Reader Views is talking today with Janet Grace Riehl, author of the deeply personal, yet universally poignant book of poetry, “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary.” Janet is interviewed by Juanita Watson, Assistant Editor of Reader Views.
Juanita: Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us today Janet. Please tell us how this unique book of poetry unfolded onto paper.
...(Caitlin Press 2011), represents the definitive record of the sketchy facts that can be gathered about Lillian’s walk from New York to the north-west coast of Alaska in the late 1920s. The book is available from all the usual sources and I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Lillian’s story is still not that well known. I first encountered the tale when camping for a few days around the ultra-beautiful village of Atlin in Northern British Columbia (BC). Many small communities in Canada have their own rootsy and funky little museums. In the Atlin museum I came across a pamphlet about Lillian Alling produced by a local historian. Having spent quite a few days and nights experiencing the BC wild lands I was immediately captivated by the story of a lone, ill-prepared, driven woman wandering the mountains and forests 80 years earlier, when the terrain would have been even less human-friendly.
...