A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Snow day and dishwashing haiku

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Just as the deep snow here had melted to half-gone and I’d broken usable trails through the month-old snowpack remaining, a new storm blew in, dropped another five or six inches, and undid my hope for a winter thaw.  Two more storms over the next three days are expected to fluff things up even more.  [...]

The Happen Stance

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Saturday night, my husband and I made a last minute run to the only grocery store within 22 miles before it closed at 9 p.m.  On the return trip, I drove with the SUV’s highbeams on, because we live on a country road whereon we’re likely to come across animals on the pavement, everything from [...]

Smarter than we think

Monday, December 21st, 2009

I love stories like this.
The “Wow-ee!” response of the scientists involved would make for an interesting study, as well as the “maybe it’s the first example of invertebrate tool use but maybe it isn’t” facet of the story.
Everything is smarter than we think and has the prospect of becoming smarter, including us, if we could [...]

Field Notes #6

Monday, July 13th, 2009

June 2, 2009. I hiked into Crossfire Canyon via Coyote Way.  The morning had a warmth to it I didn’t feel while I walked topside through currents of wind blustering north out of some rise of weather.  But as I followed the trail down into the canyon the breezes thinned.  Then holes formed in them, [...]

Language, the planet, and ice cream sundaes

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

Last Saturday I attended a meeting of SE Utah writers that the Utah Arts Council held in Moab.  This meeting followed a reading that the Moab Poets and Writers—a group specializing in nature writing—sponsored the night before, a reading in which yours truly participated.  It was a pleasant and interesting series of events all around, but something happened during [...]

Getting digs in: On the 6/11 SE Utah artifact raids

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Saturday, June 13.  As I was coming up out of Crossfire I heard voices.  Much has happened lately in our small, southeast Utah town, so I was curious about who might be coming into the canyon.  I saw a woman on the rocks above me, well off the trail, turning back in response to a [...]

Taking what is not offered: Guest post by greenfrog

Wednesday, June 17th, 2009

[Greenfrog, aka Sean, is a piquant concoction of Mormonism, Buddhism, and Lawyerism living in the Denver, Colorado area. He describes himself as an amphibious creature who "breathes Mormon air and swims Buddhist waters, both quite happily."  I became acquainted with him through his comments on posts at A Motley Vision. Field notes he contributed to some of my posts (see here, and here, scroll [...]

Guilting the lily

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I’ve been thinking about shaming language, rhetoric meant to motivate others to action by attempting to arouse feelings of guilt, unworthiness, or disgrace —how unhealthy it is, not just for people’s psychological well-being but also for the environment.  So I thought I’d run a couple of posts about how using guilt to motivate folks to change their behavior toward the earth and its natural [...]

Field Notes #5

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

From time to time, someone asks why I don’t write about the meaner, nastier side of nature, especially the predator-prey drama.  Until I go on that man-eating African lion-hunting trip or bag me an Alaskan grizzly or happen to be on hand when a puma takes down a mule deer buck, I just don’t have much to offer on [...]

Amy Irvine McHarg wins Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers

Monday, April 6th, 2009

The Ellen Meloy Fund has awarded their grant of $2000 to Amy Irvine, author of Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land, to support her work on her upcoming book, Terra Firma.  This is the fund’s fourth annual grant.
She competed for this grant last year, too, when the award went to Joe Wilkins.
Since then, [...]