Meri grew up under the wide Montana sky on a small farm near the Canadian border milking cows, feeding chickens, and listening to her brother's tales of the stars and starlore. But as graduation loomed near, she began to regard the figures on the celestial carousel with the sentimentality of a forgotten toy and became increasingly uneasy with her expected entry into a university. She had too many questions, questions that sitting in a classroom wouldn't answer. She needed to find some solid truths, truths she could pound against and they wouldn't crumble. She was determined to seek them out.

Leaving for the west coast, Meri and her best friend Christine end up moving in with Rex, an old environmental warrior who takes them to an old growth forest, shares the tools of activism, and to Meri's surprise, aspires to the same mindset of putting all on the line for a meaningful life. Soon she finds work at a state agency, starts taking classes, and joins protests.

But she's still strangely comforted when, glancing up, she makes out familiar figures in that ancient ring of myths encircling the earth. She imagines that as ancient sky watchers mapped the path of the sun in the night sky, they wove tales of their movements and their own lore into the stars. And as she begins to relate to the tales of guardianship and farming, balance, and wildlife and so many others, she begins to find a true purpose and a path for this, her turn in time.

--Kathleen Ann Emmett

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