…out of growing actual physical necessity, sometimes, or maybe it’s just the power of suggestion, something about waking to the nearby sound of a freight train with the windows open for the first time on a warmer-than-it’s-been spring night, but in any event the reality of the premise doesn’t matter because once the thought has arisen that relieving...
Read MoreFull Circle
Glowing from within: ponderosas in the snow. Photo by the author. To my eyes, adapted as they’ve been to the artificial light of the kitchen, the night appears complete as I step out the back door. Complete, but not dark: the waning moon is still up, its cold light reflecting brilliantly off the snowbanks, setting the surface crystals to sparkling. But the...
Read MorePunctuating the Year That Was; The sense of an ending, and a beginning
My favorite among my parents’ extensive LP collection was a goofy Tom Lehrer record titled That Was the Year That Was. The year referred to was 1965, at which time I was barely toddling and certainly too young to appreciate satire. But the witty songs by one of America’s greatest satirists stood the test of time into the 1970s—and clear through today, for...
Read MoreInflection Points; End of a Long Drought
Sometimes it seems like one sentence is enough for an essay. No, I don’t mean that one. Or this one. I mean one like this: Yesterday morning, Saturday morning, I went outside on the patio and it had sprinkled a bit in the night and the air felt so much more alive than it has in many weeks, and within the next hours the election results were announced—the...
Read MoreGhost Hikers; Fading marks on the land, and in the mind
There are stories all across the land, and when we choose to tell one we set a course and decide which path to follow and which ones to walk past. We call that set of choices a narrative. Sometimes the possible paths are practically infinite, like the myriad ways to pick a route through the streets of downtown Chicago. Sometimes the land chooses the route...
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