“It's hard to imagine Anne without Trixie,” my friend Karen said on Friday when I had to say goodbye to my beloved 15-year-old dog. It's hard for me to imagine me without Trixie either, because we were so connected, nearly inseparable, for the past 14 years. I feel a kind of naked I've never known... Continue Reading →
How appropriate that the cat would die on New Year's Day after a year like we had, disabusing me of the notion that the flip of a calendar page would somehow wipe clean the disaster of 2020. Jasper did himself and us the great favor of dying with relative ease and seeming peace at the... Continue Reading →
I wasn’t looking for another dog. We already had one, and he was damn near perfect. But when I saw Trixie’s black, white, and tan face, I was done for. A tiny color photo in an email was all it took. That was 12 years ago. Trixie came all the way from Arkansas in a... Continue Reading →
At first I was curious about why or how anyone even noticed a female orca in the Pacific Northwest carrying her dead baby. I figured it must have been a random sighting and, concurrently, a random demonstration of animals expressing grief. Simultaneously, I wondered how a sea animal “carried” something at all. By the time... Continue Reading →
Our first house was set into the side of Mount Nonotuck, a smallish mountain in Easthampton, Mass, at the western end of a smallish spread of hills called the Holyoke Range. The nearly 100-year-old structure, which had an angled dirt basement with actual boulders sticking up in it, was seriously “settled,” meaning its floors tilted... Continue Reading →
Today I read a story in a back issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine by Brenda Miller that revolved around the National Toy Hall of Fame (who knew such a thing existed?). Though Miller wrote about all kinds of memorable toys—Etch a Sketch, slinky, Legos, and the like—there was a significant focus on dolls, as they seem... Continue Reading →
Maybe it’s because I’m a native Texan. Maybe it’s because Mother Nature always amazes me. Maybe it’s the same for most people. But the first snow in New England each year really does feel like some kind of enchantment. It seems incredible that light, pure, sparkly dust suddenly sprinkles from the sky, sugaring everything below.... Continue Reading →
It's no revelation that spring brings the birds. But for those of us who grew up in Houston where seasons barely exist — and therefore plants stay green year 'round and bird migration means only that the feathered ones pop over to Mexico for a quick holiday and then come right back — the bird... Continue Reading →
Our friend Cassie found the four-year-old tri-colored low-rider at a pound in Nashville. She sent us pictures of him with his big warm brown eyes looking up at her through the metal bars of his kennel. The dog looked happy despite his confinement, and we were immediately smitten. My husband Peyton and I had talked... Continue Reading →
The deer traffic here, The deer from the forest With their considerable bodies, they cross, stepping Soundlessly through camp, As if possessing some magic Over mounds of brown dry leaves, littered fallen branches Without a crunch or snap, without even a sigh Though the dog occasionally catches A whiff, her snout arching upward, on the air Apparently, they have a scent undetectable... Continue Reading →
True Scrawl 