I’ve always been a searcher, a seeker after the truth, a maker of mistakes, a taker of missteps.

I’m a believer in the power of work of love, of focus and discipline and following your passion. I believe in the power and wisdom of our inner world, our imagination and dreamworld. I believe in the power of friendship with one’s self.

I search for the thing that is searching for me.

I now work and live mostly alone in a cabin deep in the Adirondack woods—more alone than I’ve been for 15 years—and out of that is emerging new work, a new Heron Dance. I’ve been reading and thinking about the poetry of the Tao and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and thinking about what I’ve learned over a lifetime of searching, since first sticking my thumb out on the side of a highway at the age of fifteen, forty years ago, and my experiences as a forest fire fighter with Dogrib Indians in the subarctic at the age of sixteen, and as an investment analyst on Wall Street in my twenties and paddling the north shore of Lake Superior, and boxing and cancer and the hundreds of interviews for Heron Dance, the search for people with answers, the years living without money to pursue a dream. I was way, way out there in those early years of Heron Dance, dealing with a serious cancer diagnosis but trying to ignore it, driving around the country with a tape recorder sleeping in the back of my van.

And now the search for answers inside myself, and in the beauty of the Split Rock Wildway, the wildlife sanctuary where I live. This work comes from the deepest part of my life experience and core. As wild nature shapes this work, shapes the art, it becomes wilder, freer, more abstract.

Start your day with a nature painting and reflection on life lived in close connection with the natural world: Journal Meditations of a Wild Artist. Visit here.

To read about A Pause for Beauty, the free once-a-week edition, visit here.

For information on the annual art book visit here.

Some Notes on the History of Heron Dance :

Heron Dance was created as an expression of gratitude for the gift of life and the beauty and mystery of the natural world. It started out as a newsletter and evolved into a publisher of books, notecards and calendars based on the art and writing of Roderick MacIver. In late 2011, Rod moved to a deep cabin in the Adirondack woods and is focused on the creation of The Heron Dance Art Journal, a full color book of art and words inspired by his life in the woods.

Heron Dance offers thoughts on the gentle arts of a well-lived life from the perspective of someone who lives in the woods, on the fringes of our culture, looking in. It is a search for beauty and truth and peace — and adventure and growth. Learning. There’s a contradiction there. Some grinding takes place; sparks are thrown. In the process, creative energy is generated.

The journal notes in a A Pause for Beauty, the daily e-journal, Journal Meditations of a Wild Artist, and The Heron Dance Art Journal have evolved out of:

• the hundreds of interviews Rod has done of people on a journey, of people living close to wild nature, free spirits, adventurers and artists, of people living life as a gift
• related book excerpts, in particular excerpts from the journals of artists, writers and people serving some concept of a greater good.

Journal Meditations of a Wild Artist is published daily and is available through a membership subscription; A Pause for Beauty is published once a week via email and is free. Each edition of both include a nature painting and reflection on the arts of a well-lived life. The Heron Dance Art Journal is an effort at creating the most beautiful and meaningful work possible. Purchase includes a 12 month subscription to the daily e-journal. For more on the thinking behind this work visit here.

The predecessor to The Heron Dance Art Journal was the quarterly print publication, The Art Journaling Daybook. For more on the specifics of the daybook and its components, click here.

Nature Art

Heron Dance offers for sale original nature and wildlife paintings as well as high quality giclée art prints by Roderick MacIver.

Visit here for available original paintings.

Visit here for giclée nature art prints.

Visit here for the 2012 Heron Dance Wild Nature Calendar.

Heron Dance Press

Heron Dance Press publishes books and e-books that express gratitude for the gift of life and the beauty and mystery of the natural world. Heron Dance Press also offers books and e-books, including past Heron Dance publications. Visit here or see the “Art, Books, Etc” drop-down on the menu.