Remedy
on thick days the rhododendron, the azalea shrubs in blush are too much concluded praise, so I slip into the quiet of green woods and green air and say nothing
Posts
Where We're Going
A few updates all at once: For one month starting in early June I'll be traveling through London, Switzerland, eastern France, and southwest Germany. Why? Twenty-five or so high school students. I'm chaperoning the German trip . Yes, I know. But I think it's going to be great fun. And the stories, my friends, THE STORIES. A new essay about my father and me and our fishing exploits is up over at The Backcountry Journa l. Check it out? Here's a little tease: " Water. A boat or a bit of shoreline. A rod, bait, maybe a net. That perfect fish. I'd place my bets that you're already seeing it, that time when you pulled a slick, silvery body in. That time a surge that felt a lot like love came up with the end of your swallowed line. Your fishing story. And the people you turned to first to tell it." [ more ] Some publicity folks asked if I might like to review the BBC's most recent nature documentary series Frozen Earth . Since they pr...
The Lake
My appreciation for place comes most directly from my parents, but I also have to thank Grandpa and Grandma Longstreet for scouting out the piece of southwestern Minnesota lake land that has become the one consistent spot on earth I've returned to since the year I was born. I visit Lake Shetek and Keeley Island and the Longstreet Lot less now that I'm older and farther away and--that too-easy word-- busy . But its greens and blues and laughs and grill-roasted turkey dinners feel no less vivid. My essay "The Lake," out this month in Minnesota Conservation Volunteer , is a long-time coming. A long time, pre-me. It's a thank you letter, really. So: Grandpa Bud, I imagine your face with the smile I would have witnessed had you lived to meet me, and Grandma Mar, I miss you so much and sense the pressure of your hand around my wrist. Keeley Island, Lake Shetek, MN
Writing About Place
I'm going to put on my teacher hat here for a moment. It was during my third semester in grad school that much of what I thought about and everything I wrote began to revolve around the notion of place. My classmates and I crafted critical theses that term, and mine focused on Minnesota writers and how these men and women rendered my state so convincingly. That paper was a labor of love, time, and too many notecards, so I'm grateful that a revised (and much shorter!) version of it is being shared with other writers and teachers of writing in the most recent issue of Minnesota English Journal . If you're into that kind of thing, then by all means give it a read. Here are the first few paragraphs: "Landing: Writing About Place in our Flyover State" When I went off to college, I knew about Toni Morrison and Ernest Hemingway and Harper Lee. I loved literature, so much that I wanted to both teach it and write it for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t until I t...
Black Dog Nature Preserve
So it's spring, and I'm out walking again, today in the middle of the big city, trains rattling west, airplanes overhead, highway noise rumbling on two sides, glimpses of 35W through the ten-foot high still-standing grasses, but: the still-standing grasses swaying ten feet high, the robins with their scraggly nests and cautiousness, the deer paths, the boggy soil, dirt black as night, a new word ( fen ), the Mississippi past the sedge line , the (I think) common sootywing butterfly that looks neither sooty nor common to these color-starved eyes, which is to say nothing for the green the green the green the green the green.