(R) She sees it for the first time arching across the canyon before a grand departure. Viewed through a misted car window, it radiates goodwill.
(O) The rainbow follows the hiker down the canyon, bouncing off the walls, descending over breakfast. It threatens to turn the oatmeal into a pot of gold. She is glad when it doesn’t.
I don’t have a whole story about all this, not yet. Sure, I could make some gummy conclusion about how when we heal the land, we heal ourselves. I could encourage you to go plant a tree, pull an invasive weed, or somehow rearrange the mud somewhere in a way that allows life to flourish. But I think what I needed to do most today was to see a thread through the various work parties and events I’ve shown up to over the past year. Being a writer, I’ve taken some notes, and I’m sharing a version of them here.
Fresh fiction! Cut-out of a short story I recently dusted off for possible submission to a “Bikesexuality” collection from Elly Blue’s Taking the Lane. Then I realized that this is a non-fiction venue. Blurg! Well, it was fun to work in fiction-land for an afternoon anyway. Enjoy! *** Jamal throws his bookbag into the…
Nice of you to drop in. Oh, not a casual visit? You were checking up on me. What’s happening, you want to know? Where’s the writing? Girl (or boy), don’t get me started. I’ve been creating enough to make your head spin. The winter has been rich in collaborations, experimentations, and inspired but un-bloggable labors…
Write. Write like a skateboarder, turning tight lines in the near dark. Write like sediment. Settle words down to lake bottom and leave your record. Forgive your own sloth. Write. Write like a bee swipes pollen, thinking it’s just there for food. The miracle of life unfolds because of you. Write like tree rings. Write…
There’s just enough snow on the ground for it to tip over the brim of my hiking boots. As we walk single-file through the clumps of fir and pine, the swish-squeak of polyestered thighs masquerades as birdsong, much to the frustration of my companions. Every so often our leader stops. His ears, red in the…
0° I park the car and trade my shoes for roller skates. It’s the after-work hour and the gym rats are streaming toward the building. I go the other direction, find the sidewalk leading down into a mobile home park. As my speed increases exponentially, my body defaults to ski mode: toes turning toward each…
Ears back means, I don’t like you. I’ve learned this because Penny is a magnet. Even while sleeping in his preferred position on the sidewalk — something I call “dead-dogging-it”: lying on his side, four legs stuck out, head resting on one incredibly soft ear — he’s irresistible. Serious businessmen pass and can’t hold back…
The film was gorgeous but Tim’s short presentation afterward was electrifying, careening through fifty years of conservation history as his beautiful photographs flashed across the projector screen. As I watched, I couldn’t help but wonder where river awareness has been my entire life.
You may have seen me walking. I wear dark sunglasses, but the way my hair sticks out at odd angles from underneath my baseball cap, you know I’m harmless. Or so it seems. You’re just leaving for work so you don’t have time to ponder the slowness of my gait. Or, I might have borrowed…
There’s a fat bumblebee swerving between the buttercups in the shaggy patch of grass below my porch. She delicately mounts a yellow petal and investigates its inner regions, then sails to the next, a shaggy head of white clover. I know I should mow the lawn. The dandelions are reaching their long necks up to…
“What do you think, gals?” Dave calls out to me and Hannah, since we’ve already taken a position standing two feet behind him and off to the side. “Two sardines, two squid?”
I think it’s going to take a lot more than that to bait the hundreds of crab pots Dave says he has waiting offshore, but I don’t say it. It’s obviously a question that we’re meant to answer affirmatively, to keep up the charade that we know what we’re doing. There’s an awkward pause. Obviously, Hannah isn’t interested in playing.
