt, she wonders how much time is left to her for teaching, writing, travel, climbing.

"Seeking to gather what she terms her 'scattered slef,' Scot retreats alone to a cabin deep in Oregon's Mount Hood National Forest. As she explores the forest, she encounters a series of special and beautiful places that she comes to call her 'statioons' -- places where she experiences a remarkable senseation of completge merging with the natural world. As the seasons come and go, Scot names her seven stations -- Old Growth Sculpture, the Green Cathedral, Four Alders with Perfect Posture -- and makes a profound ritual of visiti8ng them one by one, over and over again. In this ritual, at last she finds the deep stillness in which she can contemplate aging and death, mountains and marriage.

"Scot's story is a moving chronicle of one woman's longing to express her i8nnermost self and to find her place within the creative cycles of nature. It is also an eloquent plea for the preser45vation of more places where people can experience the beauty and healing power of the natural world."
~~front flap

An exquisite book, with the ebb and flow of the seasons, mirroring the ebbs and flows of the author's personal journey of inner exploration. ( )

This was an interesting memoir set in a place I'm very familiar with. I found the authorial voice decidedly odd, and her description of a 20-odd year marriage in which neither partner ever talked about anything important, odder still. She moves out of the house and into a cabin for a year and they never actually talk about this, which I still can't wrap my head around. There's a lot of navel-gazing wrapped in pretty nature, and lots of mortality-contemplating. It all left me somewhat bewildered and bemused, but I was interested enough to finish it. 2.5 ( )