Seasons on the Ridge

Seasons on the Ridge is a luminous tribute to the Appalachian landscape and the life shaped within it. In this tender, time‑skipping collection, Evelyn McAmis Bales gathers fifty years of love, memory, and devotion to the place she calls home. Each poem becomes a window into the Ridge-its native trees, its folklore, its creatures, its seasons-and the spiritual quiet that rises from the land at dawn, in snowfall, under the winter heavens.

With a voice both reverent and intimate, Bales traces the contours of a life lived deeply in one place. She honors the Appalachian traditions that shaped her childhood, mourns the trees and landscapes lost to time, and celebrates the enduring bond she shared with her beloved Jack. From the playful warmth of Snow Day with Jack to the aching remembrance of Elegy for Beech, these poems reveal a woman rooted in nature, gratitude, and the sacredness of ordinary days.

Early readers describe the collection as "an autobiography of poetry-tender, tranquil, and full of love," a work that feels like stepping into a lifetime of seasons, each one carrying its own beauty and its own letting‑go. Seasons on the Ridge invites readers to slow down, breathe deeply, and walk with the poet through the landscapes that shaped her heart. It is a celebration of place, of home, and of the quiet holiness found in the passage of time.