The wind blew Thursday, and the snow fell. The world was a swirl of white. Snow devils danced across plowed fields, roadside ditches filled with drifts, cars crept down county highways. Winter, if only for forty-eight hours, had re-asserted itself at October’s end. But today is Saturday, partly sunny, and calm of wind […]
Read more "The Art of Going"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"Declaration – I tell you this with some urgency. Life is short, and we must make large of it. We must wake each day conscious to its possibilities. We must wake expectant. We must wake ready. We must participate. This is my declaration. Walt Whitman began his poem Leaves of Grass — I celebrate myself, […]
Read more "We Must Make Large of It"The chipmunk sat upon its branch, posing perhaps, or so it seemed. He or she gave me all the time in the world to kneel in the dry grass and focus my camera. She stayed in place as if asking me to see only her and not the tumult of competing thoughts thrashing about in […]
Read more "Transformation"