Monthly Archives: July 2021
The call of the cicadas
Waiting, I noticed the midsummer sound of cicadas, their dry rasp foretelling summer’s finale and autumn’s approach, and soon after that, winter. Some find it a sad sound, herald of the season’s ending. I find it mellow comfort: an invitation to rest; to return to the earth, my source; to reground in what is more […]
Old canoes and old sermons
Some years ago, a fellow from the Adirondacks called Willem Lange, one of Vermont’s treasured storytellers, wanting to know if he had the time to restore an old canoe. Lange didn’t have the time, but since it was the kind of thing he could do in the evenings, and since he loved old canoes, he […]
The ruckus of the birds
It’s the season for sleeping with open windows – even as the dog days begin – and waking to the sound not of an alarm clock but of birdsong. When I carried the burden of more outer commitments, I’d turn to the television for an early news and weather report. Had another act of terrorism […]
The Sauntering Pilgrim 