In early April, I learned that my project here has been named a finalist in blog category of the 2016 Writing Awards sponsored by the Colorado Authors’ League (CAL). There will be a reading event at BookBar in Denver, Colorado (click here for details), on Saturday, April 30, 2016 . Finalists in the the Feature…
Even though we live in the sort of place most people escape TO, my hubby and I feel the impulse for a break now and then. Sometimes the change of place from this semi-arid ridge in central Colorado’s mountains is wet and coastal and occasionally it’s foreign, but often it’s a short city break. We…
The winter started out cold—fiercely so, in fact. Icy air preserved the scanty accumulation from small snowstorms for weeks, solidifying it to slick veneers anywhere it was packed down—on roads, on the pathway I follow to and from the barn. The thin snow cover lingered for weeks under the oblique winter angle of the sun.…
The pattern makes sense: that these winter months are a time of retreat, a withdrawal of sorts from the outdoor domain of wild that orients a significant part of my life. The weather is cold and even if it’s not—even if temperatures are freakishly warm, as they have been for most of February this year—the…
On a snowy day, the metaphorical alignment of undisturbed snow with the blank page is all but irresistible: that expanse of unmarred whiteness, awaiting signs of meaningful passage. I don’t necessarily mean to compare writers to rodents, but it has lately come to my attention that signs resulting from the movements of mice in and…
Sure, you can raise your heart rate and a nice sweat on the elliptical machine in the basement. You’ll stare at the wall, though, and play mind games to keep yourself from watching digits on the timer count too slowly downward. Save that for the days when the wind sucks the air from your lungs…
For the past couple of years, I’ve pulled my barn coat off the hanger for the first time each fall and thought, I gotta get a new coat. But then I’d think, Nah…it’ll go one more year. The holes in the front pockets came first. I thought almost daily about patching them, but put such…
I like being a denizen of the temperate zones. I appreciate that the seasons here, dictated by my position on the globe, are so distinct. Watching the gradual cycling of weather, light, foliage, and animal activity has helped train me in the habit of attentiveness. Yes, I’ll think, there go the oak trees, turning to…
For once, it wasn’t me. The party running late, this time, was autumn. Oh sure, the light changed, spearing over the land at that long low angle that first alerts me summer is waning. And, yes, leaves of sticky geranium and Rocky Mountain penstemon flared scarlet here and there against a backdrop of grass cured…
When a delicate early-morning rainbow appeared late last week, I hustled to find the camera and take a picture. “We almost never see rainbows in the morning,” I was thinking to myself. And it’s true. Most of the time, rainbows here are captured in the beams of late-day sun, riding the tails of afternoon thundershowers.…