I left the mountains and went to the coast. I walked along the beaches in between Makah Tribal lands and National Forest, and saw Cape Flattery, the Northwestern most point in the continental U.S. The cape is filled with beautiful and mysterious caves. I think trolls live in the caves.

When I was young, I used to visit Yellowstone National Park every summer on my family's yearly pilgrimage to Oregon. In the gift shops, I liked to look at pictures of the park in winter, when the visitor rates drop down, and the park is blanketed in snow. I longed to see the snow and the forest full of wolves and elk, but I knew that I had to go to school, and that the roads in winter were treacherous.

I think too often, we fill children's books with wild creatures while forgetting that the wild is often inaccessible to children.

The importance of wild spaces and ideas for children has been written about in books like Sharing Nature with Children, and The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places.

As our modern society becomes increasingly urban and busy, I think it is not only children that suffer from a nature deficit.