I know that I talk a lot about writing in here, but running gives me unending thoughts. This time of year, with its rain and windstorms and wildly blowing red and golden leaves, which dance in the air like wild fairies, has fueled my novel. I am up to chapter 7. If I didn’t work…
Today is not my running day, so I went for a long walk in the woods. Last night we had a storm, with 96km winds and lots of rain. Today is mostly dry, but the winds and rain brought down more leaves. The walk was fragrant with scents of pine, nuts, soil, and firs lifting…
After my run on Tuesday, I showered and headed back to campus. I noticed my right big toe was very achy. I stubbed it recently, and before that bumped it into a rock (when I fell down that hill). I could barely walk on it for the rest of the day, and it hurt pretty…
I returned from a weekend camping trip very sore from a trail fall, but my cold is better. I learned later that, though there was no sign posted, the Goat Lookout Trail, where I fell, was supposed to be closed due to high water in Felix Creek. The water did actually reach the bridge. Birkenhead…
This weekend was sort of a bust with running, thanks to a nasty summer cold, but I had already run my normal number of times that week before this thing hit me. Regardless, the bbq yesterday was wonderful–sitting beneath sunny to starry skies with a couple mint juleps (made from lemon-mint from the garden and…
It’s odd to be nearing August already. The summer feels eerie, and I feel lost in time. I try to feel part of the world, but the corruption in governments, the cognitive dissonance and ideological delusion in voters, the ignorance of why it’s important to take care of nature, the terrorist acts in various countries,…
Off-grid living has been on my mind for quite some time. Earlier this year I published Ron Melchiore’s Off Grid and Free: My Path to the Wilderness, which is one the most successful books to date at my small publishing company, Moon Willow Press. After Morgan and I went on a long hike and run…
Jeff VanderMeer has a great piece today in Environmental Critiques called “Hauntings in the Anthropocene.” It goes into dealing psychologically, and in fiction, with global warming, which he terms a “hyperobject.” Morton’s central idea of a hyperobject is in a sense a way of using a word as an anchor for something that would be…
I haven’t run more than a mile since returning from Ireland, though I have hiked some, once in Mundy Park (where we definitely heard a bear nearby), and another time over the weekend on a trek up the hill for a few groceries. It is a slow recuperation, getting back to work, both my day…
The Ireland vacation now seems like a magical dream. We planned the trip some time ago simply so that my mother could visit her ancestors’ homeland and her own dream “place to go in life” before she got too old. It is a place that I have always wanted to go as well, mainly being…
