I am a blogger...

As you can see if you click on and enlarge my profile photo, I am just sitting here by a log at a quiet stream on a sunny day, without a care in the world for the moment, enjoying the beauty and solace, thinking about the good books I have yet to read and the stories I have yet to write, and realizing that I am today something I have never been before...I am a blogger.

I have been a writer all of my life. From the time I could first print letters as a child, I was writing stories in "books" prepared by my mother. She would cut some typing paper in two, fold the sheets together, and then braid red yarn through two punched holes on the spine. The book was ready for my words. One of my first books was titled "Fly the Bird."

Trying to spread my literary wings and also fly into imagination, I wrote and wrote. Stories and stories, most of them quite awful if anyone were to read them now. But I also wrote letters. I wrote in diaries.

Because my family moved a lot, books were good friends and writing was a hobby easily enjoyed on rainy days. My high school journalism teacher particularly encouraged my interest in journalism. She chose me as editor of the high school newspaper.

In my freshman year of college, I wrote news stories for the student newspaper. My first published story in the University of Arizona Daily Wildcat was about the sinking of the U.S.S. Arizona in Pearl Harbor. But the first story for which I was rewarded financially was never published, nor was it journalism. It was fictional story that won a prize of $15 in a campus writing contest. Eventually, I earned the position of science reporter, covering the science and research beat for the student newspaper. I loved it, meeting all kinds of people and learning about all kinds of science topics, from jojoba beans, tree-ring research, and controversial nuclear energy issues to Antarctica expeditions, folklore superstitions, and what zookeepers fed anteaters. No, not ants. We student-reporters were paid a small amount per column inch. I would have done it for free.

When I left college, my sights were set on starting my own newspaper in my home state of Wyoming. The newspaper was The Medicine Bow Post in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. I performed every task imaginable at a small weekly newspaper for 11 years, but the writing part was what made the newspaper a voice and a public record for the history of the town. The science of wind energy technology in its infancy in Wyoming meant more science writing. I was able to exchange reporter jobs for a short feature experiment with a Washington Post reporter. I compiled some of my newspaper columns into a book titled "Sage Street," thus the connection to the name of this blog. I have interviewed amazingly interesting people, from CBS newsman Walter Cronkite to a destitute drifter sleeping in a highway culvert. I helped my brothers with editions of "The Wyoming Almanac." I wrote my master's thesis on the Journalist-in-Space project. I helped students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln learn to use layout software. I advised college students about writing and reporting for student publications at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, and Missouri Valley College in Marshall, Missouri. I organized and edited "The Missouri Almanac." I taught journalism courses. I still teach college journalism classes and advise students.

Every year from my time in high school, I have had something--a feature story or a photograph or a book review--published. I have written about the Freedom of Information Act, rocket science and history, actress Barbara Stanwyck, Owen Wister's cowboy myth-making, the novel "To Kill A Mockingbird." A review about a literary "Mockingbird" is a long flight from the child's idea of story-telling with "Fly the Bird," but it also makes some sense. Writing marks my path, history, and journeys.

And now I am a blogger. My writing now finds a place on the Internet. I hope it will be worth reading. I know it will be fun to write. And you never can tell where the "herd of words" will venture.

Sitting here by a log at a stream on a sunny day, I know adventures in writing are as close as a pen or a notebook or a keyboard or a thought retained. You never can tell what will happen or where it will lead.

Huh? It just felt like the log moved...