So many below freezing days, and then this storm of heavy and wet snowflakes that stung our cheeks as we walked. The pond, transformed by a layer of ice and snow, was a white meadow ringed by bare trunks. I snapped a few photos and then the wind told us it was time to turn back. Just as we started on our way home, I looked down and noticed: she’d...
I leave the trail and follow a narrow deer path along the shoreline to a small, sheltered cove. I stand very still in sparse underbrush and listen to voices echo across the water. I drop to my knees in the middle of a stand of hardwoods. I bring my face close to moss, bugs and fallen leaves. I hover over clusters of soft, grey mushrooms. I stare too long at...
I sat on that very same flat hometown rock when I was her age, on the side of a rushing cold water creek filled with crayfish and bubbles.
A beautiful fog. The pull of memory. I close my eyes and live a thousand lives.
I’m experimenting with through the viewfinder photography again. I find that I still love the feel of the old Kodak and the distortion and noise introduced by the dirty lenses and mirror. I love the brokenness and imperfection and mess.
We returned to Woods Edge farm for our third annual bonfire on Saturday. Angelina‘s non-profit hosted a camp for Native American youth this summer, and many of her campers returned for the day. So many sounds: Johnny Cash coming out of the barn speakers, horses neighing, a leaf blower making a giant pile for jumping, laughter, native flute. I spent time in the chilly upper pasture trying to get a...
A walk: to show them beauty between strips of asphalt to console myself to let the urge pass (not all good things are wild and free) sweet gentle green moss frail butterfly wing round red berries a single thorn
More music on our front steps. The kids played hide and seek in the dark spaces between the buildings. One nearby door slowly opened a crack, an unseen man or woman probably peering out to pinpoint the source of the sound. I sat on my stool, listened, swatted away mosquitos. My neighbors’ television sets cast strobing stripes of light on their front lawns.
This early summertime has been lovely. Some notes: We waited with bated breath for cicadas to visit, but in the end had to settle for finding a few husks out at a friend’s place in Haymarket. My kids were the very first people in our community pool on the Friday before Memorial Day. It was 54 degrees outside. We three went strawberry picking, our first time ever. My first time...