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ABOUT THE BOOK

“When I built my cabin and installed a wood stove I had never heard of a chimney fire. Live and learn. One cold winter night . . .” Thus begins one of Jim Stapleton’s many adventures during the eight years he lived as a hermit in the Allegheny Mountains. My Pennsylvania Hermitage tells why he went, how he lived, and what he discovered. Stapleton thrived there not as a back-to-nature advocate or Thoreauvian experimenter - he just wanted some time with himself. At his hermitage he wrote boxfuls of scribbled manuscripts, but never an account of his life at the time. A friend, Carl Cloffe, hearing an outline, urged him to tell the whole story. Stapleton does so here, largely from memory and notes-to-himself pasted on the wall forty-five years ago. The book is about self-discovery, awakening to the mysteries of the natural world, and all the funny things that can happen when you take the untrodden path.

EXCERPTS

“I came to my Pennsylvania retreat with a promising sense of inner sanctuary. Up to then I had devoted my life to the “outside”: success in academics, building a career, weaving a social web. Here for the first time I discovered a life within, an abundant reality independent of networks, institutions, or even other people. The longer I lived among the aspens and beavers, the richer, more elaborate and inviting this world became.”

“Returning from a long, hot, summer bike trip was a sensuous moment. Aching, reeking, liquid of limb, and wobbly with delightful exhaustion, I parked my bike and threw my sweaty body into West Branch Creek, a few feet below the main crossing . . . . Then the languorous moment of leaving the pool, steamy-flanked, shuffling about the buzzy evening on my deliciously drained legs, dribbling the soccer ball about the playfield in aimless directions, thoughts stumbling behind.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jim Stapleton lives in the Green Mountain village of Bristol, Vermont with his wife, Diana Bigelow, with whom he enjoys an engaging avocation in the theater.

www.jimstapleton.com

Helen J. Emery was born and grew up on a farm in Central Maine, married and have two sons. She started school in a one room school house where all eight grades were taught for four years. She moved to town to be near her father’s work, and went to school there, to graduate and two years of Business College.

She worked at stores for a time, moved to Connecticut where she worked in large shops. Helen always had a love of the outdoors and the country. As years passed she wanted a place where she could have animals and garden. On retiring she had that opportunity and did have a horse and at one time had two sheep, always a dog and cats, but mostly birds-geese, ducks and others. She now has only three special geese, Kippy, Sweetie and Little One.

Helen has been a member of Audubon for many years and still loves wildlife and the country. These little stories are only a few of the incidents she experienced over the many years she kept geese and at times ducks. It was some work, but the pleasure that she has enjoyed from so many, overshadows the few bites, bruises and work, and has been worth more than she could relate. Kippy has been Helen's last ‘Special One’ with Sweetie and Little One, his ‘Companions’.