Dead Things
My husband, Marc, and I made it out to Lake Mary this weekend. First, a disclaimer: I grew up in upstate New York, about two miles from Lake Ontario. So, I am a “lake snob” for sure. But since visiting the upper falls of Lake Mary last spring during the snow melt, I’ve come to appreciate the charms of a small-ish lake surrounded by forest, hills and quaint picnic areas. This day brought us out to the Osprey Lookout where a recent eagle watch was canceled due to our recent snowstorms. We couldn’t help but think we might see eagles and osprey...
read moreThe Tree
The first candle I burned this morning was called “cedar balsam.” The next, “tree farm.” But I need only step outside into the frigid morning air to smell real wood. As I walk, I see Oregon juncos picking amongst the sawdust looking for birdseed. I survey the wood shavings and a freshly made stump close to the fence line; the only proof that a mighty ponderosa was there as recently as yesterday. Tree farm, indeed. No candle required. It started two months ago, when I called an arborist to come consult on what to do with the wayward...
read moreMy friend, Vinny
I’ve always wanted a dog. In some of my daydreams, the dog is a cheerful, white and gold fur, blue-bandana-wearing Corgi named Joe. In others, she’s a sweet, gray and white Pitbull named Mira. When I was little, my parents gifted me a dog for Christmas, so I named her Noel. Our love affair was not long-lasting after she dug a hole so deep in the backyard my father fell in and sprained his ankle. Thankfully, some neighbors a few streets over were willing to adopt her, but I never saw her again. Many of my friends in Flagstaff have dogs and...
read moreGoing Under and Forward
Medical procedures that involve anesthesia often put me in a mental tailspin, and my recent visit to a local surgical center offered no exceptions. Even though it was a routine procedure that many of us of a certain age endure, I carefully placed our outdated medical directives and wills on my home desk before going to the surgery center. They are from when we lived in Maryland, and I’ve been thinking for the past 15 years that we should update them to Arizona. Which is, wow, how long we’ve lived in Flagstaff now. That was also around the...
read morePriorities
My husband, Marc, shares enthusiastically that he is meeting with a composer his local orchestra has solicited for a piece of music. As he tells me about her and how they will explore his percussion instruments, he drops the bomb. “She’ll be here at 2 p.m. tomorrow,” he smiles, as he walks into another room to pull out and display his instruments for her to play. It’s 7 p.m. on a Thursday night, and I’m just home after a long day of meetings and teaching. I scan the middle of the living room as she might see it. My ceramic Christmas trees and...
read moreThe work of friendship
I do what I always do when I haven’t heard from Hank – whose name has been changed for the sake of privacy – for over six months: I scan the obituaries. He’s still alive, as far as I can tell, which means something else. It means his emails must be in my spam folder. Alas, there’s no proof of life there, either. Which means only one other thing is possible: the correspondence, thus friendship, has ended. Perhaps for good this time. I know I could reach out, send an ol’ “how’s it going?” email and marvel at how much time has passed as an...
read moreChristmas cards
My first memory of sending Christmas cards was helping my grandmother at her kitchen table. Everything she needed was staged on a white plastic tablecloth covered with poinsettia designs. She had a damp sponge sitting in a saucer on the table for my job: to seal the envelopes and affix the stamps. It seemed that she wrote a letter in each card, but I don’t know how many cards she ever sent. Even as a young girl, it seemed an arduous task. When I asked her about it, she told me it was a nice way to stay in touch. At the time, I thought it was...
read moreAlienated Majesty
My husband sent me a link to a book review this week by an author whose work is in my wheelhouse. The author’s new book extolls the mental and physical health benefits of walking in his neighborhood the past several years. Of small observations and large realizations. I think of my almost-finished manuscript of walking my own neighborhood. A world-weary sigh escapes my lips as I drop my phone into my satchel and head to class. As I face the brisk wind on my walk, hair whipping around my face, I can’t help but mourn another idea and...
read moreFlight Risk; Building a life you don’t need a vacation from
The river shush-shushes through Jane’s backyard as I catch the last of the afternoon breezes under the shade of several trees. It’s tempting to close my eyes, to call this a meditation, but another thought has taken over as I listen to birds calling to one another from the trees on the bank of the river—do birds have accents like humans? Is that why I can’t recognize any of their songs? Rather than closing my eyes, I watch the wind lift and push the leaves above my head and listen more closely. By the time this is published, I’ll be returning...
read moreReal broken wings
“Thank you for creating such a positive and beautiful atmosphere. You looked at us as if we haven’t been broken just yet.” Note from a student I have been fortunate to find another teaching position at our local university and, although I don’t often write about my students, they have been much on my mind since I sent them off to their final exams and summer vacations on April 29. Looking at the calendar today made me realize that I’ve traveled to Kachina Wetlands four times since their departure, seeking solace in nature. As many...
read moreI’m fine. Really.
I continue to be a work in progress. One of my most recent activities, aside from birdwatching, reading, and binging the second season of Bridgerton, has been trying to stop myself from typing I hope this note finds you well, on my email correspondence. The sentiment is true enough, although the words themselves are automatic and now meaningless after so many years of typing them, especially during the ongoing pandemic. Face-to-face greetings also have become a challenge. I’ve yet to settle on a response to the typical greeting and “how are...
read moreEphemera at the end of the world
Scientists discover that sea slugs can self-decapitate. A childhood memory of hiding under my desk, hands over head, ready for the bomb. A paper cup filled with coffee and milk and swirls of chocolate. A pair of rainbow-colored go-go boots that I will never own. Scientists discover that, after decapitation, sea slugs can regenerate their hearts in about one week. A childhood memory of a button. Of buttons. A list of possibilities of how the world will end. A gnome, smiling with finger salutes. Sea slugs have a “breakage plane” in their necks,...
read moreWhat is sacred?
Every group of friends has an organizer, and in our group it’s Ron. I’ve learned over the years that it’s more fun to say “yes” to Ron’s gatherings rather than following my usual inclination to stay home buried under cats and a pile of blankets and books and my usual state of introversion and torpor. So, on a recent early Sunday morning I found myself sitting in a coffee shop with our gang, enjoying delicious coffee and each other’s company. None of us are religious, which is partly why I was caught off guard this particular morning. Our...
read moreThe Infra-Ordinary: What happens when the extraordinary meets up with the infra-ordinary? When tragedy becomes a kind of daily-ness?
“The grief process is very fluid. Most of us do not proceed in an orderly fashion through the stages of shock to acceptance.” This was the first line I read on the handout from the campus counseling office before scanning the rest of the worksheet, wryly observing the neatly numbered stages one through 10. As a writing teacher, I wondered what kind of form this worksheet could have taken that was not orderly and somehow still managed to articulate a process for grief, as if there can be such a thing as a process. Seeing these guidelines in...
read moreThe Matrix
Every few days, I find myself rewatching The Matrix 4: Resurrections movie trailer as though it is the whole film and wonder how I can possibly wait three months until December 22 to be fully immersed in that world again. Certain cultural touchstones stay with each of us through our lives and one of mine will always be The Matrix franchise. It was one of the first films I saw that made me contextualize the cost of living a life unexamined and, later, appreciate the ways in which philosophy can be accessible through popular culture. In...
read moreLife without an umbrella
I moved into my new office in the middle of a monsoon downpour on a Friday afternoon. It feels auspicious when something begins in the middle of a weather adventure. Monsoon rains, moving up and down four flights of stairs, dodging a heavy and steady rainfall running under eaves and awnings as best as I could, trying to keep dry. Then, moving furniture, sweat dripping off my forehead, hoping none of my new colleagues came by to shake my hand or comment on the state of my wet, dripping self on the seemingly new carpet. I imagined what students...
read moreThe essentials
Smoky Sunset Photo by Stacy Murison Even though our county government tells me that I should always be prepared for summer forest fires, I never really am. I have a better bug-out-bag for the oft-imagined zombie apocalypse or potential nuclear fallout (I am a child of the 1980s, after all) than I do for the realistic evacuation orders for fires. As the inevitable hero of my own stories, I like to think that I’m calm and rational when there’s imminent danger. In my mind’s eye, I move about the house with precision, knowing exactly where...
read moreReturns
I think I’m late to the garden this year, although I’m not sure—I seem to have kept notes of everything last year except plantings. What I remember is that by the time I went to buy tomato starters last May, they were mostly gone. The person at one garden store shook her head sadly while telling me I was about two weeks too late. Because there was still frost at night, I thought I would have been too early. I guess time is only a construct when it comes to non-important daily activities, but necessary when it comes to nature. Or at least it...
read moreAnniversaries and Observations
An ex-boyfriend once told me that every day is an anniversary of something. I suppose that’s true, especially as I scan social media “memories” from one year ago. I was especially active that first month of the pandemic: sourdough starter photos, music playlists for students as we all scrambled to finish the school year online, and photos of a bluebird at Kachina Wetlands. In fact, it was also one of my first bluebird sightings and, although a poor image, I posted it as a hopeful sign that there were better days ahead. There were worse days...
read moreThe I is the first circle
On a recent Saturday night, I found myself sitting on the floor reading notes from a graduate class in philosophy taught by Bud Ruf (pronounced “roof”). Even in my 30s, I could not bring myself to call him “Bud,” but always “professor” or “doctor,” to his annoyance. “Call me Bud,” he would say, and I would reply, “OK…Doctor Ruf.” I understand his consternation now that I ask students to call me “Stacy” rather than “Mrs. Murison,” who is my mother-in-law and not me. It’s taken me a long time to realize all of the different ways that I have...
read moreThe Orwellian Charge
This English teacher’s heart beat more quickly this past week, reading quotes from so many people who seem to have read George Orwell’s work. Of course, it also was laden with the hope that people had actually read Orwell’s 1984. As time went on, I realized that it’s easier to invoke an idea of intelligence than it is to actually dwell in the realm of intelligence. And so, here we are, discussing what it means that the world seems to have gone Orwellian. I am not a scholar of Orwell, only a reader. The idea that I’ve always taken from 1984 is...
read moreThe hunting of the pie
Once in a while, an idea takes hold of me and sets me off on a hamster wheel of adventure—always scrambling, but not quite arriving anywhere. My singular mission the past few weeks has been finding a recipe for pumpkin pie. Not any pie, mind you, but the ice cream pumpkin pie my mother made for Thanksgiving sometime back in the late 1970s. It was the first time I ate pumpkin and I thought it was the most marvelous thing ever. Or maybe it was the pint of vanilla ice cream coupled with pumpkin pie spice. My mother only made the pie that one...
read moreLemons without lemonade
Recently, I dreamt that I wore a high-necked lacey blouse, hair done in a Gibson-girl bun, and had discovered a way to preserve lemons while standing in a farmhouse kitchen that was part of a farm and not a kitchen remodeling trend. Lemons were hard to get in dreamland, and in my current reality they seem to go bad within two days. They have become worse than avocados, skin browning and insides mushy—surprising, since they seem so firm in the store. My busy but supposedly resting brain figured out a way to preserve these precious lemons, if...
read moreEscaping a black hole
I always thought I was going to be an astronomer. But failing physics and trigonometry in high school put me on a different path. It’s good I found an astronomer to marry, I thought again as I packed our car with chairs and blankets. It was the second night of the Perseid meteor shower, and Marc knew a perfect place to observe the meteors. Although the lights of downtown Flagstaff continue to encroach on our Dark Sky city, there are still a few places around town where it’s easy to see a bright Milky Way on a clear night. Over the years, I’ve...
read moreFinding Equanimity in a Pandemic
I am up late, fighting with strangers on the internet. The feelings of my seemingly justifiable rage wash over me in an adrenaline-fueled mission to find the most accurate words to prove my point. The message has to be just so, my tone both biting and funny. My aim is true: I must prove to myself that I am smarter than my unknown nemesis. Or at least feel that way. What causes otherwise rational, thinking people to lose their sensible selves, even if temporarily? My anxiety and malaise have morphed into unexpected bouts of anger. Most...
read moreOn life: False normalcy and not-so-quiet desperation
I wake and pad out to my makeshift garden. I had cleared a small area in the yard to grow three lettuces, two cucumbers and five tomato plants. You might call me a COVID cliché with my gluten-free sourdough starter and a half-assed victory garden. But there is no sense of victory as I notice another leaf gone from the small bunch of romaine that had seemed healthy a few days ago. Something was working its way inward. After pushing the leaves back and watching small gnats disperse into the cool morning air, I can only think of the rabbit in...
read morePunning My Way Through Quarantine, One Dad Joke at a Time
Q: What’s brown and sticky? A: A stick! I’m a terrible joke-teller. I never remember the punch lines and I have a poor sense of timing. I’m the friend you patiently wait for as I try out three or four endings before giving up on the joke altogether. But 20 years ago, my friend, Sarah, told me the stick joke and I wish I could give her a dollar for every time I’ve told it. It’s one of two jokes I can remember, the other also being from Sarah about elephants that I probably shouldn’t tell here. I got serious about jokes around the time...
read moreCOVID-days dispatch; Uncertainty is the new norm
Dear Friend, Thanks for your text. I’ve been thinking about you also and hate that we’re not able to see each other right now. While I am happy to hear that you’re able to work from home, I am sorry about the increased number of hours you are working. I cannot imagine an eight-hour conference call. How did you manage? How does your company handle restroom breaks? Speaking of which, a friend of mine recently reported her conference call was interrupted by loud noises and then flushing by one of her co-workers. Apparently, he forgot to hit the...
read moreNature, Interrupted; On coexisting in a modern world
I dressed in layers and packed my knapsack until it was bursting. Too much water and not enough sunscreen, I would later learn on the trail—and that I probably never need to bring a paperback bird guide with me again as long as I have the eBird app on my phone. At the end of January, I decided to go on my first bird watching hike through Picture Canyon. I didn’t know what to expect from the three-hour hike and imagined that, in the throes of winter, the watch party might include just me and the guide and no one else. But birders are a hardy...
read moreNo one plans well; Coming out of hibernation
I’ve been bothered by the squirrels and chipmunks in my yard for the past month. Not because they are there—I did, after all, buy a special seed mix and some dried seed corn for them—but because I always thought they hibernated all winter. Instead, they bound through the snow as though there are mere flakes on the ground rather than hard-packed snow-ice. It seems they are more active than I have been all month. This past week has been like waking from a long winter nap. There’s always a moment when I feel a post-holiday letdown coming...
read moreWelcoming silence; Sound thoughts on loud times
The quiet mornings after the recent snowfall had me marveling at the seemingly absolute silence outside. Friends discovered and shared articles about the physics of snow absorbing sound, and we agreed it all made sense. But I couldn’t get over exactly how quiet it was, the only sounds a neighbor making their way through snowy sidewalks or streets, trying to get their dog a little exercise before the work day began or before it got too dark at night. This contrasts with the cacophony of crunching just two short weeks ago as I picked my way...
read moreWashing windows in November; A helping hand for my backyard family
The sun has just risen and I’m outside in my slippers and pajamas using a kitchen knife to no avail. The window screen, so easy to remove a few weeks ago during warmer weather, is firmly stuck, perhaps frozen, in place. The outdoor thermometer hovers around 30 degrees. I go back indoors, open the window and push the screen out, then run back outside with a squeegee, window cleaner and rag. Now I can wash the windows again. Yes, I do windows, but no, I won’t come to your house and do the same. In fact, I don’t think I’m a particularly tidy...
read moreBetween friends and acquaintances; Oh, the friends we’ll make
When I moved to Flagstaff 11 years ago, I marveled at how wonderful it was to see so many people I knew wherever I went. It felt joyful to be able to stop and say hello and chat for a few minutes in the produce section or while walking to dinner with my husband. My friend, a long-time resident, expressed bemusement. “Just you wait,” she told me. “It’s not always so great.” I didn’t want to believe her and maybe a part of me still doesn’t. I do still enjoy the serendipitous meeting of people I know, but it seems that more and more of these...
read moreArriving at your destination; On becoming a walking poet
I’ve been struggling the past few months with a feeling that I’ve come to describe as post-Brooklyn let down. I miss everything about the neighborhood I lived in earlier this summer: The school children down the block, the local book store around the corner (with a fat cat named Tiny) and the roses that grew in small gardens in front of many of the brownstone buildings. My friend, Aly, listens to me wax on about my daily neighborhood walks and determines that what I miss the most about Brooklyn is the amount of walking I was doing. She...
read moreSummer of lazy days and iced coffee; On being “productive”
Summer ends earlier for teachers than it does on the calendar, which means that I’m now in peak anxiety season. Not about teaching, which I love. I can hardly wait to get back to the classroom and meet the new students. Instead, I am anxiously thinking about the list of projects I had hoped to complete over the summer with “time off.” Looking at my list over the weekend made me realize there’s not one damn thing I can fully cross off. Time off is an elusive concept that I still don’t grasp. After so many jobs during my lifetime working all...
read moreThe grass is always greener; On leaving Flagstaff (temporarily)
I saw the advertisement around February, which is the month when I think I can’t possibly drive the same five miles of Flagstaff anymore: “Studio apartment for rent, Brooklyn.” I wouldn’t say I have many regrets in my life, but there is something like a feeling of absence. I wish I had lived in New York City when I was younger and been an intern at The New Yorker. I imagine I would have been like an intellectually inferior Andy Sachs working for a writerly Miranda Priestly. Whenever I have the chance to go to New York, I book my travel...
read moreBirders and backwoods; On becoming outdoorsy
The meeting starts as all of my meetings outside of familiar buildings start. Out in the wilds of a water tank parking lot somewhere in Kachina Village, I wonder two things: am I in the right spot? and, am I late? A short walk through the pine needle-covered parking area assures me there is no other “there” here and that I just have to be patient. I see a house near the wide open field and some official-looking signs and my mind rests a little. I’m not particularly outdoorsy, which makes being out in the Kachina Wetlands unusual for me. Since...
read moreTragedy plus time; When it’s funny…later
It was summer and, although my mother and I don’t remember exactly how old I was, I was old enough to read and old enough to know better. My mother held the box of effervescent denture tablets in one hand and, in the days before 911, dialed Poison Control on my grandmother’s rotary phone. I stood there stupidly in my grandmother’s kitchen, wondering how soon it would be before I died. I had a stomach ache and had accidentally downed two of my grandfather’s denture tablets instead of Alka-Seltzer. I could only hear my mother’s side of the...
read moreMaking pancakes, or not; The nostalgia of Saturday traditions
Most Saturday mornings start the same: I ask my husband who will make us pancakes for breakfast. Since the cats are not quite teenagers yet (and do not have opposable thumbs, nor are they tall enough to reach the stove), our options are limited. Sadly, I have yet to perfect making pancakes at high altitude. I never remember if it’s more flour, more milk or less baking powder. I stare at the ingredients on the counter and pore over my cookbooks. Inevitably, we each fix our own bowl of cereal as I return the eggs to the refrigerator. Although I...
read moreFrom Kon-Madness to Kon-Magic; Finding joy in real time
I bought Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, while traveling for Christmas a few years ago. We were staying at a rental house that was incredibly clean and sparsely decorated—I was ready to occupy that space permanently. Reading Kondo’s book made me eager to return home and tidy the hell out of everything; it seemed possible I could achieve this goal in the New Year. December almost always fools me like this. I did some of what Kondo suggested. There were old clothes I had held onto—Guess jeans from 1987—and books that...
read morePlanning to plan; Writing the bullet
The holiday gifts are purchased and wrapped. Now is the time I buy one thing for myself to help me in the year ahead. I can spend hours in a single day looking and still not find it. I’m in search of something so perfect, so uniquely me that I will not know exactly what it looks like until I see it. In between holiday concerts year-end work and festivities, I go to the office supply aisle in every store in Flagstaff and run my hands over pages in beautiful…calendars. The only paper calendar I’ve been able to keep beyond the month of February...
read moreLike little hermit crabs; Home by any other name
I had dinner recently with a group of writing colleagues while we were at a conference. One writer shared part of his talk for his panel presentation on the concept of home. My colleagues then shared the journeys they had taken and the many places they had lived through the years. We talked about where we were from, where we live now and if we considered our parents’ homes still our homes as well. I want to tell my own story of home, but I am often stymied by what this word means, and I use it in a seemingly casual way to others. For example,...
read morePumpkin all things; It’s the most wonderful time of the year
The season of The Great Pumpkin is upon us—I hope you have figured out where the most sincere pumpkin patch is in our region. It’s also the season where spirited discussions happen about the pervasiveness of pumpkin pie spice and all things pumpkin-flavored. Every year, I think I will lose a friend or two over how it is too early for pumpkin-flavored things to take over all food-stuffs at grocery stores and cafés. This year, for example, Starbucks celebrated the 15th year of its seasonal Pumpkin Spice Latte by returning it to menus Aug. 28....
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