The sun shone brilliantly Saturday. In celebration, I spent the morning taking photographs at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. I wondered what sights I’d see as I headed to the refuge. The week prior great flocks of ducks had shared the open water, rising in concert at the screech of an approaching raptor, settling again once all […]
Read more "The Earth Tilts"I tell you this, ‘though I admit some shame in doing so. My heart hurts as I wander the woodlots surrounding the house. The aspen and slippery elm leaves I watched unfurl in the earliest spring have yellowed. They fall now with the slightest provocation. They fall at the merest suggestion of a breeze. They fall […]
Read more "To Dream"The first wheat was taken from the fields last Sunday, and now semi-trucks loaded with grain travel the county roads to the elevator in Hazel. Sandhill cranes grazed the shorn field south of our place Monday. I parked my bike on the shoulder of the road to photograph them in the early morning light. […]
Read more "You Might Ask"It is the height of summer. Days begin with an edge of cool but quickly heat up. “Too hot,” I say as I cross the yard to the garden. Too hot by 9:30 am to weed. Too hot to hoe. Too hot to pick beans. It is green bean season. We’ll harvest green beans every-other-day […]
Read more "Summer Update — Too Hot"Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I guessed at; What I guessed when I loafed on the grass, What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed…and again as I walked the beach under the paling stars of the morning. My ties and ballasts leave me…I […]
Read more "What Shall Be Grand in Thee"We have come to the end of May, and as is often the case in late spring-early summer, the weather has turned cold. Today, as yesterday, rain-tinged winds gust out of the northeast. I sit chilled in the 9:00am dark of my study dressed in sweatshirt, jeans and heavy socks. Outside my study window, unaffected by the […]
Read more "None Other"As a child, when books were few and far between, when I had not yet learned about libraries, I craved the written word. In our home we had a small bookcase containing a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and a number of my mother’s art books. I do not know why reading was not emphasized in […]
Read more "Of Libraries and Wagon Wheels"