The wife of a friend of mine died suddenly when she was 40. The mother of an eight-year-old, our daughters were the same age and shared an interest in horses. She was an English teacher, and we both loved books and reading. We’d escape parties to talk about what [...]
A poem. V'ahavta by Aurora Levins Morales. Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up, when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts, embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on [...]
(When I was in jail once, I could only sustain myself with my imagination. Pandemic social distancing feels similar, yet as necessary as fighting for the earth. We do it for each other because we care for each other. So this is for all my friends that are feeling [...]
I am hiking. The long trail up the mountain stretches out ahead. It’s a bright spring day on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The trees are desperately sprouting leaves celebrating the green ouroboros. While the air is cold, the earth is warm. A raven squawks from across the [...]
For me, the last raspberry is the sweetest. Perhaps bitter sweet. All summer I’ve watered them and kept invasive Japanese Beetles and birds off with netting, and tried to protect them, knowing this time was coming. I like to record the date of the last raspberry. Over 25 years, [...]
Walking through the forest, I am at peace. A soft carpet of red pine needles mutes my footfall, while my eyes follow the trail ahead. It turns and twists organically following the Cascade River valley a hundred feet below. I grew up as a feral child. Like Tarzan, I [...]
The feathers of a sparrow drift down like snow out of a sky made bluer by yellow leaves and white clouds. A victim of a Cooper’s hawk. Life seeking and reducing everything to amino acids. The Junko is oblivious. The energy of the sparrow will power the hawk for [...]
The world is green, cool and humid. The land falls away over a valley, and beyond that, another and another. I ask the driver of the Land Rover to let us off a couple of miles from our camp at 10,000 feet. We are on the slopes of Mount [...]
The lake is a mirror to the universe. I can not tell where the sky begins and the water ends. There is no boundary. The sun dips below a reef of clouds and the world turns orange. The earth turns and Venus rises as it’s twin reflection sinks. We [...]
It’s been a while. Maybe two million years. For me personally, about sixty years. What, you ask? Since I’ve sat in a tree. Which is where I am right now. As a species we used to sit in trees. Mostly for safety and to escape nighttime predators; the lions [...]
