Nature

How the hell does anyone experience anything directly? There’s so much chaff and scrapings in the way. Odd emotions, opinions, lists of things to do. Running narratives and lusts. Little fears like cockleburs, big ones that wake you up at night. Dogma and certainty, hunger and pain. As I was telling someone the other day—while [...]

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There was something special yesterday along the Rio Grande, down in the canyon by Pilar. I don’t have any proof—the photos can’t do it justice—but I had an honest-to-God numinous encounter. Nature magic! And it had a voice… That was the amazing thing at first, that the river really spoke. Yes, yes, you’ve heard such [...]

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I whipped out the Pentax the other night to take a telephoto close-up of this creature. There’s something vaguely disturbing here, but I kind of like it. For behold, it cometh in the night:

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Today I decided to sweep the dirt. The front of the house looked like hell. The old elm tree that will one day take the north wall with it sheds limbs and twigs like I do split ends, and a few days of high winds had pretty much trashed the place. Yesterday I picked most [...]

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This is the Rio Grande del Rancho. It flows through the valley less than half a mile away, although I took this picture from a vantage point on NM Rt. 518, about 15 minutes away by car. We live on the other side of that mountain in the background and a little ways north. This [...]

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What is it about a pond that can move me so much? From my earliest days, freshwater ponds have evoked deep, complex feelings for me. I have no idea why. But show me a real pond—hard to find these days, most places—with good water, a lively web of life including well-established plants, enough breadth and [...]

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When the government treats its own citizens as real or potential enemies, you’re beyond having a problem. It’s a whole new world. When all the President’s advisors are Wall Street banksters and the CEO of General Electric is head of a jobs commission, when the Army builds schools in Afghanistan while thousands of teachers lose [...]

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Names and addresses omitted to protect the innocent, of course. An older friend of mine who lives by a beautiful secret spot in a handmade home sent me an article about the negative effects of “fracking,” a method of releasing trapped gases from underground deposits by injecting noxious chemicals at high pressure deep into the [...]

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