Community of the Land

My annual Mother's Day planting orgy

2008-05-12T18:35:00.005-06:00

Yesterday was Mother's Day, or in my household, plant-the-pots day. Here at 7,000 feet above sea level in our valley in the southern Rocky Mountains, Mother's Day marks the date after which hard frosts are very unlikely. So my tradition is to visit the local greenhouse, choose from the enticing offerings of annual flowers, and spend the day wallowing in soil, potting my collection of planters to decorate our various porches, patios, and decks.

Between our cottage across the alley (the historic brick duplex where we used to live, which now belongs to a friend, although I still tend the landscaping for him) and our new house, we have one deck, two terraces, and five porches--plenty of space in which to indulge my Jones for planters! After the crocus, daffodils, and tulips scattered here and there around both yards have finished blooming, and before the wildflowers begin their summer riot of color, I put out pots of annual flowers, partly to give migrating hummingbirds and early-hatching butterflies nectar to feed on.

This year for the first time, I grew some of my own annual flowers: in March, I planted seeds of alyssum, a spring-blooming mustard with clusters of small white flowers and a fragrance that draws bees and butterflies; a mix of salvias, relatives of mint with fragrant leaves and spikes of flowers in shades of red and blue; sweet william for its spicy scent; and cosmos, favorites of butterflies. On our trip to the greenhouse to buy the rest of the annual plants, I told myself I would be restrained. And I was--mostly. Richard helped me pick out petunias in a mix of vibrant colors, verbenas with their lacy foliage and clusters of pink and purple blossoms, sapphire blue lobelias, ivy geraniums in crimson and white, a collection of coleus with wildly patterned leaves, and some dwarf zinnias in magenta and fiery orange.

I look for annuals in colors, shapes, and scents that will appeal to the nectar-feeders I love to watch: hummingbirds go for red, tubular flowers, while butterflies like orange and yellow blossoms, and evening-feeding sphinx moths are attracted to flowers that advertise their nectar with scents that carry on the night air.

Back at home, I gathered the first batch of pots, dumped the potting soil they held from last season into a wheelbarrow, and added organic aged cow manure to renew its nutrients and water-holding capacity, and filled the pots again. Then I began to arrange plants, designing the collection in each pot to suit the environment where it would sit (hot and sunny, shaded most of the day, morning sun only, and so on) and to offer colorful and textural vignettes through the season.

By the time I straightened my aching back and went inside to scrub the soil from under my fingernails that evening, I had planted two dozen--yes, 24!--planters, windowboxes, hanging pots, and big architectural pots.

This morning, I heard the trilling wings of a male broad-tailed hummingbird as he zipped by overhead, migrating north toward summer breeding habitat. His trilling did an abrupt about-face when he spotted the pots on our front porch and winged down to check them out. At lunch, Richard and I watched the first western black swallowtail of the year flutter through the yard, pausing to inspect the pots of annuals for sip of nectar.

I garden because I love plants, and I love fresh food. And because I can choose plants that provide my neighbors, the many other species that make up the community of the land, a place to call home too.

Gardeners: optimistic by definition

2008-05-07T18:53:00.008-06:00

"It's easier to deal with crises like this in the spring," a friend said today after hearing about my husband Richard's cancer. "It's such an optimistic time."

I puzzled over her remark all day. This evening, I stepped out into the kitchen garden. The wind was blowing hard up the valley, the air temperature was plummeting, and the storms that might have brought us moisture had passed without dropping the rain or snow we sorely need. It's been an extraordinarily spring dry so far. Today marks seven weeks since our last measurable precipitation--and two weeks since the doctor scoping Richard's bladder said cheerfully, "And that's a big carcinoma."

There's nothing optimistic about this spring, I thought with distinct grumpiness.

Then I looked at the asparagus bed--and counted six fat new spears poking up through the dry soil.

Not only is our valley sliding into drought, the season has been bitterly cold too. Last week the nighttime temperatures dipped to 22 degrees F--twice.

And still the asparagus spears are pushing up from their octopus-like skirts of roots a foot deep, headed unerringly toward light and the chance to produce more food and make new life as surely as their kind have done every spring for millions of years.

As I turned to head back into the house, I passed the tomato bed. One of the plants cocooned inside the insulating tepee-shaped walls-o-water caught my eye--a costoluto, for you heritage tomato fans. It boasted half a dozen tiny flower buds, readying itself for the warmer weather and the buzz-pollinating bumblebees it is sure will come.

I shook my head in wonder. That's optimism, I thought.

And then, as if a light had switched on in my brain, I understood my friend's comment. Spring is an optimistic time: here in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, life awakens from its frozen slumber, and pushed by instincts far more experienced than mine, sprints into the lengthening days, aiming for light and renewal.

I'm a gardener: I should understand optimism. I'm the one who presses tiny tomato seeds into damp soil of seedling pots in early March, when here at 7,000 feet elevation in the Southern Rockies, the days are still short and dark, and the nights long and frozen. I'm the one who watches the rows of pots each day for the first sign of green, exulting when the pairs of slender cotyledons push their way out of the seed. I plant in the belief that spring will come. And it does.

It occurs to me that I can rely on that same optimism that leads me to plant tomatoes in late winter to cope with Richard's cancer. Only in this case, it's not a seed I want to sprout, but a carcinoma I hope will be destroyed. I'm after stopping that growth, not encouraging it. But that's gardening too: cutting off a diseased limb to save the tree it grows from.

The optimism my friend meant, I think, is about believing in the continuing cycle of life. It's not hard to apply that to Richard and his bladder cancer. He's blessed with caring people dealing with him and they're upbeat about his prognosis. So I'll just press my seeds of hope and rejuvenation in the soil of the universe, in the belief that spring will flower for him, time and again.

"Beautiful" carcinoma

2008-04-25T11:08:00.004-06:00

On Wednesday, my husband Richard watched on a monitor as a doctor maneuvered a tiny scope into his bladder to look at the mass revealed by a CT scan he had last week. (He's been peeing blood for weeks now, with no other signs of illness. After extensive testing, he was referred for a CT scan, and then this cystoscopy.) When the papillary carcinoma - a tumor caused by bladder cancer - came into view, Richard, ever the artist, described it as "beautiful."

"It's on a narrow stalk," he said later as we walked hand and hand under old trees in one of our favorite Denver neighborhoods, "and the doctor called it a sea anenome, but that's not quite right. It's too - I don't know, filmy."

"A sea pen?" I suggested, and he nodded.

"It's got these tissue-thin 'petals' at the top of the stalk, and I could see them waving gently in the current in my bladder." He stopped to admire the calligraphy of two redbud trees across the way, their spare branches painted in intense pink bloom, and the explosion of yellow flowers on a forsythia bush.

"It's a lovely color, too," he said. "It's really beautiful."

"You should draw it," I said.

"I might."

We got into the car and headed west through Denver, past the suburbs that sprawl right up to where the mountains muscle out of the Plains, and wound uphill in a rocky canyon on our way to the first of three mountain passes we would cross on our drive home. As I drove, I thought about cancer and the beauty Richard could see in this tumor.

My dictionary defines cancer as "the disease caused by uncontrolled division of abnormal cells." It traces the word to the Greek karkinos, or "crab," perhaps because the swollen veins supplying tumors looked like crabs' legs. What the dictionary doesn't say is that those "abnormal" cells are your own tissue with the factors that normally limit cell division turned off or blocked.

Cancers vary enormously, but what they have in common is uncontrolled growth, and the fact that the cells that divide without limit are our own cells - not strangers or foreigners. Richard's bladder tumor is simply bladder cells that have lost their ability to stop multiplying. His cancer is thus an intimate part of him. Unwanted, with potentially serious consequences - but still Richard.

So I can see embracing this sea-pen delicate tumor as part of one's self. But beautiful? That's a stretch for me.

On the drive to Denver, we saw a flock of about 50 white pelicans tracing the looping meanders of a hot-spring-fed stream through the grasslands of South Park. Watching the birds rise out of the grass on white wings edged with crisp black and flap with deliberate strokes, cupping the air, I felt the chill air rush through feathers. That's beauty. Winding our way back through the mountains on our way home, we passed two bighorn sheep grazing on new green grass right beside the highway, their winter coats shedding in shaggy hunks of fur. Those sheep looked like part of the landscape, their muscles chisled like stone, their pelage colored just like the weathered granitic boulders around them. That's beauty too.

Richard was born when the sun traveled in Cancer, the constellation named for the Crab in the myth of Hercules. The constellation was rising over the horizon at the time of his birth as well. Perhaps as a Cancer, he can see things about his namesake illness that I cannot see.

I know this: his company in my days is a blessing. I'm learning to appreciate every moment we have. That's beauty too.

Chasing spring and picking up roadkill

2008-04-11T19:46:00.008-06:00

Two weeks ago, Richard and I set off on what turned into a 4,400-mile drive, chasing spring across the Great Basin to the Pacific Coast. The first four days were a birthday gift to my 78-year-old mother, who asked for "spring" as her gift. So we planned a tour around the red-rock country of far western Colorado, the low elevations where spring has already arrived - a catered tour, mind you, complete with picnic meals I made myself and history and natural history interpretation, informed by my research for Colorado Scenic Byways: Taking the Other Road, due out this fall.

After dropping my folks in Grand Junction to catch their train back to Denver, Richard and I set out on our own tour, taking Highway 50 across the inland West. We
ended up only going as far as Moab the first night, following the scenic road along the Colorado River from Cisco instead of the interstate. We discovered spring wildflowers in the red sand desert along Onion Creek. (That's a crescent pod milkvetch with pink flowers that positively shimmer in the evening light.)

The next morning we discovered Arches Book Company - we already knew its sister store across the street, Back of Beyond Books, which has one of the best selections on the slickrock country in existence. We met store owner Andy Nettell, who also happens to be president of Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association, a trade group dear to my heart because they nurture local authors and local books.

Then it was time to get serious about heading west, first on I-70 across the San Rafael Swell, one of the most dramatic and wonderfully lonely features of the Colorado Plateau, and then on Highway 50 across the Great Basin Desert. We chased snow showers and dust devils, ogled mountain ranges rising like waves out of the shrub desert basins, spotted abandoned mines and desert marshes, and saw elk resting, golden eagles soaring, and pronghorn racing their shadows.

The mountain ranges were still white-crested with snow, and the basins were just beginning to green up. The night skies were dazzling, littered with stars, and the air was crisp and so fresh that breathing it was like a cleanse.

It was a breath-taking trip, a pause in what has been a crazy year-and-some of work for me, a time to think beyond next week's deadline. And a reminder of why I write: to give voice to those whose lives and voices we have forgotten how to hear.

Coming over a rocky summit between two lonely basins, Richard spotted a hawk lying on the roadside, just off the pavement. He thought its head moved, so he pulled a quick U-turn and drove back. And there on the gravel shoulder, inches from the roar of passing traffic was a gorgeous adult red-tailed hawk.

The bird lay on its belly, the wings that span four feet in the air folded at awkward angles, flapping loosely in the backwash of passing vehicles. The hawk was alive, but immobile, its spine broken. It stared at us out of the fierce dark golden eyes, able to blink and move its feathered head, but nothing else. There was nothing we could do but move it away from the road.

We got a blanket from the car and Richard wrapped the hawk in it, and then he carried that hawk - so light for such a great bird! - off the roadside. He laid the broken bird in the thin shade of a sagebrush. And then we stood for a long moment, tears running down both our faces, saying goodbye to the hawk that was beyond help.

I've picked up roadkill for decades. I believe in stopping to move the broken bodies out of harm's way as a sign of respect. It allows them to decay in peace and thus feed other lives in the doing. It's been my ritual of atonement for the harm we humans do with our thoughtless lives.

But never in all of that time, with all of the bodies I've handled, have I felt so helpless as I did leaving that red-tailed hawk, broken by a collision with a speeding vehicle, and still so fierce, so vital. I don't grieve leaving the hawk there to die - moving it into the desert to dream its dreams in peace was the kindest thing to do. I grieve how it died, the completely unnecessary loss of its unique and individual life.

I hope that the hawk we laid gently in the shade of the sagebrush away from the traffic that killed it passed peacefully into dreams of free flight under the spring sun. In my dreams, the world has room for red-tailed hawks like that bird to fly free - without ending up immobile on the side of the highway, wings crumpled and flapping loosely, backs broken.

Tonight, I can't write past that hawk. Perhaps in another day's entry, I'll continue the journey we began.

Earth Hour every day

2008-04-06T10:03:00.006-06:00

Earth Hour, the hour-long, worldwide symbolic gesture of turning off non-essential lights and appliances to draw attention to the need to slow global climate change, found Richard and I, along with my parents, in the red-rock canyon country of far western Colorado. We were about 60 miles from Arches National Park as the crow flies, but several hours by road in that remote and rugged landscape. We celebrated our own Earth Hour in a small casita with red rock mesas rising all around.

As the light fell, a flock of mountain bluebirds flew into the cottonwoods on the slope above us, their twittering seeming to usher in the dusk. We stood on the doorstep of our cabin, listening to the evening.

"There goes a bat!" exclaimed my 78-year-old mother.

I looked up, and a tiny Myotis (mouse-like) bat fluttered through the air above the gravel road , its translucent wings cupping the air in its own rhythm as tiny flying mammal chased mosquitoes and other spring insects. Another bat fluttered into view, and then another.

Three distant ravens began a croaking call-and-response conversation that echoed off the soaring cliff walls, and a screech owl called once from down by the Dolores River.

Whenever we stop like this to listen to the pulse of nature and the sounds of other species, we witness a kind of magic, a glimpse of the force that impels life. If we had been inside our casita with the blinds drawn, we would have missed it.

But because we were observing Earth Hour we were outside on the door stoop. We were present to see and hear the community of the land change shifts to its night time rounds. We set aside our lives and remembered that humans are only one among many species, and not the most important either.

That kind of reverent participation in the business of "life living itself" in Kathleen Dean Moore's words (from her powerful essay, "The Marsh" in Holdfast) is something we can do every day. We could call it "Earth Moment." It doesn't take an hour, just a few minutes of awareness. It doesn't require special training or knowledge or equipment, just going outside and opening ourselves up to the sounds and sights and smells of other lives. It's about being aware, and giving our attention to our neighbors, the millions of other species that green and animate this planet. The plants whose breath gives us oxygen, whose food-making gives us the sugars that nurture all living cells. The animals whose flesh nurtures our own, the bats and butterflies and flowers and rocks who touch our hearts with the beauty of their presence in the landscapes we share.

Such "Earth Moments" can nurture our heads and hearts, and fill our souls with peace. With grace, with joy. To observe an Earth Moment is to engage in living prayer, as the poet Mary Oliver writes in Thirst,

. . . the doorway
into thanks, and a silence
into which another voice may speak.

It's like falling in love with life all over again.

For more ideas on returning reverence and creativity to your daily life, read Janet Riehl's "village wisdom for the 21st century." In honor of National Poetry Month, she's running a poem a day.

Earth Hour - Lights Out for a Brighter Future

2008-03-27T20:13:00.004-06:00

This Saturday, March 29th, Richard and I will be staying with my parents at Gateway Canyons Resort in western Colorado's remote red-rock canyon country. My mom's sole wish for her birthday this year was "spring." So we're taking my folks on a four-day spring-finding expedition to the slickrock desert.

At eight o'clock Saturday night, we'll turn off the lights and appliances in our cabin in observance of Earth Hour, a global effort to dramatize the need to take action to slow global climate change. There in tiny Gateway, we'll join millions of people around the globe in sixty minutes of saving energy.

Why join this symbolic effort? Because it forces us all to pay attention to the energy we use. When we turn off the lights in our cabin, no one will likely notice. But when all of Sydney, Australia, went dark last year on the first Earth Hour, when the lights winked out at the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, and buildings across the city, it was visible from space. (Check out the video at Earth Hour.)

Switching off the nonessential lights and appliances for an hour isn't much of a sacrifice, but it is useful in showing us just how much energy we use, and how much of that we actually need. It's an opportunity to change habits and find ways to conserve, as our personal contribution to greening our footprint and lowering the amount of greenhouse gases each of us is responsible for adding to Earth's atmosphere. It's a way to begin to lighten our impact on the planet.

So spread the word, and join millions of people the world around this Saturday night in showing you want to make a difference. Turn out your lights and turn off your appliances from eight to nine o'clock. And turn on your global consciousness.

While you're at it, go outside and look at the stars. The moon won't have risen yet, so the Milky Way should shimmer like a silvery river running across the sky. Looking south, the bright star you see is Sirius, the closest star to Earth, in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. Looking at the night sky is a great way to refresh your sense of wonder, and remember how easy it is to love this living Earth and the galaxy it spins in.

Listen to my podcast this week for more on Earth Hour.

I'll be on the road until April 15, so won't be posting again until after I return. After the find-spring outing, Richard and I will drive US 50, America's loneliest road, to the Pacific Coast, where I'll be doing some research for my next article for Audubon magazine, on how we can "green" death. (Check out "Raising the Roof," my article on green roofs in the current issue.)

Spring spinach for localvores

2008-03-18T20:03:00.006-06:00

It didn't snow today here at 7,000 feet in the southern Rockies, so after last night's silvery coat of frost burned off in the morning sun, we took the row covers off the spinach in our kitchen garden. The crinkly green leaves are just starting to lift off the warm surface of the soil, but they're not quite big enough to pick yet. After an unusually long and cold winter, I'm eager to get back to eating food grown from my own soil.

I planted the spinach last fall just in time for them to sprout and grow a few tiny leaves before the weather got too cold and the days too short for them to do more than hang on under the insulation of the row covers. But now that the equinox is almost here, and the days are lengthening relatively fast, my spinach plants are perking up. I'll thin them this weekend, and by next week, I'll pick a few leaves for our lunch time salads. The localvore in me is getting impatient to taste my terroir again!

It's time to plant the sugar snap peas too, plus some other spring greens. Last year we discovered chervil with its lacy leaves and delicate licorice flavor - it's a wonderful addition to sandwiches and salads. This year I'm going to plant tat soi (also called bok choi), turnips (I'll pick them tiny to steam greens and all), and I'm trying gala mache, also called corn salad or lamb's lettuce as well.

As always, I rely on plantswoman and cook Renee Shepherd of Renee's Seeds for my gourmet kitchen garden seeds. She knows gardening, and she knows flavor and cooking, and the combination makes for unbeatable seed varieties and prodigious and yummy harvests. Thanks for satisfying this localvore's hunger, Renee!

Greening the places we live

2008-03-11T19:36:00.006-06:00

Since returning from Albuquerque last month, where I spoke at the New Mexico Xeriscape Council's national conference on water conservation and sustainable landscaping, I've been thinking about the rich rewards of living close to nature, of nurturing the community of the land right at home.

My husband, Richard, and I live on a half-block of formerly decaying industrial property on what used to be the wrong side of town, a place that once was a blight in its neighborhood and now blooms so exuberantly with wildflowers in summer that passers-by stop to take pictures. Our kitchen garden, sprouting in raised beds where above-ground oil tanks once sat, is so bountiful that we feed friends and family and still have enough left over to feast ourselves. Our house, while not yet finished, is so full of light and so inclusive of the views from all around that people exclaim in delight about its connection to the world outside when they walk inside.

In the decade-plus since Richard and I adopted this property, we've put in a lot of work. But it hasn't been hard, or expensive to return the place to health. It just took vision, and a good deal of stubbornness. (The latter, anyone who knows me will tell you, is a quality I have in spades.) The return for our work is an abundance of joy in watching what we've nurtured grow and flourish. Greening this half-block gives us hope that our species can have a positive impact on the places we live. It's profoundly uplifting to see what living lovingly and generously on the land can do. It brings us home as part of the community of the land right here where we live. That's a gift I cherish.

(For more on the story of our restoration of what we only half-jokingly call our "decaying industrial empire," read my entry in the Audubon Magazine blog: "Greening our very own decaying industrial empire.")

Talking books on Title Page tv

2008-03-11T19:07:00.006-06:00

If you've not seen the newest entry in the genre of book discussion shows, go look at Titlepage tv. The first episode of this internet book talk show is up now, and it's a good beginning. Host Daniel Menaker interviews four novelists I didn't expect to see sitting at the same set: Richard Price, Colin Harrison, Susan Choi, and Charles Bock. Each of them gets a chance to talk about their latest novel, prodded by good questions by Menaker, and then the four talk about creativity and the writing stories. If I were teaching creative writing, I'd want my students to watch this episode in part to see these four novelists, but also to get a glimmer of how writers come up with profound stories and how they choose to describe their work. But it's not a class, it's a discussion between artists, shaped by an informed and intelligent host who has actually read the books he's talking about. (He even reads passages on camera.)

Here's what I loved most about this first episode: Menaker is a charming and knowledgeable interviewer, and the novelists were . . . just themselves. Not tarted up for tv, not stretching to explain their story in a 30-second sound-bite. They had time to talk, and some were clearly better at articulating the whys and wherefores of their novels than others. That was refreshing. For example, Richard Price starts out stone-faced, slumped a bit in his chair, holding his head at a funny angle and saying "uh" a lot. And as Menaker draws him out, his answers become more animated and his eyes light up, and pretty soon he's sitting up and gesturing with his hands and making his novel and its characters come alive. That's the treat: getting to hear a novelist show us his or her passion for the story they birthed.

Titlepage tv isn't perfect: the camera work needs, well, work. The set is pretty spare. And it would be really nice if they'd take questions from readers. But it works. It's like getting to sit in on a book group with writers talking about their own books. For free. On your computer or iPhone or other browsing device anytime you want to listen. How cool is that? Very cool, I'd say.

Thanks Titlepage! I'm looking forward to watching your work evolve.

Living in a "regenerative" way

2008-02-23T18:53:00.011-07:00

My apologies for the silence. It's been nearly two weeks since my last post, the one that opened a new "blog duet" with poet and blogger on community Janet Riehl, in which we are considering the balance between outward-aiming work in the world and the inward work necessary to sustain the spirit and energy that outward work draws on. I'm usually pretty good about maintaining that balance, but in the past week, I "spent" all of my outward-aiming work energy on speaking engagements, so blogging just had to wait until I could let the new ideas settle and hear myself think.

Yesterday, Richard and I drove home from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where I spoke at the New Mexico Xeriscape Council's 13th national conference on water conservation and sustainable landscape design. Some 400 attendees involved in how we design the landscapes where we live and work gathered to hear a fascinating and inspiring line-up of speakers, beginning with New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, who pointed out that conservation is the cheapest and most effective way to "find" new sources of water. Bingaman quoted US Bureau of Reclamation studies saying every dollar spent on water conservation yields around $5 dollars worth of water that can now be used in other ways -- or just allowed to flow downstream to maintain the health of aquatic ecosystems.

Other highlights of the conference: Natural capitalist Hunter Lovins talked compellingly about the opportunities in environmental challenges, from developing renewable energy sources and carbon cap trading to restoring ecosystems. Her three points of natural capitalism:
1. Buy time with increased energy and water-use efficiency.
2. Reinvent with natural technology after studying how nature - the ultimate sustainable, renewable system - does business.
3. Restore natural systems - healthy ecosystems provide trillions of dollars a year in "services" from cleaning and delivering fresh water to fixing carbon to regular CO2, the most important greenhouse gas.

Gloria Flora talked about how to work within human communities to bring change for the better: Find the common ground and work from there. Think in terms of transformation, not destruction. Peter Warshall gave us the global picture on conservation of water and energy. This nugget particularly struck me: 8 barrels of water are used in locating, recovering and refining every barrel of oil. (Yikes! That's a powerful incentive to consume less oil, whether in driving or choosing foods and clothing not dependent on oil-consumptive pesticides and fertilizers.)

NPR correspondent and "doyenne of dirt" Ketzel Levine took us on a tour of some of the heroic ordinary people working with restoring local plant communities whom she has interviewed in the network's series on global climate change. (Check out Ketzel's fabulous NPR blog, "Talking Plants.") Sculptor Betsy Damon showed us the results of her three decades spent using landscape sculpture to restore rivers and educate people in China about clean, healthy water.

The phrase that sticks in my mind from the conference came from Keith Bowers of Biohabitats, an ecological restoration firm based in Maryland. He talked about "regenerative design," designing landscapes and systems that renew or restore themselves, using the integrity of nature to also meet human needs. I hadn't come across the word before, but it was the perfect lead-in for my talk about how Richard and I stumbled into restoring what we only half-jokingly call our "decaying industrial empire," half a block of blighted property that is now the site of our house and our wildflower-filled yard, our lively organic kitchen garden and the restored block of urban creek that edges our property. (The photo at the top of the post is Indian paintbrush in our front-yard native grassland as it looks now; below is the "before" shot.)

We didn't set out to rescue this place, but once we bought it, there was no other option but to return it - and us - to health. It's been a tough project, and it's given us a lot of joy. (Nor are we finished, but that's the story of life!) Now I know it's been regenerative as well, because in restoring this place, much of its native plant community and some of the animals and insects as well, we've restored our own connection to the landscape where we live.

And that brings me back to the blog duet with Janet Riehl on the subject of keeping one's balance between outward-aiming work and inward-aiming sustenance. It seems to me that regenerative applies here too: if we work to make our lives regenerative, to make sure the rhythms of our days restore our own energy and enthusiasm as well as work to restore the communities around us, if we use nature as our model to keep our balance, surely we'll find the balance that brings us both fulfillment and joy.

Finding your balance: outward and inward

2008-02-12T20:34:00.004-07:00

I've been talking with poet and blogger Janet Riehl about how to find a balance between an outwardly focused life and an inward one. It's a subject important to us personally, as we find our lives becoming more public and our work more in demand. But recognizing the relationship between connection and stimulation on the one hand and solitude on the other is a crucial issue for all of us. How do we nurture ourselves and still nurture the world? There is no one answer: we all need to find our equilibrium between inward-focused spiritual and emotional work and the outward focus involved in creating new connections and tending existing relationships.

In this ongoing exploration of where the balance lies and how to find it, Janet and I have decided to start what she calls a "blog duet": I'll post my initial thoughts and then turn the virtual mic over to Janet, who will respond, and so on. We hope our back and forth postings will prove inspiring and useful!

I'll start with an admission: I'm an introvert, although I seem extroverted to most people because I've learned that outward-extending behavior. But acting like an extrovert doesn't make me someone who thrives on constant contact. In fact, the question I struggle with is this: If I'm always connected, always tuned to other people, how can I hear my own inner voice? If I'm listening to the other voices around me, I can't listen to the quiet voice of my own creativity, my spirit. I find that especially when I'm traveling for work and have to be "on" all the time in interacting with others, I become exhausted and need the quiet time that being anonymous brings in order to rest, check in with myself, and restore my inner equilibrium.

The other morning, for instance, my husband and I were in the nearest Big City sitting at a neighborhood deli that we've been visiting for nearly three decades, separately and together. We feel at home there because we recognize many of the faces of the regulars. But no one really knows us, or expects more than a smile; the place gives us the comfort of the familiar without the demands of intense connection.

The night before I was the headliner at a fundraising dinner for donors at a university institute. From cocktail hour until when I finished my "charla" sometime past ten (a charla is a "chat" in Spanish, and I use it in the sense of an informal reading and talk about what's in my mind and heart), I worked with a crowd of donors who didn't know that they cared about a relationship to nature and the community of the land. In the end, most of them realized that they did: they were charmed and kept me talking because they hungered for more.

After a "performance" like that, where I and my ideas and beliefs are on stage and in a sense on trial, I seek a place that offers the comfort of community and contact, but allows me my solitude in the midst of the crowd. It's exhilarating to be "on" and the center of attention, to feel your work touching other's hearts, but after it's over, it's like coming down from a sugar rush or a serious dose of caffeine. There's awful thud" when the energy is gone and you just need to curl in on yourself to recover.

For me that means quiet time when I can let the stimulation of other's emotions and thoughts subside, my thoughts clear like a pond going still after a rainstorm stirs it up. I use the image of a storm deliberately: what connection and conversation and the stimulation of being around other humans does is very like what a rainstorm does for a pond: it stirs up the bottom sediments, redistributing nutrients, changing the patterns of habitation and flow, and adding fresh water and nutrients as well as other lives washed.

In very much the same way, interaction with other people stirs up our thoughts and our patterns, adding new insights and data and changing our habits of thought and routine so that we see things in new ways and turn over our accustomed patterns. That's all healthy, if not easy. And finding the quiet time to listen within to both head and heart helps us settle again, lets the water still and clear and the new information and insight be integrated into who we already are.

Over to you now, Janet. . . .

(I'm illustrating this post with a photo I've used before of the full moon rising over the Sangre de Cristo Range blanketed with snow and washed with the last light of the sun. That brief period when the full moon is up and sunlight still illuminates the landscape represents for me the kind of balance I seek in my life, a balance that isn't static, but shifts as conditions shift. I shot that image last month in the next valley south of the one where we live. As with all the words and images in this blog, please ask for permission before using it in any way. Thank you!)

Writing from the couch with my heart outstretched

2008-02-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this from my favorite late-in-the-day workspace: the living room couch in front of the woodstove. And before you get the idea that writing is a cushy life involving lying on the couch and eating bon-bons and watching soap operas, let me assure you that there are no bon-bons anywhere in the neighborhood and I'm not watching soap operas (we don't have a television). The couch is just where I go when the day's store of energy is used up, but I haven't finished the day's work. I put my feet up and my computer in my lap, and keep writing.

Sometimes when I'm tired and still wrestling words at this time of night, I wonder if I'm crazy to write for a living. Perhaps. But the truth is, it's the only thing I want to do. I'm reminded of what Ken Washington, Director of Company Development for Minneapolis' renowned Guthrie Theater, said when I asked him for advice for young artists:

If you can do something else, do it. But if you are driven, don't let anyone stop you.

I spent the first decade of my career in field science, studying how ecosystems, the wild, self-sustaining communities made up of plants and animals and their relationships, shape the landscapes we share. I studied sagebrush, one of the West's iconic shrubs, wildfires, and the habitat needs of big animals like grizzly bears. I loved the work: it took me outside, gave me license to explore some of the wildest country in the lower 48 states, and nurtured my bond with the community of the land.

When a health crisis and divorce shattered that life, I moved away from the home I loved and thought I'd start over again in science. Until I found writing and was hooked by the lure of telling stories, whether true or invented. What keeps me at this crazy business after two decades, eleven books and literally hundreds of magazine articles and newspaper and radio commentaries is knowing that what I write is a gift: it could be just the thing to lift someone's spirits, teach them something they didn't know they needed to know, or spark that "ah-hah" moment when suddenly we see the world differently.

Good writing can change minds, nourish spirits, and touch hearts. Good writing can, I believe, change the world, one reader at a time. And there's much in the world I'd like to change, starting with mending our fractured relationship to nature, which I believe has a lot to do with other ills like poverty, war, and violence.

So here I sit on the couch, writing long after my work day should be done. Because - thank you, Ken Washington, for helping me understand this - although I could do other things, I don't want to. My heart is in writing. And to write well, my writing has to come from my heart.

In her song "Goodnight America," sing/songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter talks about dreaming with her heart outstretched as if it were her hand. That's a powerful image: it speaks of courage and vulnerability, of being true to one's inner self as well as to the outer world. So here's my new writing goal: to write with my heart outstretched as if it were my hand.

The reading business, not just the book business

2008-01-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

In "Freed from the Page, but a Book Nonetheless" in Sunday's online New York Times, San Jose State business professor Randall Stross reviews Amazon's new Kindle e-book reader. It's really less of a review than a look at where the publishing business is, and what Kindle may mean for readers and authors alike.

I'm not terribly excited about the Kindle, which is expensive at $399, and seems like a very clunky design and clumsy interface despite its use of the cool new E ink technology. But Stross makes three really interesting points:

What makes Kindle so appealing is the ability to download books and other digital content wirelessly from anywhere Sprint's EVDO network reaches. The point of that techno-jargon is this: Kindle makes obtaining a new book incredibly convenient. If you've got your Kindle in hand and you're within reach of Sprint's wireless network (which would be in any major urban area), you just search on Amazon for the book you want, and in minutes, you can start reading. You don't have to go to the library, the bookstore or even sit at your computer. Kindle thus becomes a bookstore itself, at your fingertips, as it were. That makes downloading books as simple as downloading songs, and if you've followed the revolution in the music industry, you know what that's done to sales of CDs (they're dwindling fast).

Does this mean the long-forecast beginning of the end of the actual book? Not necessarily: there's the cost, and the clunky factor. Still, as Stross notes, Amazon sold out of the devices soon after they were introduced and they're having a hard time keeping them in stock. (But we don't know how big the initial manufacturing run was or how many have sold since.) The Kindle IS the first e-book reader to actually sell well. That's interesting in itself.

The second thing Stross said that interested me is his response to Apple CEO Steve Jobs' comment about the book industry at the recent MacWorld. When asked about the Kindle, Jobs, in one of his more arrogant and less-visionary moments, said in part: "the fact is that people don't read anymore." Not true, says Stross, citing a Book Industry Study Group report that 408 million books were sold last year, bringing in $15 billion in revenue, not a bad chunk of change. Stross also cites a survey for the AP that found that 27 percent of respondents hadn't read a book the previous year, while the same percentage had read more than 15 - and eight percent had read more than 51 books the previous year. (You go!) Yes, concludes Stross, some people don't read - but some read a lot. (And we authors love you who do.)

The end of Stross' review is really intriguing. The book world, he says, has always had "an invisible asset": the passionate attachment that its authors, editors and most frequent customers have to books themselves. Indeed, in this respect, he continues, avid book readers resemble avid Mac users.

The object we are accustomed to calling a book is undergoing a profound modification as it is stripped of its physical shell. Kindle’s long-term success is still unknown, but Amazon should be credited with imaginatively redefining its original product line, replacing the book business with the reading business.

Replacing the book business with the reading business: What does the reading business look like? And what will that mean for authors, publishers and readers? That's something worth thinking about.

By the by, here's an indication of the changes to come: in "New Literary Program to Make its Home Online," in today's NY Times, Motoko Rich reports that Daniel Menaker, most recently executive editor-in-chief of Random House has signed on as host of "Titlepage," an online book show, beginning March 3. Described as "passionate conversations about books" Titlepage will feature Menaker and several authors in roundtable discussion and will "air" on titlepage.tv, a new internet television channel.

What do you think the reading business will be? And how can authors help shape it? Let me know.

Writing my life - and leading with my heart

2008-01-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of negotiating a contract for the memoir I've been working on for, oh, two decades or so. When I started writing it, I had no idea what I was doing, no idea of what memoir was, and no real understanding of how to tell the story - hence the very long gestation. I describe this as "a book of my heart," and it's true. It's taught me who I am in many ways, what I care about, what motivates me, and why I live the way I do. It's a story about love and life: how I nearly lost both, and how my relationship to nature, the living world that nurtures us, gradually brought me back. Back to life and love, and most importantly, back to myself - to believing in and loving who I am, just as I am.

There was a time when I was sure this was a "big" book, a book that would bring me a contract with a big publisher and get me the kind of exposure all of us dream about. I thought it was my chance, my corner, my way to finally get my due. And I couldn't figure out why I struggled with the story. It sounded too heroic, or too stilted, or too forced. It just didn't sing.

A few years ago, on my way to a residency at the Mesa Refuge in California - two heavenly weeks of time to write uninterrupted, I read a slim book called Faith, by Buddhist author Sharon Salzberg. And I had one of those "Duh!" moments. I realized that I had been going about the story all wrong: I couldn't write it with the idea that it would bring me recognition or mention in the New York Times Book Review or big advances or being published by the right publisher because that's not what I believe in. That's not why I write. I write because I love the world, because I want to spread my own ocean of light over the ocean of darkness, because I hope to touch people's hearts. I write because I believe, as author and psychologist Mary Pipher said in The Shelter of Each Other, "Good stories have the power to save us."

I write because I want to tell the kind of story that can save me, you, all of us, and this singular living Earth, the only planet we have ever known.

So when I finished the memoir - when it finally sang, beginning to end - I didn't sent it to the hot-shot agent who read an earlier draft and loved it, the guy who doesn't take a project unless he can earn money from it, or to the pair of agents who love great stories and who loved my proposal, or to the editors at big houses who had said good things about earlier versions of it. I sent it to the editor-in-chief of University of Texas Press because she loves my work, she's market-savvy, and she publishes beautiful, thoughtful books. She has time to talk to me and she believes in what I have to say. She cares about the work as well as the bottom line. So I picked love over prestige and money.

That's not to say I don't intend to sell as many copies as I can when it comes out next year - I want those books to fly off the shelves! But if I don't live what I write about, the story won't work or touch its audience. I have to be the person I say I am, all the way though the process. This is truly a project of my heart, so I'm leading with my heart as I send it out into the world. I can hardly wait!

Turn off the tv. . . .

2008-01-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

Sometimes companies do such smart things that you have to give them a big "atta girl." Today's goes to title nine, the women's fitness and casual wear company named after the Title IX Act that prohibited sexual discrimination in any educational program or activity receiving federal aid. (The act passed in 1972, thirty-five years ago, and both the federal government and educational institutions are still trying to weasel their way out of compliance. But that's another story - read it at the Women's Sports Foundation's web site.)

What title nine the clothing company did that I think is great is in the latest catalog. In "Too Much News," a short piece on the inside front page, founder Missy Parks sounds a call to stop being so fearful and selfish, get off our duffs and get outside that reads in part:

"I've noticed that the more news I hear the more I tend to worry. Really, it's hard to keep up with what we're supposed to be worrying about. Should we worry about the plain-vanilla flu or Bird Flu? Should we worry about a Recession, A depression, a global financial meltdown? Is there a child predator in our neighborhood or a crazed kidnapper lurking in our city? . . . .
Or perhaps, I should remind myself that statistically our children have never been safer, we have never been healthier and our nation has never been wealthier. . . . So perhaps what I should do is turn off the tv, shut down the computer . . . [and] go for a hike, buckle up, buckle up my children, eat well -- most of the time, lend a helping hand, get some sleep, express gratitude."

I've been reading Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's book with the illuminating sub-title, Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It's about just what it says: what it costs our children - and our culture - to be so alienated from nature. Not from expeditions to far-flung places or nature shows on television or computer, but every-day nature, the pockets of wildness right around us. What our kids are missing is time spent outside in the places where the processes of life go on in their own messy and fascinating fashion. Time to dream, to imagine, to invent, to be in the company of other species, time to simply watch life happen. Time spent in the community of nature, as Louv and may others point out, is rejuvenating, restorative, calming, healing, and inspiring.

So as Missy Parks says, let's turn off the tv and get outside - and remember what life's about!

New year, new resolutions

2008-01-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, a friend came to visit for New Year's and brought with her a beautiful tradition that my husband Richard and I continue to celebrate: we each light a candle and close the old year by briefly describing what we are proud of, and then voice our intentions for the new. My resolution that first year was to focus my writing - not on earning a living, which was crucial to me, but on accepting only those assignments that would allow me to learn something I wanted to learn or express something important to me. For a freelancer, I was making a perilous choice. Has it worked? That's the subject of my podcast for this week. Hear more (or read the text of the podcast) at my web si te. (Click on the title of the podcast, and then once it has loaded, click on play arrow, the arrow facing right in the audio bar. Don't click on the word "start" - nothing will happen.)

I wish for you heartfelt resolutions and much joy in the year ahead!

New Year's Eve - by one calendar, at least

2007-12-31T20:14:00.000-07:00

It's New Year's Eve, and my husband Richard and I are not out partying. It's not so much that we're not as sociable as we used to be, or that we don't stay up late much, or that we're getting old. All of those are true to some extent, but they're not the main reason we're not out partaking in the revels marking the end of one year and the imminent arrival of a new one.

The main reason is the timing. For me, the changing of the year has already happened, on winter solstice. The night of December 21 was the longest night of the year and the days have lengthened noticeably since then. So since I've already celebrated the turning of the solar year, it seems to me like this New Year thing is old news.

The business of marking January 1st as the beginning of a new calendar year is a relatively new phenomenon in human history. The ancient Romans apparently began a new numbered year on January 1 (although that day actually varied a good bit since the years weren't precisely calculated), but even as late as the Middle Ages, different European countries began the new year on dates varying from Christmas to Easter to the first of September. The standardization of the year and its opening day as January 1 was the result of the widespread adoption of the Gregorian calendar (named for Pope Gregory XIII) between 1582 (when the Pope ordained the new calendar) and 1752 (when renegade countries like Britain and Scotland finally got around to adopting it).

The adoption of the Gregorian calendar was quite handy on the whole, since it corrected some serious issues the Church had with the Julian calendar, including the fact that the day of Easter drifted around too much, and the aggregate errors in year length required large adjustments from time to time.

But the late medieval astronomers and mathematicians who devised the Gregorian calendar deviated from the solar calendar in one respect important to me: rather than have the new year begin on the day after winter solstice, which is when the Northern Hemisphere turns toward light, life and spring, they set it as a week after Christmas, so as not to distract from the religious holiday.

No wonder then that the official New Year's Day seems a bit anti-climatic to me: the solar year ended on winter solstice, a week and a half ago.

Still, Richard and I will each light a candle tonight, and looking at that flame that represents light in the darkness, new beginnings, hope and life, we'll say our resolutions for this new year, solar or Gregorian or whatever.

Happy New Year, no matter what calendar you use!

Lighting the Darkness

2007-12-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Every year my husband Richard and I celebrate the passing of winter’s longest nights with a party: we fill our bellies with homemade eggnog and other treats, and our hearts with the companionship of friends and family.

To warm our spirits, we light the darkness, filling dozens of paper bags with a scoop of sand and a small votive candle, and lining our block with these luminarias. As dusk falls, partygoers help us light them one by one; the small flames burn through the night heralding the sun’s return at dawn.

Light is a traditional part of winter celebrations in latitudes where the tilt in Earth’s axis sends one hemisphere away from the sun during half of each year. The resultant darkness inspires the menorah of Hanukkah, Advent and Kwanzaa candles, and the Yule log burned in holiday bonfires.

Before our relatively recent understanding of the effect of Earth’s rotational eccentricity on day-length, it must have seemed as if the sun retreated each fall, leaving only darkness and cold. Then, as if by magic, our celestial source of light and heat had a change of heart after winter solstice and the days grew longer again.

No wonder my Celtic and Scandinavian ancestors lit bonfires atop hills near their homes on the shortest night of the year. The ancient Norse illuminated the dark times with a 12-day feast in crowded halls lit by burning log and taper, where bards recited epic poems in which heroes triumphed over the darkness of evil just as the returning light would eventually banish winter’s long nights.

The luminarias that Richard and I light every year are a tradition born in Hispanic New Mexico from bonfires and hanging paper lanterns lit to guide the procession portraying the Holy Family in their search for shelter. (The paper-bag lights are still called farolitos, “little lanterns,” in Santa Fe, but are luminarias elsewhere.)

Holiday lights are meant to illuminate, a word that means “to light up,” and also, appropriate to our modern insight into the way Earth’s tilted axis is responsible for the annual alternation in day length, “to explain, make clear, elucidate.” Light alleviates intellectual darkness, bestowing knowledge and understanding.

As I strike a match to light a wick at our holiday party, and place a flaming votive candle on its bed of sand inside a paper bag, I think about the lessons in luminarias. The bags by themselves are flimsy and flammable, the candles too dainty for sizeable light, the sand simply grit underfoot.

Yet together candle, lunch bag, and sand do their part to illuminate the darkness: each slender wick feeds liquid wax into flame; the paper walls shelter flame from wind and snow and their translucency diffuses light; the sand grounds the bag and prevents the flame from incinerating the paper that protects it.

Inside their flammable shelters the candles burn steadily hour after hour through the darkness of a long winter night. When dawn comes many of these ethereal lamps are still glowing softly, demonstrating the extraordinary resilience and beauty inherent in the simplest of things.

As I light another wick and watch the streetlights wink on, clouding my view of the darkening sky, I wonder if our ancient fear of the night has blinded us to an illumination visible only in true darkness: the light of the stars. Away from the glare of electric lighting, the night reveals heaven’s miracle: we see the stars only by light from the past which has traveled years across space to reach our eyes, while their current light shines only in our future.

Standing with family and friends in the darkness of a blessed winter night, I turn my face to the silver-spangled heavens. My spirit glows, lit by the commonplace grace of small candles burning in simple paper bags.

Happy Solstice, all!

(This essay first appeared in my weekly column in the Salida, Colorado, Mountain Mail newspaper, and was heard on KHEN community radio, 90.6 FM, Salida, Colorado. All rights reserved.)

A year in butterflies

2007-12-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

My friend Bob Pyle, author and lepidopterist extraordinaire, is embarking on an amazing journey around North America: in 2008, he will attempt to find and observe as many butterfly species as he can in the United States and Canada. His Butterfly Big Year will serve as a witness to the status and lives of our 800-some butterfly species, and also as a benefit to raise funds for - and awareness of conservation of these amazing pollinators. (Imagine knowing how to transform your body from crawling caterpillar to fluttering adult - that's an ordinary part of life for a butterfly.) You can take part in his historic journey by pledging a donation to the Xerces Society for every species he sees and documents, and you'll also be able to read about his travels and experiences in the book Swallowtail Seasons: The First Butterfly Big Year, to be published by Houghton Mifflin (once Bob makes it home at the end of the year and gets to writing!). Bob's a scientist, but he's also a man in love with butterflies, and this journey reflects both his passion and his knowledge. I eager to hear his dispatches from along the way.

Snow!

2007-12-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

After a fall so warm and dry that we had no significant moisture between September and December, a storm late last week finally brought us rain turning to snow - lots of it. Our local ski area, Monarch, went from bare ground to skiers' nirvana with over 70 inches - almost six feet - of new snow on Thursday and Friday. Another storm blew in yesterday, dumping foot in the high country.

With that kind of snow, it was impossible to resist playing hooky today. So we didn't: this afternoon we piled our skis, boots, and poles in the car, along with our daughter Molly, home for a pre-holiday visit from Portland, and headed for the mountains. Twenty minutes later, we were parked in a white wonderland, with fresh snow covering trees, rocks, mountainsides, road, and no one else in sight. We laced up our boots, clicked into bindings, grabbed our poles and began to schuss uphill.

Flakes of snow twirled out of thinning clouds overhead; two ravens coasted by, silent but for the sound of air passing through their stiff black wings. Then it was just the creaking of fresh snow under skis and labored breathing as we climbed the old narrow gauge railroad grade. Ours were the first tracks - except for the twin-hoofed prints of a herd of mule deer that bounded uphill through the snow as we watched.

We skied uphill for almost an hour, then followed another railroad right-of-way around a forested ridge, swooping down and across a creek almost buried under mounded snow. We saw more deer tracks, met two other skiers, and two guys in a Jeep looking for a lost pair of dogs. We startled a flock of mountain bluebirds caught uphill by the sudden storms, and watched a long-tailed, rusty-capped sparrow hop about, foraging for seeds on the surface of the snow.

For the last half a mile, we raced the sunset downhill. We schussed around the last bend as the clouds overhead turned brilliant pink and then began to fade. Red-cheeked, out of breath, and almost giddy, we stowed our skis and slithered down the snowy road toward home as the early darkness of a winter night swallowed the landscape and its mantle of fresh snow.

This afternoon's outing reminded me - again - of the joy of simply getting outside and losing ourselves and our cares in the company of the living world. How easily I forget, and how generous and beautiful is the remembering!

Why Blog? Because it's not all about (Me)me

2007-11-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking about the blogging life, since Dani Greer, who writes about new authors and new books, and about the land, and Janet Riehl, storyteller and wise woman, tagged me for "It's all about (Me)me." So here are my answers to this meme on the blogging life:

1. How long have you been blogging? I'm a late-bloomer. I didn't figure out that I loved telling the stories in the data better than I loved collecting the data until I had spent ten years as a field biologist studying wildfires, sagebrush communities, and grizzly bear habitat. My first book wasn't published until I was 34 - which, oddly enough, was the same age my botanist great-grandfather was when he found his professional niche studying deserts around the world. So it should be no surprise that I didn't discover blogging until earlier this year.

2. What inspired you to start blogging and who are your mentors? I wanted a place to write in a less formal way than my published writing, a place to muse and try out ideas and report on what I read. My mentors are other bloggers, especially those who highlight - and illustrate - the places we live in and love, and the stories we tell about what makes us so beautifully and imperfectly human, bloggers like Sherrie York at Brush and Baren, Susan Albert at Lifescapes, Donna Druchunas at Sheep to Shawl, and Deb Robson at Independent Stitch. I learn something from every blog I read - the blogosphere is like having a whole world of storytellers at my fingertips!

3. Are you trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun? Money? Fun? Hah hah hah hah! I'm a writer. I make my living from my articles for national magazines and newspapers, from teaching and speaking, and from the books I write (ten published, the two-book set I'm whaling away at now will make 11&12 or double-eleven, however you count it). I'm blogging as another way to write about what I believe in: the importance of restoring our relationship with the community of the land. To give voice to those whose voices we cannot hear, to find new ways to tell the stories of my head and heart.

4. What 5 things do you struggle with online? 1) Finding time to blog. 2) Remembering to shoot photos to illustrate my blog. 3) Remembering that I don't have to be perfect. 4) Brevity. 5) Finding the words when I find time to blog.

5. What 5 things do you love about being online? 1) The blogosphere is like radio in a way: you send your words out into the ether and often have no idea who they reach because you can't see your audience. But listeners and readers find you, often in unexpected ways. 2) The immediacy of it. 3) The informal and random nature of the connections; the huge web of relationships that grow organically. 4) Other bloggers & 5) Readers, bless you all!

I'm tagging Sherrie York, Donna Druchunas, and Deb Robson. Your turn now. . . .

Storytelling and the winter garden

2007-11-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

Next week I'm visiting Janet Riehl's blog, Riehl Life: Village Wisdom for the 21st Century, which is just what it says: a compendium of every-day insight from across cultures and generations. Janet is writing about the practical stuff we learn from life, and what the arts have to teach us about what it means to be fully human (as in "humane"). One of her threads is about why stories matter, and that's my topic. So catch me on Riehl Life on Monday!

I've also just been invited to join Audubon magazine's new blog, The Perch, as a writer about gardening and western environmental issues. So look for me on my winter garden sometime in the next week or so. I've got spinach, arugula, and stir-fry greens growing slowly under insulating row covers despite night-time lows of ten degrees! When I throw off the white row cover fabric at mid-morning after the frost has burned off and see those crinkly green leaves underneath, I am reminded of how sometimes just the smallest gesture - like remembering to cover my garden each night - makes a huge difference. My attentiveness to those hardy greens means the difference between life and death for them and it gives us a bit of fresh food from our own soil through the winter.

Last night when friends from Boulder stopped by, I clipped some stalks from the rosemary - also under a row cover - to give them for their dinner. Smelling the rich perfume of fresh rosemary leaves on my hands, I was grateful for the gifts that plants give us. As winter closes in here in the mountains, the nights grow longer and life slows down, the touches of green in my garden remind me that all of life's cycles come around again - and again.

What Wildness is This (again)

2007-11-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

What Wildness is This, the new Story Circle Network anthology from University of Texas Press showcasing women's voices on the landscapes of the Southwest, is garnering some great reviews. I've got an essay in the book - it's the thirteenth anthology to include my work - so naturally, I think it's a great book. But I'd love it anyway for the range and depth of the writers it includes, from ones I know and am inspired by like Joy Harjo, Denise Chavez and Barbara Kingsolver to writers I didn't know before and am delighted to meet in print, like Cindy Bellinger, quoted in the second review below.

Here are some recent comments. The Texas Observer writes:

The women who have contributed to What Wildness is this have been given a channel for sharing their clear, and often startling, visions. In doing so, they have carved out a domain of their own.

New Mexico magazine adds:

This is a book where none can escape the truth of the land. These women, more than most, appreciate the experience of a life that is untamed. They show us how to balance duties and dreams until we walk with confidence, knowing how "each step deliberate on the skin of the earth, we pick our way across a plateau strewn with wildflowers and bones."

It's a pleasure to be part of such a fine book. Thanks to the editors, Susan Wittig Albert, Susan Hanson, Jan Epton Seale, and Paula Stallings Yost, and Theresa May and the staff of UT Press for putting together a book that's giving a bunch of feisty and inspiring women's voices the notice they deserve!