Life

Sit long enough, perhaps looking through the window or outside with the sun on your face, and you’ll notice the greatest voice is the one that speaks in silence.

Every time I fill my shiny, clear glass…

I thought of the planet Neptune
and its diamond rain…

I used to think winter was the time for sleeping or for dying…

Instructions for a good day:Look out the windowWatch the birds.Love them. Inspired by the poet Mary Oliver’s words: Instructions for living a life:Pay attention.Be astonished.Tell about it.

It takes the bravery
of a warrior to sit down, close the laptop, bury the phone—sever the cord—and wait in the blankness…

A great chef might have said with his knife in hand, there’s a lot to be learned from the onion…

When I grow up, I want to be a teabag…

Outside in the rounded land, soaped smooth under snow, are the footprints of my brothers…

On my walk I discovered a dead, black mouse lying on the soft, white snow….

Ever wondered how remarkable it is
that at 7am or thereabouts the sun
comes up and fills the world with light?

What would happen if we chose to stop the juggling…

Yesterday afternoon out of the east the wind came to visit…

Isn’t it odd? The hardest thing to find…

When the snow has fallen, I go outside and listen to the silence…

The squirrel, who noticed me inspecting his spaghetti tracks in the snow, said…

I wonder if the snowstorm plots to drop twelve inches, or if it just lets go of a flake, one at a time.

Today I’m stacking bricks of joy so I can build a house…

Mentally, I’m Sears…

This year you are too far away so I’m sending you flowers via the internet…

When an ancient pinecracks and splits, when amountain crumbles to rubble,when a star expands and explodes,the single thing that remainsis discovered only when we’re still,we close our eyes, and breathe.

Down the road is a giant oak…

Above: The woodpecker bangs its head against the white birch…

Maybe hawks and eagles and peregrines are the wisest of creatures because they can leave
the sticky ground and soar.

One cold afternoon I discovered the quickest way to joy…

Wouldn’t it be funny if this—right now—was paradise?

On days like Wednesdays when happiness seems far away, the
sshortest way to get there
is to stop walking.

My mind is itching to climb a mountain…

I remember the heatheron a Yorkshire moortop,partly purple, partly scratchyand very springy when I lay downon it and gazed at the sky andbreathed in the warmth and knewI could lose myself there and sinkinto the peat and be part of it for everand it wouldn’t matter becausealthough I am a person I am alsoit all.

Here I am, sitting inside, with my wood stove and my Lay’s chips…

I love visiting moss on rainy days…

I remember the time I sat with the chickadees..

Perhaps the only thing we need to grant ourselves is the permission to be still.

I’m going on vacation…

The bird flies to the feeder,
and there is a bird…

Is it in the fresh glass that shines smooth and hard, empty and full of future?…

We give the wind and the tree
their own names. But what do we call it when the tree starts dancing?

It takes fifteen minutes and a lifetime to drive home.

Just trying to get everything lined up and certain…

Today I am sitting on a chair, still, with my eyes closed…

Amid the noise and the dinners, the rushing and the Zooms, the texts and the nexts…

If you go for a walk in the woods this December…

Below insists the slushy, grey snow
of the everyday…

As I drove along Highway 118, up the hill and through the forest…

Sometimes when I’m homesick for a wild mountain…

The squirrel, cozy amid the frost, stamps its feet at the excitement…

There’s an oak beam stretching from here to there…

It’s curious, isn’t it, that amid the spice and salt of every day…

Just now I stepped outside into the cold air…

It’s odd–but probably true–that if you hug mud…