Marilyn Fais is a retired elementary school teacher who wove her delight in both words and the natural world into the lives of her students and through her own life, as well.  Even while mothering three daughters, building a family cabin on reclaimed, lumbered land in Pennsylvania, and taking summer camping trips (including one in a canoe built by her husband of 60 years) down the Missouri River, Marilyn always wrote poetry. Her work has been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines, but her family most treasures the yearly birthday and valentine poems she continues, now in her 90s, to write.