She was a self-taught botanical artist of some renown, her work having been published in several nature magazines as well as a few textbooks.
Her original goal in life, and by that I mean her childhood ambition, was to become a mountain climber - she set her sights on conquering Everest someday, sometime before her thirteenth birthday, and to achieve that aim she started climbing anything and everything in her hometown that presented even the slightest challenge.
Which was not much, she would relate to others much later in life, as she was raised in a small town in central Illinois, an area of the country that was fairly flat.
It wasn't until after the accident, when she spent nearly a full year either in a bed or a wheelchair, that she took up the artistic endeavor, mainly to pass the time. She wasn't much for reading, and television just made her sad as everyone on all the shows could walk and run through life without a care in the world.
One of her relatives had brought her a sketchpad and a box of colored pencils soon after she had been released from the hospital, and since her bedroom at home was filled with bouquets of various flowers sent by friends and family, she started sketching them to pass the time.
Before she had relearned to walk she had gained a reputation as a talented artist.
Mountain climbing being taken off her plate, she decided that the decidedly less dangerous avocation of drawing and painting might be worth turning into a vocation.
Chalk one up for lighting a candle as opposed to cursing the darkness.
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