Cicadas are the best bugs. The 17-year cicadas emerged here in the D.C. area two years ago and I haven’t gotten over it yet. Everyone knows this, and that’s why Our Kate texted me on Monday with a link to a new paper in the journal Science about the effects of cicadas on the food […]
Nature
I was hoping for an extra few hours somewhere in the race between hither and yon to write something of substance, but it didn’t come. I do want you to know that instead of writing, I camped near Crystal Geyser in Utah and listened to it gurgle and throb all night long. I dreamt to […]
I’m at the beach (the beach!) and it’s September, and there was a storm recently, so things have been quite chilly and windy and sploshy. Monday morning, I went out for a walk before starting my day of remote work, and I saw this horseshoe crab, and it was moving. I am told by the […]
An Icelandic beach, which I did not visit this summer. Summer is not over, officially, just yet; I know, it’s past Labor Day, but it is still Lower Summer* here and I am not ready. So although it is not gone, I am already mourning its end, especially the things I did not do, and […]
It’s been a little while since I shared some bummer bird poetry. This one has the marvelous distinction of having been broadcast into a dark Scottish forest. My other poems are still a little jealous. Window: White Pine I. Chaos in the predawn dark— starlings scream II. Robbing the open pinecone, rewarded again and again—chickadee […]
Returning to this creek was my stepdad’s idea. At 78, he wanted to try it again, but do it right this time. Twenty-some years ago, when we first hiked this mostly untrailed alpine canyon in Colorado, we planned it as a day trip with a car at either end for a shuttle. My mom was […]
About seven months ago, I acquired a boyfriend. I mention this for two reasons: (1) to brag that an exceptionally good-looking, kind, and intelligent man wants to hang out with me and (2) because I just recently noticed something about this tree in his front yard. I’ve been going out of the front door there […]
Near where I live in Seattle there is a rail trail called the Burke-Gilman. Everyone around here knows it simply as The Burke. An asphalt conduit that bisects north Seattle from Bothell to the Ballard Locks, The Burke is over twenty miles long, and a classic multiuse recreational urban route. Bicyclists fly over it, people […]