Today something ineffable, something beyond the reach of my own language, happened in the everyday sky. The air turned blue and then silver. A dog barked. A bird whose song I don’t know began to sing and then fell silent. The air cooled, and suddenly Venus was gleaming in the midnight-blue pitch of the sky. The … Continue reading A Ring of Fire
I am wholly a creature of piney woods and folded terrain, of birdsong and running creeks and a thousand shades of green, of forgiving soil that yields just a little with each footfall. There is something forbidding to me about the vastness of the ocean and the flat hand of the shore, something that feels … Continue reading Neither Out Far Nor In Deep
On the morning after my mother’s sudden death, before I was up, someone brought a basket of muffins, good coffee beans, and a bottle of cream—real cream, unwhipped—left them at the back door, and tiptoed away. I couldn’t eat. The smell of coffee turned my stomach, but my head was pounding from all the what … Continue reading Holy, Holy, Holy
The world is in full fecundity. The bright clarity of June has given way to hot July, thick days and thicker nights pooling with song: cicada and tree frog and cricket and a thousand others I can't name. In the corners of our windows, spiders profit in the damp darkness. The spring wildflowers are all … Continue reading The Teeming Season
Tweet, post, share, blog—the human realm runs on TMI, but the natural world lives by secrets. What do you see in this picture of an old sugar maple tree? If you're the tidy type, you might see an unkempt yard, an eyesore, a weed patch. If you're an environmentalist, you might see an unexpected pocket of … Continue reading Confidential
When I was in college, English majors were required to take at least one math class (or approved math substitute) and at least two science classes (for which there were no substitutes at all). Both requirements filled me with dread. In high school, when it was my turn to go to the board, the trigonometry … Continue reading Science
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
“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
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
Nature Is What We See 