W.Va. Author Explores The Natural World In New Book

This conversation originally aired in the Aug. 17, 2025 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Writer Sheila McEntee has been observing nature for most of her life, especially birds. She’s published essays about her experiences in Stonecrop Review, Woods Reader, and Wonderful West Virginia magazine. Several of these essays have been collected for McEntee’s first book. It’s titled, Soul Friend: And Other Love Notes to the Natural World.

Inside Appalachia Producer Bill Lynch spoke with McEntee about writing and developing an interest in nature.

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

Lynch: Sheila, thanks for coming on Inside Appalachia. 

McEntee: Happy to be here. 

Lynch: Where did your interest in nature begin?

McEntee: Well, I remember most vividly when I was about 12 years old. My family had moved from Maryland to Massachusetts, and the winters there were cold and gray and dark and long, and my dad started feeding birds. 

He put up bird feeders in the backyard. He was learning himself and he taught me. He learned the different backyard ones that are our neighbors. He learned how to feed them, and taught me about that – the different seeds … like goldfinches, like thistle seed. Everybody else pretty much likes the black oil sunflower seeds. I learned about those and the woodpeckers and there was a lovely comfort and interest from that. 

I kind of hung on to that, but that’s kind of as far as I got with birds, until I got to West Virginia. Then, I met some naturalists who I went on hikes with. They taught me about warblers and raptors and song birds and neotropical migratory song birds and all these birds that I had no idea about. 

It was just such a wonder. 

Then, there were birders who could identify birds without even seeing them. They knew their voices, and that just amazed me. And so I started with the backyard ones. And so I’ve grown to know a lot of voices myself and a handful of warblers, but there are some amazing birders who just know them all. 

It was that, that really brought me into a love of birds. From there, I went to flowers and trees …

Lynch: Something that’s kind of come up … it’s become a meme online, right? Middle-aged people getting into birds and sourdough. So, why do you think people, particularly people of a certain age, middle age, like myself, or beyond, take an interest in birds?

McEntee: I don’t know. When you’re in your 20s and your 30s, you’re trying to figure out life. You’re trying to figure out what you want to do, who you want to be. You’re busy or distracted, maybe you’re having kids or not. Then, later on, life slows down a little bit and you’re able to maybe look out the window a little bit more. Or maybe, you know, you just need some comfort and inspiration. 

And … there it is. I think that might be part of it – just that life slows a little bit and you’re able to pay more attention. 

Lynch: Tell me a little about your writing process.

McEntee: I am generally not a daily writer, but I do try to get there pretty frequently, and I’m doing that more now. I’m writing a blog, and I’ve given myself some self-imposed deadlines. So, I am writing more regularly, but usually whenever it is, I like to sit down and have an idea. So, I’m not kind of staring at a blank screen. 

But yes, I’ll come to the keyboard with an idea, and then I’ll just let it go from there. 

Actually, during the pandemic, I wrote quite a bit, and there are three essays in the book that were written during that time, when I had more time, saw fewer people and was looking out the window more.

I’m kind of grateful that I was able to commit some of that, those experiences, to paper. 

Lynch: That’s a feature of your book; the snapshot into a very specific time, the beginning of the pandemic and the lockdowns, obviously. So, looking back at that and that time, what sort of lessons should we learn from that?

McEntee: Well, interestingly, Bill, you had brought up before that, as people maybe approach middle age, they have more time kind of to look out the window. 

Well, during the pandemic, we had more time. So, I think there was a big spike in bird watching and interest in birds during that time. And so the lessons were we had to slow down. We had no choice, and so I think a lot of us got back in touch with nature then. 

Maybe the lesson is to hold on to that. 

I remember very vividly that here I was cooped up in the house, couldn’t see my friends, and yet I looked out the window, and nature went on. I say that in one of the essays that wild things remained wild, and the tropical migratory birds, they didn’t change their travel plans. They came along and did their thing. We were the ones that were really impacted. 

But I think to hold on to that as life keeps getting faster and faster now and changes, to hold on to the peace or the comfort or whatever anyone derived from that, it would be a good thing. I find that in the book, that the idea of comfort comes up a lot, because it’s there for me in different transitions and periods in my life. When I’ve needed it, I’ve gone to the woods to walk, or looked out the window, and there’s just comfort there. That’s what I hope that people would learn and take from the book, too.

Lynch: So, what are you writing about now? 

McEntee: Two days ago, I was writing. I was riveted. Actually came home from being away for a night and [wrote about] the cardinal nest that was in my front yard. I would just be seeing little heads peeping up, and the female Cardinal feeding them, but instead, they were fledging. 

And so I watched them hopping around in, first in the hydrangea, and then they moved to the shrubs, and the parents were just so attentive. And not only did they have to attend to the babies, but they had to run off blue jays and anybody that got close to them. It looked like the most exhausting thing I have ever witnessed, practically. So anyway, I was writing about that.

I don’t have to look too far for ideas, it seems.

Lynch: I saw you brought a copy of your book. Would you like to read something?

McEntee: I would love to read something. 

This one, I kind of like because it feels like Appalachia to me. Of course, it is. We were deep in the pandemic. We couldn’t see each other, but two friends and I got together, and we went to the woods.

This is from the essay May 2020, and the segment begins with a line of poetry from the poem “Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. And the line is, “What is all this juice and all this joy?” 

And now we are in the woods, three old friends and our dogs. 

Martha chose this trail because she knows larkspur blooms here walking single file and rarely six feet apart, we spy the rosy red star like blooms of fire pink nestled near the ground amid the leaf litter. 

Midge uses her walking stick to point out sorrel. Its tiny pink, purple flowers rising above clover like leaves brushed with blood red trim. May apples cover the forest floor, some in showy, snow white bloom. Others display the tiny, green, oval-shaped apple for which the plant is named. 

Hiding in the shade, amid a trio of broad green leaves is a stunning Jack-in-the-pulpit with deep, maroon stripes. I say that “Jack looks jaunty,” as he peeks out from beneath the flap, dipped rakishly over his head. Midge and Martha laugh, in a way the forest makes us giddy, like children hearing the voice of an Eastern Towhee.

Martha and I lift our heels up and shuffle back and forth, mimicking the way the bird rustles up leaf matter while foraging on the ground. We laugh some more. 

As we walk the woods ring with Wood Thrush flute song, the calls of an Eastern Wood Pewee and a Red-eyed Vireo can barely be heard amid the loud pronouncements of Carolina Wrens and Cardinals. 

Then, as the trail dips down, we find larkspur in abundant bloom. Each flower has a long spur at the back that reminds me of a witch’s hat or perhaps a unicorn horn. Indeed, the blossoms are every bit as magical.

Lynch: I love that. I was actually reading that this morning. Sheila, thank you very much. 

McEntee: Thank you, Bill.

——

Sheila McEntee is the author of Soul Friend: And Other Love Notes to the Natural World. It’s available now from Blackwater Press.