There’s been some unusual activity in the garden lately. A squirrel walked up to me as I sat still sipping coffee, looked me squarely in the eye and didn’t run away until I called his bluff. A pair of bluebirds, normally quite shy, are aggressively guarding the birdhouse they made into a home. They let…
“I am summer, come to lure you away from your computer… come dance on my fresh grass, dig your toes into my beaches.” — Oriana Green Maybe it was appropriate that today, June 21, the Summer Solstice, I awoke at 4 AM—just in time to mark the exact minute (4:13 AM CST) of the tip…
If you can’t decide what you want to doIf you can’t stand what people say to youIf you can’t see when your eyes are open wideIf you ask yourself what your doing and there’s no replyGet outside— Robert Palmer, Get Outside Sometimes you reach the end of the day and you don’t know what you’ve…
“Deep in the forest there is something sacred that exists without a perceptible function. This is the central core, the navel of the world, and I want to return to that place.” — Hayao Miyazaki Last month I walked through a forest with several coworkers on a group hike. One of them commented that the…
Star and coronal and bellApril underfoot renews,And the hope of man as wellFlowers among the morning dews.— A. E. Housman, Spring Morning Spring in the air, with a twist of biting cold thrust like a knife into the gut to keep you on your toes. That’s April in New England—best to appreciate the brief moments…
“If there seems to be no communication between you and the people around you, try to draw close to those things that will not ever leave you. The nights are still there and the winds that roam through the trees and over many lands.” — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet We’re often…
We are the first double-leaf sprout, two inches out of the ground. We need rain, or we may not grow more than this. — Rumi The rain rolled in right on schedule, really, timed to mask the Aurora Borealis thoroughly and keep my mind from wandering north. Quietly scheming to drop everything and drive as…
“We do not know how life is going to turn out. Therefore the story has no beginning, and the end can only be vaguely hinted at. The life of man is a dubious experiment. It is a tremendous phenomenon only in numerical terms. Individually, it is so fleeting, so insufficient, that it is literally a…
Cape Cod is a summer playground, we all know that. But what of winter and early spring? These “off” seasons are often described by well-meaning seasonal snobs as desolate and depressing. I’d argue for the stark beauty of isolation, and seek it out whenever possible. The Cape isn’t desolate off-season; it’s dormant. If you listen…
“On every side, the eye ranged over successive circles of towns, rising one above another, like the terraces of a vineyard, till they were lost in the horizon. Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the…
