Where I write...

My summer "office" provides the essentials: a surface, shade, a comfortable chair, a breeze off the pond, the soundtrack of birdsong and privacy.

A year ago, I bought my home, Nixie's Vale, a four-and-a-half acre piece of heaven sandwiched between two lakes. I grew up in midcoast Maine but often visited grandparents in the lakes region, where we had a family summer camp on Little Sebago Lake. Now I work in an office on the road I used to drive down with my grandfather to visit his brother; it was serendipity that I ended up here, after living nearly eight years on Mount Desert Island.

I lived on MDI while I was at College of the Atlantic and worked as a park ranger at Acadia National Park. I miss the island but have come to love the lakes region. It's now my home. I had waited over ten years to adopt a rescue dog--until I had the yard and space for it--and lucked out with Sophie-Bea, a pointer-dachshund mix from Arkansas. She's a rescue dog. In August, she will have been with me a whole year--and my, how she has come into her own! She's healthier, happier and more confident. I think she was a hunting school drop-out but one can only guess; she was abandoned on the side of a highway and then brought up to Maine on a doggie bus so I could adopt her. She wasn't quite what I had envisioned for myself, for my first dog, but she's perfect for me. Energetic and lazy, depending on the weather. A good mix. A lot like the female version of Snoopy! She loves the water. I took her to the beaches on the Maine coast in the fall and spring. It was her first experience with the ocean...and she wasn't sure about it until she saw other dogs swimming. She prefers lakes and ponds, a true wetland dog.