Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here I like the sneaky-pete feeling of it, the mini-dash of the forbidden. I’ve been doing it for years. If I’m trying to be accurate, I don’t think I ever stopped once my curiosity bloomed at about 12. I wanted to see things that some official said were off limits. So….slip…So….slide…and gone into the forest. Based on what a ranger told me once about estimating the ages of local trees, the […]

You Can Listen Here The Rules are simple: Go out. Be still. Keep binoculars at hand. It began as a NOT flickering at the edge of my vision — as in Not-Squirrel, Not-Bird, Not Chipmunk. Rabbit? Rat? It skittered low across the stone wall — there, gone, pop-out, disappear, east end to west end and back. Furry tail, especially the end, very fast, sleek, torpedo shaped. Nothing chasing it. No other animal like it. […]

You Can Listen Here It is coming on full of itself now. A color wheel will not help with all the greens appearing from one day to the next — sassafras green, first bud green; barley, blue grass, cedar green. Cabbage butterflies and honeybees are foraging dandelions, mustard and clover, hyacinth and blue bells. Today, another bird returned, a tribe of tree swallows as iridescent as oiled steel — up from central Mexico and swirling in […]

You Can Listen Here Yesterday, the sky filled with clouds blue as bruises and the light sharp enough to have a blade and the wind blowing hard right out of the west — we walked into the squall, hail-snow cutting with enough force to cause me to turn my back and cover my face, the dogs jacked up and oblivious, racing into the shock of it. Today, this soft snow filling the cups of […]