a river's reflection of heaven and earth Many years ago, there was a small ranch-style brick house on a large lot the next block over. Once a golden honey color, it had turned to a brown mustardy yellow. The house has since been demolished, and a larger, modern two-story has taken most of the space in the large lot. [...]
An awakening started with a potted plant. It sat tall bedside in front of a window to capture what little light it could from an otherwise dim room. I wrote a while back on this blog about a much needed green thing during the winter. It popped from the mother plant, a small thing that pushed its head through the [...]
When I considered preparing for a book launch talk to be customary, as I had been talking about my debut novel, The Wisdom of the Willow, for some time now, it wasn’t. I had been preparing answers for questions when I realized I had been playing it safe with my writing. Over the past twenty years, I have [...]
One fall morning while treading the parched earth through the woods, I veered from a narrow path to a short bridge hunched over a sleepy river. A pair of mallards commanded a “V” through water like plate glass. Oaks, in states of bright fall undress, hugged the banks. Peace and a soft landscape filled my vision. The sun’s rays [...]
A rusty paper clip held them together. Typed letters, faded from the dark-inked punch of typewriter keys filled lines on discolored pages rimmed in muted brown. Stories told here were pulled from a brown envelope written over forty years ago by my then college self. The pages took me back in time to settings and places where words were heavy [...]
Tucked in a corner of a shallow closet for two years now is a metal file box. I’ve always known it to be there, despite it being hidden by a stuffed bag of unwanted items for the Goodwill. Opening the closet door was like cuing a flashback when several rosaries, a wooden cross, a small statue of the Virgin Mary, [...]
On a crumbling, narrow road, twenty-three houses sit on either side of a gravel-ditched apron. My home is one of the few remaining cottages built on this private road in the 1940s for the wealthy folks to escape the city to the north suburbs. The road, its houses that line it, and its occupants inside those homes are not like [...]
While I fiddle with the outdoor holiday lights, my fingers stiff from a windy cold snap, I think, "Wasn't it just Halloween?" While busy hands unsort, I'm drawn to the dots of light. While I await them to pierce through the darkness, I can't help but to acknowledge what the lights suggest. Like a magnet, it attracts us to feelings [...]
When I’m headed out the door at daybreak, weather permitting, I tell my husband I’m leaving to be athletic. He understands this to mean I’m going out for exercise—a run, a brisk walk—along a path in the woods near my home. But sometimes my rendezvous with the natural world has nothing to do with the freedom to move my body [...]
As I write this in late September, October looms in the rearview mirror. It becomes more visible as it nears. Both months are my best days of living where I am seated on a runway of the natural world, her change in dress from suits of greens into colorful party clothes of crimson , and burnt orange, and green-apple, yellow, [...]