I spent this weekend at Rivendell Writers' Colony, the most peaceful place on earth. It was my second visit to Lost Cove in two weeks: last time I was staying at a friend's retreat cabin a bit further down the bluff from Rivendell. Like the rest of the Tennessee, Sewanee was crippled by a terrible … Continue reading Hide and Seek
Wild storms came to Middle Tennessee this week, right on schedule for a region on the edge of Tornado Alley. Many branches fell out of our seventy-year-old maple trees, and many others were left dangling, torn but not broken—a scenario that is always a trigger at our house for a conversation that goes like this: … Continue reading Secrets
“Nature’s first green is gold,” Robert Frost once wrote, “her hardest hue to hold.” Even as a teenager, reading the poem for the first time, I understood the paradox of those lines—of green beginning in gold, of leaf beginning in flower—but I had never seen that paradox for myself. I could picture it, but I … Continue reading The Hardest Hue to Hold
I was twenty-two years old the first time I saw the Mississippi River, twenty-six the second time, twenty-nine the third, forty-eight the fourth. On this trip, I am fifty-five. And every time I see the Mississippi River, I see it for the first time. I acknowledge Heraclitus. I acknowledge the relentless influence of time—of the … Continue reading River Light
Oh, the arrogance. Oh, the hubris! “Now it is March,” I wrote last week, “and spring appears to have launched itself in earnest.” Six days later a snowstorm swept through Middle Tennessee, coating every delicate flower in luxuriant death and interrupting the courtship plans of cardinals that for days had been singing out loud news … Continue reading A Little Bird Told Me
Here in Tennessee the tulip trees and daffodils were in full bloom weeks ago, but even their early arrival this year was not so very early for flowers that always usher in the springtime. The weather was far too warm, but Facebook’s “On This Day” feature kept throwing out pictures of tulip trees and daffodils … Continue reading The Green Fuse
Weeks ago, when they first appeared in the neighborhood, I assumed they were starlings. A flock of starlings is the bane of the bird feeder — a vast, clamoring mob of unmusical birds soiling the windshields and lawn furniture, muscling one another aside so violently that no other birds dare draw near the suet. But … Continue reading Last Breath
Thanks to his Washington Post column, Garrison Keillor is now the voice of the outraged liberal, but there was a time, decades ago, when A Prairie Home Companion was an escape from politics. Keillor’s own views were always clear to anyone who knew the code, but all that came through the airwaves for two hours … Continue reading Love, Fear, Grief, Water
Here in this first-ring suburban neighborhood, we are far from the spongy paths of the forest peoples who gave this moon its name, but we are not far from the snow moon itself, which rises through the bare trees as it has always done since long before we were here, since long before the forest … Continue reading The Snow Moon
When I was young and poorly padded, it was the cold that got me. In winter I felt drawn, hunched, crouched and furtive. I craved the expansiveness of heat, the languor of an afternoon so hot the only choice was stillness. I longed for light and color, impatient for the goldfinch to put on his … Continue reading Ripeness Is All
