The spiderwebs were catching nothing but fog this morning--small droplets of it, beaded along the silk filaments. The spiders, hunkered somewhere against the fog and cold, could not have been happy. Its invisible trap had turned into a clear kaleidoscope, beautiful rather than deadly. How clever, I thought. How effective. Not even fog can pass ( Read more... )

What happened to the calico, I wondered. On Friday, a mad riot of color ran wild over the hills; this morning, I see brown tree trunks looking miserable in the drizzle. They crowd the hillside like a high school football stadium, and the home team is losing by a lot, and it’s homecoming, and the rain has been cold and everyone has been drenched. ( Read more... )

They’re nearly ubiquitous across the north: Civil War soldiers standing vigil in the town square or the city cemetery. I came across this one, with the autumn amber splayed across the sky behind him, in Allegany, NY, the small college town where I teach.

Take a look, Macduff, at Emerging Civil War.

"this was what passed for spring in northern New England, an edgy eight weeks chrome-plated with cold and damp."

-- Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

"Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing."

-- Camille Pissarro

As I was driving down 219 south this afternoon, a bald eagle flew past me not thirty feet over my head. I was going slow enough, and he was soaring low enough, that I got a good look at him. Neat, neat bird. They look so majestic.

From Camus, passed along by my friend Keegs ( Read more... )

Although I’ve done a fair amount of hiking in the past few months, I haven’t had my hiking shoes out of their box since I wore them to Uganda back in January. Flecks of Uganda’s rust-colored clay still line the crevices of the shoes’ treads ( Read more... )

I am so lucky that the world is so full of wonder.

Pelted in the face by breeze-blown apple blossoms made me feel oddly blessed today.