Travel, even for reasons as simplistically goal-oriented as arriving on your mom’s doorstep to give her a hug for the first time in almost two years, puts a frame around a period in life. Whether for a few days or a fortnight or a month, your perspective shifts, your views change, and you’re forced out…
I didn’t know there was a name for my quirky lifestyle. Practical logistics dictated by our choice to move to a distinctly rural and reasonably remote area in the spring of 2001 amplified the tendency to social distance, but I’ve been working from home, staying put except for essential errands, and communicating mostly via email…
I often say I write about my home place, but that’s not true all the time. The book project currently consuming my writing energy, for example, is about scientific literacy. (Though it might far afield from the natural history and personal observation focus of this blog, it turns out that scientific literacy is concerned with…
One of the side effects of abundant solitary time is an inclination toward idiosyncratic projects. If my husband were not spending his weekdays provisioning Coloradoans with wine, he might kindly suggest that I stick with tasks that are either of manageable scope or practical advantage. As it is, some of the chores I come up…
When my husband decided in October that he’d be making a quick trip out of town in early December, I immediately knew what I’d be doing that weekend: an at-home writing retreat. Credit for my inspiration belongs to Linda Hasselstrom, a friend and mentor who has run writing retreats at her South Dakota ranch home…
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…
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…
We moved into this house back in March, 2003, twelve years ago this month. Which, when I think about it, is longer than I’ve ever lived in any other house. If I do the math, it turns out I’ve spent just shy of one-quarter of my life occupying these rooms. Add in a couple of…
I don’t get out much. This is intentional and by nature. I enjoy the vast good fortune of a life that revolves around a home place in a beautiful natural setting. I work from home, and my husband and I continually strive to arrange our leisure time to include activities that do do not require…
Although it hasn’t happened in a while, there have been times since settling in at our place in central Colorado when I think back over the past week and realize that I haven’t left the property in six or seven or, occasionally, ten days. My record, I believe, is twelve days: a period approaching two…