I cannot stop gardening. We are in the dogs’ days of summer and the early spring cold crops – radishes and beets and lettuces – are coming to an end. Not a necessary end; only that I’m tired of eating and harvesting and cleaning and re-seeding them. Still, today I re-seeded a bed a fast-growing green vegetable for September. I... READ MORE >
When you break into the Frost River proper, you break into an intimate, great country. Though the Frost is a famous river, it is humble and small, mostly quiet, occasionally babbling. And though it is called a river, it comes to you like a brook, or a stream at most. And though it presents itself as a stream or brook,... READ MORE >
For Tim O’Brien, and for the men – young once – of the Air Cavalry. At the bow one paddled an old, old paddle. Long, thick and wide. He portaged it with the bulky camouflage lifevest slung through the shoulders while he humped a Duluth pack over 50 pounds. In the Duluth pack he carried a hammock system of a... READ MORE >
Dora was David Copperfield’s first wife of two, his second true love of three. She was enchanting – a Fairy and a Sylph – with a delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, and the pleasantest little ways. Girlish and graceful. A Dickensian ‘femme parfait’. She had a little dog named Jip, who was her first and last true love.... READ MORE >
Up from the ribbon like river rose a high sand wash on the outside bend, and that is how all the bends are created and remain, the river rolling into a hill older than the Indians made of sand and clay, and coming in contact with the high, hard Earth, deflecting and turning. Always the tongue of the inside bend... READ MORE >
One cannot claim to be born either an outdoorsperson or naturalist (literally, unlike a Spartic baby trialed on its first night alone on the mountainside, or Romulus or Remus and the She-wolf along the Tiber), just as one cannot prove to be born spiritual or religious, although one may quickly and early get a feel for the world, and a... READ MORE >
Is there any seed that is at once as viable and valued as the radish? In an envelope of radish seeds – any company, any brand, any variety, any degree of “organic” or generic – are very small seeds – not too small (like the lettuce or carrot) so as to lose an account of from the envelope, from one’s... READ MORE >
The white farmhouse cabin on Big Lake was built on a hillside so that it had to stand on stilts, and underneath in the crook between the bottom of the cabin and the sloping hill were all good things, like boats and paddles and canoes and coolness and must. Inside it had a woodstove, a Fisher stove or potbelly stove,... READ MORE >
Lady and her young son come into the store. She asks our cashier if we have “spawn sacs.” Cashier has no idea what that even is. I’m overhearing all this from over in the fishing department, where I’m hanging products on display: spinners, spoons, crankbaits, bobbers, hooks, sinkers, jigheads, soft plastics. She comes over to look for herself and I... READ MORE >
When it rose to 53°F in the April sun there was still some suet in the three suet feeders, the suet softening in the sun and warm wind, and there were still blackoil sunflower seeds settled in the two red-painted, wooden birdfeeders – the hanging platform feeder and the hanging tray. From my normal place, looking out a small north-facing... READ MORE >
