Emily Brisse

Because sometimes you need to think not cold but warmth. Because sometimes you need to think not dark but light. Because sometimes you need to think not fall back but spring forward . Here's an old essay, friends, that I first tapped out right here in this space that has, in the meantime, become a newish thing, a reminder that we can find a balance between two unsteady places. Visit the most recent online issue of The Fourth River , and once you open the PDF, read the other wonderful stories, essays, and poems, and then find my essay "Spring Forward," on page 96, at the very back. Thanks for reading. And believing in the transformative power of art. It is what will save us. It is what always has.

Hi Friends, I'll be saying this with a sigh, but O Summer!  I am already deep into classes with my students, and where it does feel good to be back with young minds talking about things that matter, summer is a particular treasure. We were everyday outside, at parks, at beaches, in lakes and rivers and streams, up to our armpits in our garden flowers. We also spent a lot of time with family and friends, at cabins, birthday parties, splashpads, and swimming lessons. My boy learned to fish. He wanted to fish every day. He would spot the earthworm wiggling into the hole behind the branch and grab it, lift it up, study its perfectly spaced indentations. I watched his body lengthen, and I listened to him tell me stories, and it is a little astonishing to me, that I have been in this world for three and a half years with him, and he is still articulating things with the lift of his eyelashes that I hadn't known existed. I am a proud mama, a happy mama, a mama thankful for a seaso...

Lake Chapala and its surrounding towns are truly beautiful. I'll likely write an essay about them at some point. For now, I hope you've enjoyed these glimpses into some lesser-known regions of Mexico. We'll be back!

We were lucky enough to travel to the Jalisco region of Mexico over my spring break this year. To say I was ready for another adventure that involved significant travel is an understatement, so I hope these photos give you a sense of the height of my wonder and gratitude. I love where I spend my every-day, but going elsewhere is like being given new eyes. I looked and I looked. More photos later (and yes, that little boy in the orange shirt racing the wind is my dear one). Viva!

Good morning, (And an early morning it is.) Last spring I could blame these sleepless a.m. hours on the turkeys roosting in the trees outside my window, but now I only have my swirling mind to point to. These are some of the things I would like/need to do, possibly today: transplant several hostas, dig up and move a good many big rocks, water the rudbeckia, move the shelves in the garage, organize the garage (!), call the insurance company, clip the little guy's fingernails, keep writing that essay, start writing college recommendations, finish rereading The Glass Castle, and oh (!) take in that sunrise. That list will be a starting point, anyway. And much of it will keep me outside, in the air that has already taken on a hint of autumn.  It's an exciting time of year, friends. Often stressful. But so very full of a pulsing, thrumming, chirping, calling, rushing, crunching, thrusting kind of life. Summer, as always, was a sweet reprieve where instead of teaching I spent ...

Ten years ago I drove down Highway 43 at dusk, watching the sun melt into a haze of orange over Deep Lake, and with one particular song that seemed to evaporate into the heavy air on repeat, I pulled my car into his parent's driveway. He was home from California, and in that moment, shooting baskets with his brother and two friends under the garage light and an assemblage of summer-drunk bugs. He wore a yellow shirt, thin and wide on his shoulders. When his gaze met mine through the windshield glass--that smile, that shirt, that sun, those bugs, the rest of our lives: there they were. What I remember of that summer was like that look: heady. Anyone who has not just walked toward love but fallen off the dock into the black midnight waters of it will know what I mean. You do not know you can talk that long, grin that big, stare that uninterruptedly, kiss that hard, laugh that loud, dream that vividly, hope that unapologetically until suddenly you are doing all of those things, unti...

Reluctantly we leave —water dripping from hands and chin, sand coating our feet

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...

that night we lay on air sultry as an Egyptian's exhale. Nothing stirred but firefly wings and our gentle fingers, figuring at the throb and pulse that electrified such small bodies with sparks. Their glimmer laced the lake's edge like a necklace, like lookout smoke, and we drifted tranquil within, at peace with each other, our unwearied lips. The water was blue-black beneath us, a veiled mirror underneath the cloak of sky, light discovering light only when we moved. -- by Emily Brisse, originally published in The Talking Stick , Vol. 20, Editor's Choice award

What do you say to an island?  Hello. Hello, there.   I came to say... Yes? Just hello, I guess. Hello. And what is it like and how does it feel and what are the sounds and smells and tastes of being here so always, so all-year-everyday, so long? It is like... Yes? This. When I canoe across the wide water, when I slide into the bay, along its shore, I pay attention. I notice muskrats and blackbirds, fish flopping, and wind. I think about its name-- Loon --and its location-- south --and I wonder at the way it was when those northern birds were here enough to leave their name. How much changes on an island like this? No houses, no campers, no impervious surfaces. Just green and brown and blue and green and green and green and green. What is it like to be so set apart? To have children watch you every summer of their lives, curious and wise? And then for them to go away, sometimes for long stretches of time, only to come back older and quieter and less brave? Does the isla...

We clomp across two inches of crusty snow that only days before had been a soft twelve; turn onto a narrow path dotted with two-hooved tracks and clusters of small, coffee-bean-like pellets; dig our toes into; stick our heels down; walk under bare, elegant maple and birch boughs until we come to Hunter Lake, covered now with slick ice the color of milk. I have always been nervous about walking over frozen waterbodies. I know too many stories. Have heard too many echoes of ice cracking in my dreams. I cannot imagine the cold of that water, or perhaps I can, or the trying to brings pain enough. In any case, when we step out of the woods and onto this strange scientific plain, I am tight in my muscles, my limbs as rigid as sticks. But there are four tall men ice fishing 200 feet away, and unlike the times before, I have a friend at my side who is more brave, less discouraged by recent high temperatures, and less shy, more easy with a held-out hand. So I follow her, shuffling--sliding ...

I cannot claim Lake Susan Park as a new destination. I have biked on its trails, read against its trees, studied its vegetation, and waded into its waters for several summers now. Occasionally I play tennis there, or stop by and watch a baseball game, my cheeks reddening in the sun. Always I am thankful that its 33-acres are close by, an open space that holds out its hands to the community. Yesterday, a season later, I woke to fantastically blue skies--more true, I found, than those in summer--and a world that was frosted white. Hoar frost . The remaining goldenrod stalks stood frozen and glittering. The grove across the street resembled something out of a fantasy story, something with a name like Niffelvine or Ruumulus or Asgard. Everything seemed cast in a sleepy spell. I went to Lake Susan with sleep still clinging to the corners of my eyes because I didn't want to miss the way the light was colliding with light. How long could something that beautiful last? How long, I wond...

I think Tim O'Brien lives in Texas now, but this author grew up first in Austin and then Worthington, Minnesota, and tends to write stories and books that connect to his homeplace. I listened to him read and talk about writing and life last spring in Chaska, and although everyone was asking him questions about The Things They Carried , he did slip in an admission that he believes his best book is his 1994 novel In The Lake of the Woods . The comment stayed with me. I wondered why. So when I was thinking of the next MN-based novel I could take in , his title came to mind.  The Lake of the Woods. It sounds mythic, doesn't it? Something you get lost in.  As I read the book, I came to believe that this was exactly what O'Brien intended. The themes include deception and mystery, loneliness and memory, and I was impressed by how well these inner states fit with O'Brien's description of the setting: "The wilderness was massive. It was a place, Wade came to unde...

The Boundary Waters from Alex Horner on Vimeo . This is a beautiful video made by Alex Horner . I found it via the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness (another great organization I'll have to lend a full shout-out to soon). Thanks to all involved for sharing such inspiring work. I hope this carries you into a relaxing, rich weekend.

Being humble is a cultivated quality in many parts of Minnesota, so it's appropriate that "The Land of 10,000 Lakes" is an understated moniker. The official count of bodies of water that measure at more than ten acres is about 11,842. According to Wikipedia (gasp!), that amounts to more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined. So, the only things that differentiate us from them are palm trees and salt water. And snow, I guess. And ice. But anyway, these lakes are their own kind of Eden, and it's a thing to be thankful for that most people, regardless of their socioeconomic state, have a circle of water within the reach of their legs or persuasive please-take-me powers. As my sweet grandma would say, that's nice. It's also nice (and fun) to skim over a list of lake names . Since I was small, it's charmed me to find that a lake and I could be called the same thing. Imagine dreaming you had a twin, and finding her blue and dancing, plump ...

In the morning the lake is dappled, full of sleepy light clinging to reeds and hiding among lily pads. I peer down and there are ten-thousand kingdoms: one is full of long arms twirling toward the water's top, another strains its fingers in ruler-straight lines, and an underwater cloud of mossy tendrils breathes as one, grows as one, should not be disturbed by a paddle. There are whole regions of shadow; down there it is cold and dark and deep. In the afternoon the light is loud, which gives everything else permission. The wind teases the surface, and the lake plunks at its touch, or laughs. The cattails and bullrushes bump their slim shoulders, shivering despite the heat. Fish leap from the water and bellyflop back. Dragonflies flit. Spiders spin. Always there is a boy of about ten unafraid of splinters racing down a wooden dock and catapulting himself through the light into the kind of dark he will be afraid of at night, but not now. Not under the hands of such a sun. Not when ...

"Beneath the waters, since I was a boy, I have dreamt of strange and dark treasures, Not of gold, or strange stories, but the true Gift, beneath the pale lakes of Minnesota." -- Robert Bly From "After Drinking All Night"