Out of Season
There’s something about finding a single wild strawberry in autumn, ripe for eating. It’s a late bloomer, a tortoise, a valiant effort, a Rocky, an …
Stone Tree
The tree is as huge as a Greek column in the Doric style. Buried for three hundred million years, it emerges from the cliff …
Revealed
The path is so overgrown that I have to cut my way through with long-handled pruning shears. When I look up, an abandoned nest is …
Beavers or Trees
Overnight, a small pond has been transformed into a large one. Trees stand knee-deep in water, unable to wade to higher ground. This slow drowning …
Swallows
For many years I have mourned the loss of swallows from farmyards; but this night, no barns in sight, the hundreds and thousands of flickering …
Moon Over Water
The full moon slipped in the sky. Not all at once, but in a series of small dips, as if the pins holding it up …
High Tide Line
Two thousand years ago, give or take a few hundred years, Seleucus of Seleucia in Mesopotamia and Wang Chong in China concluded separately that the …
Fire
There is something unnerving about having a fire outdoors, watching the dusk turn to dark, watching the sparks fly up and kiss the emerging stars, …
Waders II
The boys run through the shallow water like piping plovers. Their calls carry across the beach: “Look! A crab! A jellyfish! A minnow!” They run …
Waders
The plovers lift their wings on the beach and dash across the sand into the shallow water, laughing like carefree children. Once there, they …