Blog

Real life is healthier if one gives it the holiday in unreality that is its due. -- Gaston Bachelard, Of Water and Dreams/ L’eau et les rêves Reculer pour mieux sauter. The gist is to retreat from an obstacle so as to reflect, gather one’s forces, and begin anew—which...

“There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” Rachel Carson – Silent Spring Ferragosto: changing colors here and there, leaf fall . . . already! In Italy, Feriae...

I’ve been thinking about confinement lately, after four months of hunkering down, no end in sight. I had some concerns about geographical enclosure before our fairly recent move from coastal Washington to the mountains of North Carolina, two-thousand feet above sea...

A brief story: At the age of fifteen, with a friend, I took a canoe trip on the Saint Croix River in Minnesota. We put in at Scandia, a few miles north of my grandparents’ cabin and paddled leisurely downstream, winding in and out of sloughs, floating with the...