The Quiet Season
The days are short and cold, and it snowed last Sunday. The tree canopies, now brown, have thinned. The birds have begun migrating southwards — I hear their calls from my room, where I sip coffee — and people in …
Place
Culture, Human Landscape, Place, Poetry, Poetry, Uncategorized
Beyond This Room
Sure Thing
It is that with which the wind blows
And the snowflakes carry from the skies
The mountains echo in their deep crevasses
The sky possesses in her blue, graceful expanse
The child has in her smile
The earth …
Culture, Energy, Environmental Justice, Fracking, Place
Holy Land
I lived in a small community outside Wheeling, West Virginia for seven months in 2020. New Vrindaban – a spiritual community drawing on Vaisnava Hindu tradition, current population 100 people and 70 cows – was my refuge from COVID-19; a …
Agriculture, Frontier, Out West, Place
Gathering Chips
One of my favorite photographs hangs in my bathroom.
At its center is a wheelbarrow, with wooden handles, braces, and legs. The ten-spoke wheel is iron. Cow chips – dry dung – are stacked two feet high in the tray. …
Conservation, Forests, Place, Rivers
In town
I followed my mother down a winding forest path.
The trail head peaks through the trees that line the softball field down the street from my house. You wouldn’t know it was there if you weren’t looking for it.
Gnarled tree …
Agriculture, Place
Stacking Wood
This piece was originally written as part of a larger poetry and prose project that explored the author’s relationship with his family’s farm in Tennessee. Over a month-long span, he reflected daily on the lessons that the place and its …