I almost forgot! Today, WIZ turns one. Happy Birthday to us! I’ve been preoccupied and haven’t come up with any fun thing to do in celebration, but I would like to run out a line of thanks yous.
Thanks–deep, ever-flowing thanks–to Wm Morris, for helping me open this space and for providing solid support.
Thanks, WIZ readers, [...]
I live in the Pittsburgh area, in the suburbs. Several mornings ago I was up a little earlier than usual, and the sun seemed to be coming up later than usual. I had the opportunity to watch out my kitchen window as dawn came to my neighborhood. Looking one direction out my window gives me [...]
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, my husband and I made a dash to Moab, over an hour away, to pick up ingredients for my special needs daughter’s designer formula. Moab has a health food store, Moonflower Market, which sells several of the ingredients we use in her special blend. This tourist town also sports a large [...]
Sing the song of Cain and Abel:
Cain grew grain.
While Abel
brought flesh to the table.
Their lifestyles underscore the fable:
Cain could maintain grain.
But Abel
took food unsustainable.
Then Abel, Cain murdict.
And what is the verdict—
jealousy, heroism,
or the first eco-terrorism?
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Danny Nelson’s “Sustain-Abel” appears in The Fob Bible (http://b10mediaworx.com/b10mwx/peculiar-pages/the-fob-bible/) but is making its online debut here at the Wilderness Interface Zone. [...]
The intertwining of spirituality with images, metaphors, analogies, parables and other language containing strong veins of agrarian- and wilderness-oriented content is part of what gives scripture its power. Along with a large proportion of the rest of this Bible-reading country, as Mormons increasingly move inside and explore via the electronic frontier, scripture becomes one of [...]
by Tyler Chadwick
The crow lays roadside,
fully dead, its swollen body
trimmed with grass. Its head,
cropped with beads of dew,
cocks awkwardly to one side,
the top eye muting the sky
in a flat, milky gaze, beak
cracked in perpetual “caw,”
though no sound escapes
save the rasp of leaves
tripped by the wind
through this wooded suburban lull.
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Originally published in Black Rock & Sage [...]
Why? Because it fits.
When she woke at sunrise, she squirmed out of her sleeping bag, stood up, opened her car door, and draped the bag over it to dry off millions of pinprick dewdrops that had bloomed on it during the night. When she turned to face the dune at the canyon rim, her attention [...]
Dave’s post here caused me to reflect more self-consciously on what it is I do when I go out in the desert. Do I walk off pavement’s edge to get away from stresses or disappointments? Do I go out to have adventures? To think? Dave’s post is about seeking God in nature. Is that what I’m doing–looking for God out [...]
In my dream, people mill at a fair, trying things they’ve never before done. There’s horseback riding on flashy steeds and archery with brightly fletched arrows.
At the fair’s farthermost edge, wings rest upon the green. Their colors—kite colors—catch at me. I cross the field whispering, I’ve always wanted to try this! An attendant helps me [...]
(For Leslie Norris)
By Tyler Chadwick
Day’s last reflections
catch on wind-swept ripples
as two geese throw shadows
across watered silence.
Embraced by echoes,
each circles the other.
Tracing this current,
I watch Hudson’s pair
venturing back
across the continent:
Her wings bear no scars
of hapless encounter
with fox or wolf or man;
his body carries
no hunter’s spray,
the lead that felled him
to the dogs. They bask
in this dusking plane,
watching [...]