Liking Them Apples

Some things in life come easily, slide into place, pour forth, work out. Other things are damn stubborn and don’t want to budge no matter what you do. This fall, apples growing on trees all over our neighborhoods have been in the former category. Have you noticed how heavy laden the branches were? I wish I’d taken more pictures to capture all that deep red color, everywhere. It was richness portrayed in fruit. Just by looking at it all, your … Read More

So They’ve Always Been White…Are They Also Male?

Hiking up Mount Osceola—one of the 4,000 footers in the White Mountains—last weekend with friends, I noticed that there were about equal numbers of men and women. We were all in our layers, climbing over the rocks, getting glimpses of a breathtaking blanket of orange amidst the first snow of the season. It was a wonderful place to be on a dramatic fall day. Our party consisted of three couples, and we merged very nicely. As far as I could … Read More

Take Me to the River…or the Stream, or the Pond

Driving back from early evening tennis a few towns over, I saw the sun hanging low over the rolling New Hampshire fields—still glorious, as if darkness weren’t right on its heels. Going to the pond would mean taking a significant detour from my route and then, after parking, hoofing it under the highway and over to the water. I briefly considered doing the sensible thing: heading home for a shower before joining my family for dinner. But that was really … Read More

What the Rockies Have Done For Me Lately

“Look at that…just miles and miles of emptiness!” “But Mom, what we’re seeing is not empty at all…it’s full-up with Nature.” This is, more or less, how a bit of conversation between my older son and me went as we were driving through the vastness of Wyoming last week. Conversations were few in that car, actually, as we all just tried to drink in the dry spaciousness of what we were seeing, mile after mile. Small talk seemed, well, particularly … Read More

A Woodpile is a Thing of Beauty

It’s funny sometimes, isn’t it, how a task that might at first seem like just another chore to complete on a long list of others becomes more than that, takes on a certain depth and fullness, even gives new life? Take wood-stacking, for instance. Our neighbors down the road had what looked to be a wood-stacking party yesterday. A bunch of cars pulled in, and lots of people wearing gloves were moving about purposefully as I drove by in the … Read More

It’s Easter, and More

Over the course of the past Holy Week, my husband was preparing for services culminating with Easter today — the pinnacle of the Christian calendar. Meanwhile, I was, for the first time, teaching a unit on ancient India to high school juniors. In my mind’s eye, I saw temples with elaborate carvings and women in colorful saris as I made the daily drive up and down a fairly bland stretch of highway. It made for a kind of interesting mash-up … Read More

Abundant Life, Followed Closely by Goblins and Saints

The Abundant Life truck was here yesterday to make a delivery; I’m not sure yet whether that’ll see us through All Saints’ Day and beyond. From the name, would you know that the place sells wood, gas and pellet stoves? Yes, indeed…and they boast the “lowest prices and the largest display” in all of New Hampshire, too. The guy waiting on us there a couple of weeks ago confirmed that the original owner was actively Christian; apparently he liked the idea … Read More

Robert Frost State of Mind

Here we are again, in the middle of October, a time of year that always seems like a kind of precipice between the living and the dying, when we are at once basking in the sun-filled richness that Nature is offering us everywhere and at the same time wondering how we will cope with the inevitable darkness and sense of loss that await us right around the corner. Not to be too dramatic or anything. We got a newsletter from … Read More

Claiming Independence from the Indoor-Outdoor Divide, and Getting Some Religion too

It used to be that you could put things in different compartments and they would stay there, divided from one another in their own individual boxes. Nowadays, however— and this isn’t just in my house, either—certain things are getting mixed together in new ways. At first it can be a bit disorienting, like a kind of shift in the earth; but then it seems right and good. You look at your boxes again and wonder what else you can do … Read More

In Praise of Mud

Whoever said that Mud Season in New England goes from this time to that time and then is over definitely never lived here…or at least not near our back field. It was soaked when we arrived about a year ago, and it’s soaked again now. People in California, having to debate the rightness or wrongness of watering their lawns, would be envious. Besides seeing no end in sight to boot-wearing time, we’re getting plenty of opportunity to contemplate the many … Read More

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