Cheryl Grey Bostrom
For most of her life, Pacific Northwest naturalist, photographer, and award-winning author Cheryl Grey Bostrom, MA, has lived in the rural and wild lands that infuse her writing. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the American Scientific Affiliation’s God and Nature Magazine, for which she’s a regular photo essayist. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she has also authored two non-fiction books. This is her first novel. She currently resides near Lynden, WA.
Twitter: @Cheryl_Bostrom
What period of history do you wish you knew more about?
Hands down, I’d like to re-enter the period of U.S. history—and my family’s specific experience of it—between 1925 and 1954. To reconstruct my paternal grandparents’ Dust Bowl story and deconstruct their response to it. I’d like to tack up their mules, work them in the fields of Oklahoma in days before the drought and winds began. To spend some time with my grandfather before he sold those animals, replacing them with the jalopy that carried his family—including my preschool dad—west on Route 66 to California, where they worked the crops north. To see and listen through Dad’s eyes, as he cut his teeth on instability and want, shaping the hunger that made him a match for my mother, daughter of Alaska pioneers with their own tales of wonder, abandonment and loss. Those histories have trailed down the years and implanted themselves in my family’s DNA, feeding despair and grief, resilience and faith. All the stuff of self-awareness and great stories. I’d love to know more.
Favorite non-reading activity?
Most days you’ll find me on some sort of hike into nearby rural lands, mountains, or forests with my camera—and multiple lenses. The act of focusing on the natural world, composing shots that speak to me, helps me listen not only to the physical world, but to the spiritual truths behind it. Photography—whether macro, landscape or wildlife (birds!)—draws me outdoors at every opportunity and nourishes me in ways nothing else can.
Vacation druthers . . . City or Rural destination? Why?
Rural. Always. While people fascinate me in any setting, I’d much rather engage with them in the natural world than in a human-built one. I feel detached in cities, and wonder if people’s heightened anxiety in large population centers comes, at least in part, from a collective disconnect from the created world’s natural rhythm. I’ll take a vacation in the mountains or on a wild Washington beach over a trip to a city any day.
Do you collect anything? If so, what, why, and for how long?
Bird nests. Unlike feathers (see the 1918 Migratory Bird Act about collecting feathers), I can legally gather wild birds’ nests, once they’re abandoned for the year. I’ve hunted them since childhood, and have brought my favorites home. From robins’ mud-lined grass cups to the lichen and spider-web constructions of hummingbirds, nests show up on my shelves, reminding me of the fragility, transience, and impact of homes where birds—and we—first grow. And, of course, illustrating a bigger Wisdom in their design.
What brings you great joy?
When a reader of my work slips through a thin place in the natural world and experiences the beautiful character or nearness of God in some way, I’m inclined to do a happy dance of joy.
