Do you ever just have a moment where you fall to your knees thanking God and everyone else responsible for the creation of poems? In the short weeks of early October before my apprenticeship at the UCSC Farm and Garden ended, I was wandering the streets of downtown Santa Cruz slightly bereft, and came across a man sitting behind a vintage typewriter. This...
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It is a leisurely spring evening on the Kane Ranch front porch and the doves are moaning away in a chorus of mournful harmonies. But there is nothing sorrowful about the golden hour in Marble Canyon. The horizon is a wide, panoramic expanse stretching for miles. Here you can look and look and fill your head with the possibility of anything. A desert spiny...
Read MoreI lived with the Wadsworth family for two summers while I was in college. I was their nanny: the babysitter, the live-in help, and a full-time diversion for three young children. I lived a double life as a hippie on the frontier of the country club. Their tennis whites only enhanced my tomboy-beatnik style. I wore torn, ill-fitting jeans, red converse...
Read MoreOn windy June days with the monsoons a distant dream, I long for moisture. I find my way to the dry riverbed of the Rio de Flag. The rustling of coyote willow leaves is the closest water-like sound for miles. Twists and turns in the Rio reveal surprises—a morning cloak butterfly, a red fox behind a shock of bulrushes and an overturned shopping cart. This...
Read More“Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.” –Marcus Aurelius Last week I sat by the San Juan River for two days with my colleagues at the Grand Canyon Trust. We gathered to consider the future of...
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