Diary of a Druid

Today I received permission to use my proposed reading list for my First Degree curriculum. Over the next year, I will be reading each of the following books:

1. Guide to the Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Tennessee
2. The All-Season Pocket Guide to Identifying Common Tennessee Trees
3. Birds of Tennessee Field Guide
4. Trees of Tennessee
   
5. Tennessee Wildlife Viewing Guide
6. The Forest Unseen
7. Ecology of Cedar Glades
8. Kentucky Wildlife Viewing Guide
9. Tennessee and Kentucky Garden Guide

I plan to do one book per month and for the longer ones (such as the Birds of Tennessee Field Guide) per two months so I can make sure I'm really digging into the material and understanding it rather than breezing through. An important lesson to be learned here is that it's not a race and that I have my entire life to deepen and expand my spiritual horizons. 

Since I will be initiating myself on the next New Moon (11 May), I will also start reading in May. Here is my current plan for the order in which I will read these books:

May 2021: The All-Season Pocket Guide to Identifying Common Tennessee Trees
June 2021: Kentucky Wildlife Viewing Guide
July 2021: Tennessee and Kentucky Garden Guide
August 2021: Tennessee Wildlife Viewing Guide
September 2021: Trees of Tennessee
October 2021: Birds of Tennessee Field Guide
November 2021: Birds of Tennessee Field Guide
December 2021: The Forest Unseen
January 2022: The Forest Unseen
February 2022: Guide to the Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Tennessee
March 2022: Guide to the Trees, Shrubs, and Woody Vines of Tennessee
April 2022: Ecology of Cedar Glades

This leaves me with 11 days in May of 2022 as a buffer in case any of these run long or some extenuating circumstance throws me off track. The average page count of these books is 140 pages (and the total pages I will have read is 1257, wow), but there are some outliers which are unusually long or short (Birds of TN at 312 pages and Cedar Glades at 11).

Alongside this I must make three changes to the way I live that takes less from the Earth and gives back more to complete my Earth Path. For me, that will be working up to three vegetarian meals per week by the end of the year, making or mending my clothing instead of buying new, and employing the principles of "zero waste" to my daily life, starting now.

For now, that's all she wrote. I'll be back later today or tomorrow with a detailed outline of my plan for my First Degree Bard/Ovate/Druid project, which I am absolutely bursting at the seams to tell someone about and start working on. Here's to the next year!

Yours under the cedars,

Quill