photo sequence: back woods

We live on three acres of wood that goes back into more woods, a stream, small lozenges of crops. This year, the summer was so wet, the corn only grew in little bulbs, not enough to even bother bringing down the equipment for harvest.

Living on land became a priority for us once we became parents. We wanted our children to know what it was like to run around in the woods without serious restriction. I also have a streak of misanthrophy running through my internal organs, so living with some semblance of privacy was also appealing.

A lot of what I'm writing right now is meant to be fictional, but is based at the center of home for me: a mother, a father, two children, a home in the woods. They aren't us, but part of us is them.

book launch: wilder

It's all about convergences: being where you need to be at the moment all the points come together to form that great spark. It was last night at Claire Wahmanholm's book launch for her gorgeous debut collection Wilder. There we were in the quiet world of the Bell Museum's planetarium, and I thought of the worlds we occupy: the present, here on Earth; the imaginative, out into the universe; the quietest, in our homes.

I want to write in a way that honors these places: the mapmaking, stream ecology origins of my husband's work; my daughter's deep, driving interest in animals and their habitats; my son's curiosity with those that dig in the earth and how helpers exist and offer that help in respectable and generous ways.

I had a spark of an idea, and I thank the opportunity to be where I was in that time. These posts seek to track that process as it unfolds into what I hope will be a viable manuscript.