Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.”  The Kindle edition “slipped into the Kindle Store’s top 100 Best Sellers in 20th Century American Poetry.”  Congratulations, Tyler and Th.!  For WIZ readers’ information, several WIZ contributors, including Sarah Dunster, Jon Ogden, WIZ’s new contributing editor Jonathon Penny, Steve Peck, Sarah Page, and myself have work included in its pages.  Ángel Chaparro Sainz, another frequent WIZ contributor, wrote the anthology’s afterword.  It’s a pleasure to see that so many WIZ folk threw kindling into Fire in the Pasture’s multi-colored flames.  A poem by Elizabeth Pinborough, another poet published in Fire in the Pasture, will appear on WIZ in February.

Karen Kelsay, a fine formalist poet and constant lyrical presence here at WIZ, has begun a publishing company, White Violet Press. You can reach the press’s accompanying blog with submission guidelines by clicking on the image to the left.  While most publications are by invitation only, WVP will look at unsolicited manuscripts year round. White Violet Press is now open for submissions, so WIZ writers–especially WIZ writers of a formalist persuasion–please go have a look and support Karen in her new creative venture.

In November 2011, my essay, “Plato’s Alcove,” was awarded finalist status and an honorable mention in Torrey House Press’s creative nonfiction competition.  The essay tells about my first trip to the desert.  An earlier version won 1st place in the 2003 Utah’s Original Writers Competition.  The version I sent to Torrey House is a more highly stylized, mixed-genre experiment. Want to read “Plato’s Alcove” at Torrey House’s website?  Go here.

Profound apologies for the lateness of this next announcement, but Fortunate Childe Publications published its autumn anthology, Vintage, in October 2011.  WIZ contributors Karen Kelsay and Carla Martin-Wood also have verse published therein (search on their names in the search bar to the left to read their poetry published on WIZ).  Also featured in Vintage: four of my poems, including “Deer in the City,” “Closing Time,” and two poems not on WIZ.  Leslie Ellison, publisher of Fortunate Childe, nominated my poem “Deer in the City,” which also appears at WIZ, for a Pushcart Prize.  This is my second Pushcart Prize nomination. Thank you, Fortunate Childe!  To find information about Vintage or purchase copies of this lovely seasonal anthology, click on the picture to the left.  I will soon be buying a few for myself. Several poets included in the anthology recorded readings of their work that you listen to here.

WIZ will be running its popular Love of Nature Nature of Love event again in February.  To celebrate Valentine’s Day, all month long we’ll publish poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), video or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.  Or it could go the other way around: We’ll publish work about nature that also happens to give a nod to love.  We’re seeking submissions of original work or you can also send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.  So if you have a sonnet you’ve written to someone dear to your heart–even and perhaps especially your pet hamster Roley Poley or faithful horse Old Paint–or perhaps a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space dear to your heart–please consider sending it to WIZ.  See the submissions page in the navigation bar above for submissions guidelines.

It snowed today, for the first time. October 6th.

When my family moved to southeast Idaho, we knew that Winter was one of the by-products we were choosing. That “W” is capitalized, because winters here are real winters—you couldn’t survive without shelter. In Utah Valley, where we’ve lived the last ten years, you likely couldn’t either, easily… but there’d be a chance. Some random steaming garbage pile might keep you warm at nights if you found yourself homeless.

Not here.  We now live in Idaho’s Siberia. You’d think that, farther north in places like Sandpoint, it would be much colder, but no. The carryover from Washington state’s more temperate coastal climates makes the panhandle and other, more northern places a much easier place to grow things like tomatoes, for instance.

Here in Idaho’s Siberia there are miles of landmass and ridges of mountains to keep us from any friendly ocean breezes. In January it dips down toward negative twenty. And the winds are to be reckoned with—tearing in from the southwest, lifting sod off the fields before the ground freezes, withering the branches of any non-hardy fruit tree.

You plant your Polly peaches northeast of your house, here in southeast Idaho. The Honeycrisp apples and sour pie-cherries and, perhaps, the pears and plums might survive (all these are currently imaginary—a vision dancing in husband’s head and mine.) But not the peaches.

Our new home is hyper-insulated. Six-to-ten inches of polyurethane foam keep the elements away, and our body heat, so far, has been enough to keep us toasty and warm, even at that lethal six-o-clock hour when bare feet hit concrete floors and children shiver through showers.  But it’s coming. I know it is. My Viking blood is waking up, warning me, prompting me to drag out the giant tupperwares full of snow rompers and wool socks and mittens and hats and thermal underclothing.

We have neighbors close by who warned me that the key to life in our new little city is to “live it up in the summers and fall. Take every second you can and enjoy them… because when winter hits, everyone shuts themselves indoors. You don’t see anybody. And it drags on so long… the snow. The cold. The isolation.”

I asked him, don’t you go out to play in the snow.

He shrugged. “Yeah. But it gets so cold. Cross-country skiing and sledding just aren’t fun in below-freezing weather.”

Of course, he’s part Samoan and part Jamaican—he’s not used to this. Well, neither am I; I grew up in Northern California. But my Viking ancestors will jeer at me from the other side of the veil this winter if I don’t make the attempt…

Winter and I are going to be friends. I’m determined.

So this morning when the first snow started slanting down, soaking our alfalfa field and bringing out the sweetness of it’s purple smell and swelling the gutters with puddles, I shook it off. I  piled coats on my kids, snapped the baby into her fleece bear-hoodie and we walked to our homeschool co-op.

On the way home, two of my children slogged through a puddle. They were chattering by the time we got home and whimpering a bit. They will learn about winter, that the friendship has boundaries.

I fed my kids lunch and made my year’s first pan of cottage-friend potatoes, the most wintery of foods. My husband came home from work tonight and spent eight hours prying the lid off the boiler that heats our house and examining the rusty innards. I sense    already that his friendship with winter will involve more of a wary respect. And I admit I’m nervous. For me, friendships can be awkward at first. I get overwhelmed. I have my moments of despair: Did I say the right thing? Did I do something that revealed too much of my vulnerability, too soon?

Today I watch the snow fall through the big French doors and the windows that look south, east and north from our kitchen/dining room. I pretend nonchalance and think of the flakes as gifts. I allow the excitement to well up inside me at the prospect of four-foot drifts, of building a sled hill in the backyard, of cross-country skiing on the groomed trail by the icy-jade river that runs through our town. Of family snowball fights and cozy evenings cuddled around a TV screen watching movies that aren’t too scary but are scary enough to send my five year old shuffling to our room in the middle of the night, asking to be kissed and tucked back in.

We chose winter, and so winter will be a highlight of our year. We will make friends with winter. I’m determined.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sarah Dunster is an award-winning poet and fiction writer. Her poems have been published in Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought, Segullah Magazine, and Victorian Violet Press. Her short fiction piece, Back North, is featured in Segullah’s Fall 2011 issue. In addition, Sarah’s first novel Lightning Tree will be released in spring of 2012 by Cedar Fort. Sarah has six children and one on the way and loves writing almost as much as she loves being a mom.

blue birds
cut
and hover

over rich
reds
and pumpkin

leaves –
swell
with lush

lilies lying
nude
along the cold

stream, peeling
effigies
of a great painter.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Lala sat down on the curb and motioned for Davey to sit next to her. As he slowly sat down and settled his feet into the orange leaves filling the gutter, Lala was opening up her laptop and getting it ready for a little presentation.

“All right, now first of all, look at this tree,” Lala said, indicating a photo of a windshorn lone pine in the top window of her screen. “I call it Jake. Good name for a tree, eh? Now Jake here is something of an oddity. Not only does he have his natural form (whatever that should have been), but the effect of a thousand winds has altered his form substantially.”

Lala looked to see if Davey was paying attention. He was looking intently at the tree and so, presumably, absorbing her ever word. Encouraged, she continued.

“Now let me make this tree a little smaller. Okay, great. Now watch: I’m pulling up . . . . Okay, good! Now, what do you see?”

Davey looked at her a little askew, then back to the cascade of numbers tumbling across the screen. “Black on white,” he said.

“Right! It’s the tree! See? This is one equation which captures the essence of the tree! I wrote the program that does this myself, and it’s so incredibly amazing what it’s teaching me! Now, as soon as I get this back inside, I’m going to contrast this bewinded tree with all the other trees of its kind I’ve collected. Now that will really say something! This is sort of like your nothing out of something, see? Do you see?”

“These numbers,” said Davey, “are like footprints. The footprints of a tree.”

“Yes!” said Lala excitedly. “Exactly!”

“Well, first of all, trees, not having feet, don’t have footprints. But even if they did, what would that mean? Footprints in the dust are temporary and fleeting. And even in the rare case where a footprint turns to stone and can be read millions of years later, it is still a footprint and not a foot. A footprint can never be a foot. Just as numbers black on white will never be a tree. Writing down numbers taken from the tree is as foolish as writing down every word as it falls from the mouth of an echo.”

Lala blinked at him.

Davey gestured at the small picture of the tree on her screen. “Look! You have captured a tree!” He reached out to touch it, and as his hand hit the display he seemed surprised. He tried to touch the tree twice more with the same result. He tapped it with his fingernails.

“Tell me,” he said, “is that a tree?”

Lala narrowed her eyes. “No, not really. It’s a picture of a tree.”

“Ah! A picture of a tree! But it looks so real! So lifelike!”

Lala smiled. “Yes, yes. Well, I’ve got a really high resolution, you know.”

“Oh really? And what is your High Resolution?”

Lala started to tell him some numbers but he interrupted her. “Ah-ah! Those are numbers! Are even your goals and desires shrunken down into simple numbers?”

Lala stared.

“Do you see numbers when you climb a mountain?”

“Not exactly, but the numbers are easy to find. Like the six sides of a snowflake. Or Fibonacci numbers.”

“Yes,” said Davey. “Snow is beautiful.”

“Yes, but that’s not all it is! Like everything in nature, Beauty is just the surface; there is so much more to be seen! So much more underneath!”

“Why do we have eyes?”

“Why do we have eyes? To see, I guess. We couldn’t see without our eyes.”

“If our eyes were made for seeing, is not then Beauty its own excuse for being?”

“What? Say that again . . . .”

“Oh, tree!” exclaimed Davey, not looking at the tree exactly, but somehow through it. “I never thought to ask, I never knew to know, but in my Simple Ignorance supposed that the Nothing that caused me here, caused you there.”

“Hang on. I’m sure I—”

“I think that I shall never see a Something lovely as a tree.” Davey abruptly turned to Lala just as she was again opening her mouth. “Can you show me in numbers?”

“What? ‘You’?”

“Can you show me in numbers?”

“Well, my stuff’s all designed for trees—especially pines.”

“But can you show me in numbers?”

“Well, yeah. I guess so. But it’ll think you’re a tree.”

“And I am a tree more that numbers, am I not?” asked Davey, nodding at the laptop. “Have you ever done yourself in numbers?”

“What? Me? You want me in numbers?”

“Have you ever done yourself in numbers?”

“Um, no . . . .”

“Why not?”

“Ah, I don’t know. I guess I just haven’t.”

“Because?”

“I guess because right now I’m interested in trees.”

“How many trees do you have in numbers?”

“Oh, several thousand I suppose.”

“Indeed!”

“Oh, yes. I have a great deal of them. I think I have enough to establish normalcy. So now I’m collecting deviants for comparison”

“Such as me. I am reminded of the tale of the Grasshopper and the Chicken. They were sitting together relaxing when a Frog hopped by.

“‘Hey there, now, Frog!’ called out Grasshopper. ‘From where are you coming?’

“‘From the Lake,’ said Frog. ‘It is a stretch of water so far I cannot see the far shore, just the mountains beyond.’

“Grasshopper and Chicken looked at each other and rolled their eyes. Every time Frog hopped by he had a story as ridiculous as this.

“‘Oh really,’ said Grasshopper. ‘And what did you there?’

“‘There,’ said Frog, ‘I met a creature called Swift. It is larger than you, friend Grasshopper, but smaller than you, friend Chicken. Swift told me how each year he would fly a thousand miles and then back again.’

“After frog left, Grasshopper and Chicken took to discussing Frog’s story. They both agreed that flying a thousand miles was impossible.

“‘Why,’ said Grasshopper, ‘it is all you or I can do to fly up to the first branch of that stately elm there. To fly a thousand miles—! Impossible!’

“‘Indeed,’ agreed Chicken. ‘A thousand kernels of corn I can imagine, but a thousand miles? I don’t know that there are a thousand miles.’

“Knowledge such as yours of trees gives no true understanding of the boundaries between fact and falseness. You may know a Something, but something is no more Everything than nothing is Nothing. You accuse me of being a recluse from people by living among nature, but you are a recluse from nature by living among numbers. Your knowledge, such as it is, is as substantial as the footprint of a tree, and trees do not have feet. The task of understanding Everything is utterly beyond your powers.”

Davey Dow stood up and stretched his back. “Much as your Something is not more than it isn’t, so is this town and the all of all towns everywhere. Much as it has been pleasant being with you and your numerical trees, I must be going.”

So saying, Davey turned and headed deeper into town, the town he knew as the nothing that never was a Something, to buy seed and to never return
_______________________________________________________________

To read more of Theric’s writing on WIZ, go here, here, and here.

Davey Dow was walking down the street a bit earlier and a bit happier than was usual for a Friday afternoon (Friday, usually, being the least halcyon of his days), and anyone on the street who may have known him would have swiftly gotten out of his way with that long and peculiar sidelong glance reserved for the irredeemably weird.

But as it was, no one knew him—this was not his town, though in feel, appearance and size are they not all about the same? The thing about Davey Dow was that every town was the same to him—stiffbilly and overpopulated—even relatively smallish towns such as this.

But while every town seemed the same to Davey, every square mile of wilderness was shingilly unique. Although he had his small farm tucked away into a hidden mountain valley, he took every possible opportunity to visit the vistas far and near. And it was his desires to know the surrounding wildernesses that made his occasional weekend town-trips so unpleasant. But as has been noted, this Friday he was both in town and happy. Someone in possession of all knowledge of Davey (knowledge in terms of court-worthy facts) might suppose he was happy because he was about to buy seed—quite possibly his final seed purchase as he was verging on self-sufficiency. A good reason, but not the reason. Indeed, no real reason existed. He was happy simply because he was. And it was in this frame of mind that he met Lala.

Lala was crawling out of her SUV after another dirty week in the mountains. She walked around to the back in order to dredge out her laptop, which had spent the week converting what it saw of the natural world into page-long mathematical equations. In the neverending search for knowledge and concreteness, Lala and her laptop were something of a heroic pair. In the laptop’s prognosis of nature, Lala saw an example for humanity. “Look at the patterns and their simplicity,” she would say to a classroom of graduate students, pointing at a projection covered in characters Roman, Greek and Arabic, representing a lone pine overlooking a glacial lake, calm as glass. “If only we lived that way.” And she would sigh a long, sad sigh.

“I don’t say anything new,” she would say after a lengthy schpill in that language called the math of science. “Everything I say comes out of antiquity. I look back to our Bacchusses and Waldens, and I know that what I say is not new. Humanity—civilization—should structure itself according to nature! Nature is the key!”
As Lala stretched behind her SUV, she squeezed her eyes shut and pushed against the small of her back. She had been gone all week. As she closed up the back of her SUV, the sudden noise made Davey jump, for he was walking past just that spot as the door slammed shut.

“Oh gosh! I’m sorry!”

Davey just shook his head in an attempt to gain his bearings. As he shook his head, Lala took the moment to notice his rough and undyed dress.

“Hey, aren’t you that mountain guy from up in the Green Hills or something?”

Davey, not yet ready to speak, simply nodded.

“What sort of philosophy for life makes you seclude yourself way up there? What’s to be said for being a recluse?”

Davey had been, as she asked her question, slowly, calmly, methodically—almost sherlockingly—observing her, trying to place her.

“Being a recluse?” he repeated, giving himself a chance to hear the question. “There is much I can say about what may be learned from the simplicity of nature.”

“Oh, I know!” she gushed. “There is such wonderful order in nature! Everything has its role and its time!”

“Mmm.”

“I study nature incessantly, you know. Made it my life’s work. Thank goodness too, haha; there is so much to know! Maybe someday I’ll narrow in on my grasp on everything, you know?”

“Everything?”

“Everything the natural world has to offer. I study everything.”

“Everything! Well! Now that’s impressive!”

“Well, nature is my subject, and that includes everything.”

“So do you plan on knowing Everything?”

“Knowing everything? Well, I suppose study everything at any rate. We can leave it at that.”

“If you study everything, then Everything has yet to be studied.”

“What? That’s illogical. The more you study, the more that’s chipped off that block of infinity we call Everything. The less there is still to study. Wouldn’t you say?”

“I study Nothing, therefore there is nothing left to know. Therefore the world is open and clear—mine for the understanding.”

Lala looked at him. “What?”

“I have been, of late, visiting the Beginning before the Beginning where Nothing’s the only Something, which Something had yet to produce the Nothing that is the Something that became the Beginning which followed the Beginning before the Beginning. While I was there, I saw the Elements which were not yet elements and I watched them be penetrated by Energies that were not yet energy. By seeing things that were not what they were, I did not understand what is understood; but I did understand what no one from the Beginning before the Beginning till now has ever understood.

“This is what I mean when I say that your studies of Everything leave everything to be studied. For I saw Everything when it was the Nothing that was not yet Something and I understood.”

“I see,” said Lala slowly after a rather long pause. Letting another pause go by before she spoke again, Lala said: “Well, be that as it may, I think I have had something of an experience like that. You see, I am a scientist and a mathematician. And to me, the beauty of nature is best understood in this way. Watch!”

To read Part Two, go here.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Author’s Note: I owe a great debt to Arthur Waley’s translation of Chuang Tzu included in his book Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China. And, of course, to Chuang Tzu himself.

Theric Jepson likes both nature and laptops. Also: Chinese philosophers. He has appeared previously on Wilderness Interface Zone, viz. the essay “Communion with the Small,” the poem “Morning Walk, Spring 2009,” an excerpt from the short story “Blood-Red Fruit” (cowritten with Danny Nelson), and a reading from Nephi Anderson’s Dorian. He runs Peculiar Pages which will shortly be releasing the collections Fire in the Pasture (poetry) and Monsters and Mormons (pulp).

Editor’s Note: Photo above is of Theric himself.

*This is, of course, a variation on the common adage to “make like a tree and branch out,” and the less common adage, used primarily among canines (the dogs, not the teeth), “make like a tree and bark.” Puns about leaves will not be tolerated.

___________________________________________________________________________

Professor Percival P. Pennywhistle despises children and loathes nature, which often gets on his shoes and under his fingernails, but he recognizes that both are important enough to be addressed, and so he writes poetry and other things for children, some of it about nature. Bits and pieces of his work can be found here, and he can also be reached on Facebook and via email at pennywhistlestop@gmail.com. The poems published on WIZ come from Poems for the Precocious and Alphabet Stew: Poems in a Particular Order. Other projects in development include Mythiphus, Me Grimms and Melancholies, Kid Viscous and the Mysterious Substance, Jonah P. Juniper and getting Ben Crowder to be his illustrator.

She was feeling vaguely seditious so she bought the Diet Coke. Any other night she would have gone with a Sprite, but tonight, Jen bought the Diet Coke.

Rebellion, huh? This is a new phase, she thought.

She popped it open and started her car. Really the car belonged to her parents. But since she was sixteen (for a whole month now) and had a job she could take the old Toyota hatchback whenever she wanted. Some days she drove just for the sake of driving, never knowing where it would take her. Most days she ended somewhere up Logan Canyon, usually past Third Dam but before the abandoned convent.

As she pulled out of the gas station her cell phone jangled, jarring oddly against the Pop 40 coming out of the car stereo. She checked the text while pulling up to a red light. It was Nicki. “Ry’s here Y u L8? Where R U?” The light turned green and Jen tossed her cell phone into the back seat.

Jen pulled over at the Ice Shack and ordered a cherry snow cone. She sat on the hood of her car and watched the sun finish setting. The streaks of orange and pink reaching over the mountains looked restless. Jen pursed her lips.

Admirable or quaint: watching the sun set while sitting in a parking lot on the busiest street in town?

She took a bite of the snow cone and a swig of her Diet Coke. The sweetness mingled with the bitter. She shivered as she swallowed.

Only in Logan.

She knew it was dramatic, but the sunset seemed like an omen tonight, like the bright splashes of color were a message. Like the fingertips of a rock climber on an outcropping, the sun was holding on.

Me too.

This summer was just off. Different. Strange. Her childhood summers were always stream-of-consciousness sequences full of trampoline sleepovers, homegrown tomatoes, and night-games. This summer all that had stopped. Instead, the ward kids, when they weren’t working, just hung out. Sometimes they’d watch a movie or drag Main but usually they sat around outside and bugged each other. The guys were always trying to get a rise out of the girls and the girls were always trying to prove they were too good for the guys.

That explains Ryan. Dating him was the most interesting thing to do.

Tonight was the last Stake Youth Dance of the summer. In a couple weeks school would start and the days would be full of AP classes, seminary, and the other kids. The kids from the ward—Nicky, Kelly, Liz, Jen, Ryan, Ethan, and Jared—hung out every summer. On that first day of school, though, something changed. Maybe they’d say, “Hi” or give a small nod, but they never ate lunch together or sat by each other. No, school was for the others—the kids they didn’t have to see every Sunday, the kids whose mothers couldn’t tell embarrassing stories about them, the kids who didn’t know what ward they were in and didn’t care. Every fall the ward kids acted like they didn’t know each other, but every summer it was like they were never apart.

Maybe that was why when Ryan tried to kiss her she ducked.  The almost-kiss was certainly why they hadn’t spoken in two weeks—Ryan had even skipped the joint activity to avoid her. That was why she wasn’t at the dance tonight.

The last dance.

The dance was out at the old fire station. It would only take her five minutes to get there. Jen poured the dregs of her Diet Coke over her snow cone. The sun was almost gone.

Lost its grip, I guess.

Her cell phone sang out again.

Jen tossed the Coke in the trash and started driving. Maybe it was the slight buzz from the caffeine–What would it be like to be high?–but suddenly she wished she owned a tank top. Not one of those sloppy ones people wore with oversize jeans, but one of the pretty ones in the Old Navy window. The kind that came in bright pink and looked good with short shorts. She’d tried one on the other day and she’d liked it. It made her shoulders look strong and her boobs didn’t pop out like her mother said they would.

They looked just how they were supposed to, maybe even a little better.

She’d also slipped on a pair of shorts—just to see. They hit well above the knee but just below the bulge of her upper thigh and she’d liked the shape it gave to her legs. She’d tried them on just to see and any other night she wouldn’t have even considered it, but tonight it seemed to be the best way—the only way—to be.

The summer night pressed through the windshield as she left the store.  The moon was a bright, white mirror up in the sky making it seem bigger than it was.  Jen rolled down the car windows, wanting to feel the rush of air around her as she drove. For a moment she closed her eyes so she could really feel it but opened them quickly.

It’s all fun and games . . .

The parking lot was dark when she reached the fire station and she could hear the thump, thump, thump of the Village People’s “YMCA”. Jen changed in the car, expertly shimmying out her jeans and t-shirt. She slipped her flip-flops back on, fluffed her hair and did one last check for tags before she climbed out.

Ryan.

She squared her shoulders as he walked toward her.

It was awkward, the way he stared at her legs.

“They’ll never let you in like that.”

“Yeah. Probably not.”

He took a step closer. This time his eyes lingered on her shoulders.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked.

“Nicky called.”

“She’s still inside. Trying to get Jared to dance with her, but he won’t. You know how Jared is. Goes to every dance but refuses to actually dance.” Ryan seemed relieved to have something to talk about. Jen wasn’t.

Strains of Celine Dion drifted across the parking lot.

“What are you doing out here?” Jen tried to look him in the eyes, but Ryan had leaned against the car and was looking up at the sky, the moonlight washing across his face.

“Looking for someone.”

Jen ran her foot up and down the back of her bare calf and concentrated on letting her shoulders feel the night air. Coolness pricked her skin. She opened her mouth, just a bit, tasting the air, closing her eyes.

Ryan reached out his hand and touched her upper arm. His touch was soft, more of a brush than a touch. He slid his fingers down the back of her arm. He intertwined his fingers in hers, pulled her close, his body hot against her skin, closing out the night air. She liked the warmth. For a moment, she leaned closer.

Is this what I want?

All she could see was his shoulder. And the moon reaching across the sky.

Jen let go.

“Ryan, who were you looking for?”

He took both of her hands, fidgeting with them. “I don’t know. Someone. Anyone.” He finally met her eyes, “You, I guess.”

Me too.

She shook her head and, blinking, got in her car.

“Where are you going?”

Was that desperation in his voice?

“Somewhere. Anywhere.”

This was absurd. She wished she had another Diet Coke. Just so she could see him see her holding it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jen started her car, agitated now. “I don’t know.”

“Are you coming to Church tomorrow?”

Of course.

“It’s just a tank top, Ryan.”

Except it’s not.

Jen inhaled the summer night and aimed her car at the canyon. “I think. . .”

Really?

Yeah.

“I’m gonna go howl at the moon.”

__________________________________________________________________________

Laura Hilton Craner is a mommy and sometimes-writer. She lives and writes in Colorado with her husband and four children.  She blogs at www.butnotunhappy.blogspot.com and is a contributor at the Mormon Arts and Culture website, A Motley Vision (www.motleyvision.org).  When she isn’t reading, writing, or cleaning up after someone, Laura spends her time hiking, canning, scrapbooking, and dabbling in the expressive arts. It is only on rare occasions that she howls at the moon.

Writers: The deadline for Torrey House Press’s creative non-fiction contest is coming faster than you might think: September 30th.  Entries can run pretty long, 2,000 to 10,000 words, and first place prize is $1,000.  An entry fee of $25 is required, but that’s a standard amount for this kind of competition.

Over at Our Mother’s Keeper, Jason Brown has a wonderful piece on the Sacred Grove that I think qualifies as recommended reading.  Jason’s  writing demonstrates depth of perception.  But more than that, he seems to have a sense for the dynamism and sensitivity of language’s teeming environment and engages well in it.  I appreciate the care his words show.

This story is just so cool I had to link to it.  I have a (very very) soft spot in my heart for chelonians.

A fascinating and thought-provoking story out of India with stunning photos of an enraged leopard waging war against a village.   I hope more information comes out about this incident.  I’m sure there’s more to the story than shows through in print.

Nature-based flash fiction or short stories running between 100 and 1300 words are also welcome.  Excerpts from longer stories or novels up to 1300 words are encouraged–though pieces may run longer if they can be broken into multiple parts.

Please read WIZ’s submissions guide before sending your work.  Then electronically submit your work either to wilderness@motleyvision.org or to pk.wizadmin@gmail.com.

Coming soon to a mailbox (or computer) near you: Dialogue’s environmental issue.  Several Wilderness Interface Zone contributors are included therein–congratulations, friends! Frequent WIZ contributor Steven Peck guest edited this issue.

Table of contents:

Page     Author     Title
Mary Toscano     Front Cover
Inside Cover, Title Page
v     Edwin Firmage, Jr.     Letters
1     Steven L. Peck     Why Nature Matters: A Special Issue of Dialogue on Mormonism and the Environment
6     George B. Handley     Faith and the Ethics of Climate Change
36     Craig D. Galli     Enoch’s Vision and Gaia: An LDS Perspective on Environmental Stewardship
57     Bryan V. Wallis     Flexibility in the Ecology of Ideas: Revelatory Religion and the Environment
67     Jason M. Brown     Whither Environmental Theology
87     Bart H. Welling     ”The Blood of Every Beast”: Mormonism and the Question of the Animal
118     Mary Toscano     A Perch, A Foothold, A Float
119     Patricia Gunter Karamesines     Why Joseph Went to the Woods: Rootstock for LDS Literary Nature Writers
134     Adam S. Miller     Recompense
143     Ron Madson     Grandpa’s Hat
148     Sarah Dunster     Gaius
150     Harlow Soderborg Clark     Easter Sermons
152     Jon Ogden     Seasonal Ritual
153     Jonathon Penny     Winterscape: Prairie
154     Karen Kelsay     Mother Willow
155     Sandra Skouson     Girl Without a Mother to Her Big Brother
156     Mary Toscano     The Tightrope Walker
157     Hugo Olaiz     The Birth of Tragedy
161     David G. Pace     American Trinity
177     Benjamin E. Park     Image and Reality in the Utah Zion
180     Polly Aird     Not Just Buchanan’s Blunder
190     Rob Fergus     Scry Me a River
196     Mary Toscano     Wherever He May Go
197     Peter L. McMurray     This Little Light of Ours: Ecologies of Revelation

Can’t wait to get my copy.   I’m very happy to see so many WIZards’ work appearing in the issue, including poems from WIZ’s 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff.

Only complaint: The cover girl or boy polar bear is cute, but I would have put hummingbirds up front.

Just sayin’.