The waves here change each day. Sometimes the water is tinged brown with seaweed. Sometimes the water is calm and clear to the sandbars. I used to swim in the Gulf without an ounce of fear. I tried floating the other day, and it took … Continue reading Bluesy Dispatch from the Redneck Riviera
I am never going to get it Right. What I know: I hunger to connect. With the land, with people. Is there a different way to visit another universe? I hunger for wildness. And so I pause to walk the length of my gravel driveway … Continue reading Prayer Life on the Mountain, August 2021
As we pulled out of the driveway on Friday, a doe lay on the side of the road next to our mailbox. Her body stretched out on her right side, as if she chose to rest on this particular bed of pine needles. Only, her … Continue reading Directions to My Home
For Lauren How are Adam and Eve, Lauren asks. They’re great, hanging above my espresso machine. We drink bubbles from vintage hollow stems – Amaro accented by curls of lemon peel, air redolent with laughter We finger small plates of crudo and charred octopus. This … Continue reading Rewilding in Durham, Before the Pandemic
I seek relief in Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge on the day Trump tells four women of color to go back to where they came from. I walk the gravelly path, canopies of live oaks and loblollies shading the way – cicadas in full song … Continue reading Monkeywrenching in Lower Alabama and Other Confessions
Teaching Risk Dedicated to Roger Dunsmore and the 2018 Wilderness & Civ Cohort I asked my students to sing And instead, they taught me new songs. Learning is teaching And teaching is holding the hand of the unknown – We sometimes worry together, notably … Continue reading 3 Montana Goodbye Poems
And then the snow. On the cusp of Advent. I mop and vacuum, just in case the paramedics may need to carry one of us away. It is the season of preparation. Since watching the Great British Baking Show, we’ve taken to eating shortbread in … Continue reading Black Friday
There are days when I feel like I am in a hell of my own making – à la C.S. Lewis. I have every reason to be gloriously happy – dream job, dream husband, living in Montana, plentiful adventures, abundant community – and yet I feel … Continue reading Welcome to the Jungle
Arkansas carves a daily ache Greeted by a fat skink scuffling below a sweetgum A tick burrows into my foot and Constellations bloom across my skin All this unarranged communal intimacy All my friends feel like lovers Even Trombicula autumnalis Maybe it … Continue reading Daily Ache
Don’t Touch that. Not too far in. Mind the shallow body. Too much skin. A good woman doesn’t wear that – do that. We’re concerned. Calvinists are to blame for fear of wildness – No, calving glaciers – The speed at which ice falls is … Continue reading Mating Rituals of Alligators
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