Dog Violets
It is both easy and difficult to find the wildflowers. Difficult because the blooms are tiny, and often grow in singles or small clumps of …
Robin’s Egg Blue
Delicate egg fragments lie on the path. The colour catches my eye when I am still many steps away and I don’t immediately know what …
On Clearings
In a month this growth will be knee-high, and in two months waist-high, but at the moment it looks like someone brought a mower deep …
Whale Bones
The forest is a beach, the hill a shoreline, this fallen tree a whale. The current has carried the whale’s remains to this sheltered spot, …
Forty Days and Forty Nights
After two hundred and four pages, I begin to lose track of things a little. I draw character maps, list names, complete a chronology. This …
Moss, Spruce, Rain
The air is warm, but other than that it’s harder to tell here that spring is in full bloom. There are no blossoms in the …
On Tools
People tell me I’ll want a chainsaw, and one day that may be true. But so far, I’ve been cutting with hand tools. When I …
Waiting
The air is heavy and still; an August day in early May. We push through the brush up the north hill, trying to find the …
Keys to Words
Last week I wrote myself into a corner. I had seen it coming for months, imagined that by the time I arrived it would solve …
Porcupine Tree
Cedar finds a porcupine in the bushes. While the dog barks wildly, the porcupine pulls itself heavily up a pin cherry sapling, quilly hand over …