Blog

Slim little grosbeaks and warblers and a strikingly blue western scrub jay, fiercely territorial hummingbirds, and a young doe and her...

If you tuck yourself into the tufts of grass where beach meets cliff, the relentless breeze off the Pacific eases and the heat of the sun...

If you go to the ocean and it’s not frigid, you have to go in. So I did. The mornings here have been misty and overcast with a decent...

I walked down to the ocean this afternoon. The tide was midway out, a huge expanse of beach and shallow breakers rolling in. The breeze...

Today was spent traveling, which is to say, also waiting to travel. I drove to Duluth and caught the shuttle to Minneapolis (and had a...

A red backpack that’s gone out west once before, though not so far. Anxiety that is a ghost haunting the excitement of this trip, and...

There’s a scene in “The Astronaut’s Wife” when an electric current (hello toaster + flooded kitchen) electrocutes the character who has...

“…there are two reasons that people won’t tell you that they’re afraid. First, because our culture has taught us that fear is something...

“… anecdotes aren’t science. Like coincidences, they’re by-products of our story-seeking minds, connections we make as we search for...

Me: [generally anxious about making the same mistakes again, sad about feeling sad, not loving this exact moment of the process] Jon: Let...

I walked the property line for the first time. Nate, whose house this technically still is for a few more days, is moving west soon, so I...

I let today be itself. It wasn’t shiny. There was no diving into divine bodies of water. No sacred fires in the dark. There was grief and...

“Confidence is knowing your actual limitations– as opposed to your fears and worries. I think the closer we get to our real limits, the...

I had it in my calendar, but she didn’t have it in hers, so I found myself in town with a morning for whatever I wanted to mosey after....

A poem written on the deck with the sun at my back, with the birds calling in the trees, with the cat keeping quiet company, with the...

The first fire. A new circle of stones. Sticks and twigs and birch bark and scrap wood collected and easily blazing. A blade against a...

Nevermind that the porch light was on, the moon was there, pearly behind the sliver-rimmed clouds. And the owls called in the darkness,...

I’m all wound up, but it’s a nice feeling, and one that hasn’t swept through in a while: I bought tickets to go to Oregon! This trip was...

When you get to pet three baby kittens who aren’t yet even thirty-six hours old, that’s the Day’s Delight. (It doesn’t matter what else...

“There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. … And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and...