Get me outside myself, say, in a yurt on an island, and whoa—there are the stars, and crickets, the body I live in, the images of the people I love.

Night has its own kind of beauty, different than the beauty of day. Night is a time of sleep and dreams and inward visions, A time of pause within activity. Darkness is an invitation to imagining and storytelling, And to using ears instead of eyes to listen to the world in its stillness....

There once was an inquisitive, thoughtful girl named May. She was born in Belgium, about 100 years ago. She lived there only a few years until the German invasion in 1914. Fleeing Europe, May Sarton and her family came to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where May’s father became a professor.

Come into this room, weigh into this chair, breathe into this body, the very body that will be you, for better and for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part....

Written by Tracey L. Hurd. This is a story is about a boy who loved the outdoors. His name was Henry David Thoreau. All his life, he loved nature. It was almost as if he had a small, still voice inside him that whispered, “Go outside. Be amidst the trees, and lakes, and grass. This is your true...