Opal Whiteley's Beginning and Hoops and Hoopla. David H. Rosen

      

      Opal Whiteley’s Beginning

      Sunrise of a Child Naturalist

      &

      Hoops & Hoopla

      Diary of Hardwood Hell

      by David H. Rosen

      Opal Whiteley’s Beginning

      Sunrise of a Child Naturalist

      &

      Hoops & Hoopla

      Diary of Hardwood Hell

      Copyright © 2018 David H. Rosen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Resource Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-6085-6

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 02/27/19

      Also by David H. Rosen

      Henry’s Tower

      Transforming Depression: Healing the Soul through Creativity

      The Tao of Jung: The Way of Integrity

      The Tao of Elvis

      The Healing Spirit of Haiku (With Joel Weishaus)

      Clouds and More Clouds

      Lost in the Long White Cloud: Finding My Way Home

      Time, Love and Licorice: A Healing Coloring Storybook

      Spelunking through Life: A Collection of Haiku

      Living with Evergreens: A Collection of Haiku

      Patient-Centered Medicine: A Human Experience (With Uyen Hoang)

      In Search of the Hidden Pond: A Collection of Haiku

      The Alchemy of Cooking: Recipes with a Jungian Twist

      White Rose, Red Rose: A Collection of Haiku (With Johnny Baranski)

      Samantha the Sleuth & Zack’s Hard Lesson

      Torii Haiku: Profane to a Sacred Life

      “Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.”

      —Natalie Goldberg

      Opal Whiteley’s Beginning

      Sunrise of a Child Naturalist

      Prelude

      Earth, ourselves,

      breathe and awaken,

      leaves are stirring,

      all things moving,

      new day coming,

      life renewing.

      Pawnee Prayer

      This Pawnee Prayer reminds one of Opal Whiteley. She was a naturalist and child memoirist. The Story of Opal: The Journal of an Understanding Heart, published serially in The Atlantic Monthly, was a best-seller a century ago. Before her popular book was published, Opal had been a student at the University of Oregon in 1916. In all accounts of her, she was short in stature, dark with long braided hair, and appeared to be of Native American descent.

      Opal Whiteley University of Oregon archives

      Opal Irene Whiteley was born on December 11, 1897 in Colton, Washington. In her memoir, Opal maintained that she was an orphan. Her parents, Ed and Lizzie, claimed that this was not true. The following is a work of historical fiction that imagines Opal’s origins.

      Opal was conceived on a clear, early Autumn day in a mossy lea near a forest. Her father, Ed, was a lumberjack. On one of his excursions into the nearby hills east of the Snake River, Ed was surveying trees to cut for a new cabin. He was tall, strong, and fair-skinned. Deep in the woods, he sat down to have his lunch, which his wife Lizzie had made. It consisted of homemade bread, two apples, and a bit of cheese. Ed and Lizzie had decided to settle in Colton where the fertile hills meet the prairie north of the Snake River. Ed had learned to be in the wild as a young boy and his father had taught him to hunt with a bow and arrow.

      Ed found a huge tree to cut down for lumber. After sawing for hours, he was exhausted, so he lay down. To his surprise, he had slept for several hours.