In midlife, Kate Maloy takes a daring leap of faith and leaves behind her “right-angled urban existence” in Pittsburgh for the woods of Vermont. Her friends are shocked by her decision to uproot herself and her 13-year-old son Adam and move away with Alan, a new soulmate she met on the Internet. This pensive spiritual memoir charts Maloy’s transformation over a one-year period. It certainly more than fulfills her goal of honoring “the abundant gifts that have brought me a new partner, a new home and a new view of both my own life and the human saga of which it is a small but inseparable part.”
One of the boons of Vermont is that Maloy comes to a deeper and more tactile respect for the natural world and the turn of the seasons. She is especially taken by “witness trees” that stand proudly in the woods, having weathered the barrage of time and the assaults of severe six-month long winters. Alan, a carpenter, helps her increase her sensitivity to the beauty of wood.
But the most abiding solace in her reconfigured life comes from Quakerism. She regularly attends meetings and is refreshed by sitting in silence with others and discerning the voice of God within. Through A Stone Bridge North Maloy ponders the depths of her faith and meditates on the words, thoughts, and deeds of John Woolman and George Fox. She observes: “Meaning infuses the commonplace stuff of my life, but it originates in some realm beyond. To find it, I need to transcend what I can actually know; I need to take the leap of faith. In leaping, I have found the stone bridge over the chasm of my fears, and failures.” Faith, then, is the catalyst for transformation and for midlife lessons. By paying close attention to the rhythms of her days, Kate Maloy tutors us in the process of crafting a life with patience and diligence.
