• Nature Study

    Mystery Bird

    I woke this morning thinking of a birdsong, heard way back in July. Maybe it’s because I’ve read references to the warblers in two different books lately. Or maybe it’s because it was…

  • Nature Study,  Poetry

    Sabbath

    I’ve taken a few walks this week. This shaggy little fawn, along with his mother and sibling, greeted us on one of them. I worked hard to photograph these little birds in the…

  • Essays

    Not subject

    The very first essay I read by Wendell Berry was “The Rise,” from his collection The Long-Legged House. It describes a canoe ride on the Kentucky River during one of its winter rises.…

  • Poetry

    Lovely, dark and deep

    Actually, the woods my daughters and I walked through yesterday were anything but dark. The sun was so bright I could hardly even see this robin in the trees above, much less determine…

  • Fiction

    The Boundary

    “The Boundary” is one of the short stories in Wendell Berry’s The Wild Birds. I reread it this week and found it as extraordinarily powerful as I did the first time over 15…

  • Nonfiction

    Life onscreen

    I wanted to pause in my reading of The Next Story and reflect on this passage, where Tim Challies speaks of our insistence that the Internet is there, that it is a place.…

  • Poetry

    Poetry Friday: Finishing Well

    One never knows, but I’ve been thinking lately that I’m probably about halfway through my life. Maybe a little over. What do I have to show for it? I look back over my…

  • Novels

    Hannah Coulter

    I read Hannah Coulter (2004) when it first came out, before my blogging days. Recently my book club (is that too grand a term for three people?) decided to read it again. We…