In July of this year, my first book is going to be published. It has been a long, sometimes surprising, occasionally frustrating, but most often rewarding and exciting gestation process. It is especially relevant to Alaska Wellness because this magazine holds the seeds of how the book began…

Not long after moving to Alaska six years ago, I picked up my first copy of Alaska Wellness. At that time, it was a quarterly magazine, as today focusing on alternative healing modalities and the mind-body-emotion-spirit connection. A tiny notice in the back advertised for an Editor. Though I had never done any professional editing, I loved to write and here, in the land of new opportunities and creative spirit, I felt an urge to call about the ad. Surprising to me, I was hired.

Jackie Kosednar, publisher of this magazine and the most mellow boss I've ever known, told me that my first duty would entail going through a box of "hold" articles. These were articles that had been submitted to the magazine but had not yet been published, needed work, or for some other reason ended up in the box.

One of the articles caught my eye. It was about a guinea pig named Geisha who had given birth to a litter of babies but refused to care for them. The article was written by Chrys Long-Ago, a woman in Anchorage who claimed to talk with animals. Not only that, but the animals talked back to her! I was fascinated and simultaneously touched by the genuineness of the writing. The story detailed Chrys' conversations with Geisha and how she came to understand the lesson Geisha was experiencing in allowing her babies to die.

I wanted to print the article right away, but Jackie shook her head. "The public isn't ready for this sort of thing," she said firmly. As the magazine went bimonthly, I pestered Jackie nearly every issue about the article. A year later, she finally relented, and we ran "Guinea Pig Seminar" as a feature in the Nov/Dec issue of 1997.

One month later, I interviewed Chrys for Alaska Wellness. I found Chrys to be both intelligent and candid, and when she told me stories about a writer named J. Allen Boone, whose primary teacher in animal communication had been an award-winning German shepherd war dog in Germany who became a leading filmstar in America, I was beyond intrigued. I found two of Boone's books at the library and read them with a growing sense of wonder, amazement and deep respect.

Though the interview with Chrys was published shortly after it was written (Jan/Feb 1998 issue), I found myself reluctant to let go of the subject. Thoughts about human-animal communication playfully poked at my brain. Was it really possible to have an intelligent conversation with an animal? Did animals truly have a capacity to understand the world beyond themselves? Did they have a sense of spirituality? Did they know something we didn't? What would animals tell us, both about themselves and about us, if we approached them with serious intent? Was a deeper, more vital relationship between humans and animals - and all of life - something we had forgotten about, something we had left behind in the course of our evolution?

Through the Internet, I found Buddy, a horse who works with communicator Carole Devereux. Buddy was the first animal who agreed to an interview with me. It was a curious set-up: I posed my questions to Carole, who connected with Buddy, asked my questions, wrote down his responses, and read them back to me. A part of me couldn't help but wonder if the whole thing wasn't one quick step away from farce, though another part of me was exhilarated, feeling as if I had just entered a new world. Carole put me in touch with other animals and communicators, who gave me more names, and so the connections began.

Around the same time as the animal interviews, Jackie gave me the assignment to talk with Ilizabeth Fortune, a woman who swims and works with dolphins in Florida. Though the interview was to help publicize a workshop Ilizabeth was doing in Anchorage, her trip fell through - though not before I had a chance to talk at length with Ilizabeth and make my first connection to what I would fondly think of as the dolphin-people.

It soon became apparent that what I was involved in - this "project" as I hesitantly termed it then - was something much greater than myself. As I thought about it, meditated on it, dreamed about it, I realized with growing surprise that not only was this something I had chosen; it was also something that had also chosen me.

Ask for something with the deepest part of your being and the Universe responds. This is a thrilling realization, though you often discover that the Universe may respond in a way that is not exactly in line with what you had in mind.

My central focus throughout the initial interview process was to ask communicators if they would be willing to be the medium through which animals might answer the basic question, "What would you most like humans to know?" It was all going quite well until one night as I was saying goodbye over the phone to a communicator, I was stopped short. "If you're going to write a book about talking with animals, maybe you should try it too," the communicator suggested. A deep sense of unease shuddered through me. Surely I would not be asked to do that! It was one thing to interview animals through professional communicators, but certainly such a thing would never happen to me!

Like a seed that had to be planted, a few weeks later an event occurred that led to my direct communication with a flock of birds. It was an extraordinary event for me, one that changed the focus of the book dramatically and brought me to a deeper place of understanding how animal communication really works.

From my initial opening with the birds, there was no stopping the flow of communication I received, though I sometimes considered trying. Most often it happened spontaneously, when I was least expecting it.

Deeper and deeper the process unfolds. Are we ever really in control? Or are we simply one of the many open vessels through which Life expresses herself? I no longer believe that I was the one who had the idea to write this book. On other levels, I know there was mystery afoot, that the idea was presented to me through a series of challenges. Was I willing to let go of an old worldview in order to learn something new? Was I ready to begin living with a sense of wonder?

In truth, it seems to me now that I did not write something so much as open myself to a variety of experiences that will soon be shared in print. The role that Alaska Wellness has played in helping this to come to fruition is no small thing. We often hear from readers whose lives have been changed by news of a healing modality they read about in this magazine. Like these readers -- like you, perhaps -- my life has been changed. It is with gratitude and fondness that I honor Alaska Wellness as a source not only of alternative ways of thinking and working with our mind, body and spirit, but of unusual and unexpected inspiration.