by Natalie Ogbourne | Sep 19, 2013 | Uncatagorized
My parents are not lake people. They aren’t river people. When my brother and I occasionally talked about swimming in a nearby lake, they talked about field runoff. So when my mom told me we would be wading a river as we–my parents, the five grandchildren, and I–made...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Sep 3, 2013 | Uncatagorized
My children are all in various stages of learning to wakeboard, a sport which uses the wake, that trail of water disturbed by the passage of the boat as it moves over the surface. They wakeboard because my husband comes from a water sport loving family. They’re a...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Aug 24, 2013 | Uncatagorized
An insistent noise intruded into heavy sleep, waking me just enough to know that I had to silence it, but not enough to allow me to understand what it was or where I was. I stumbled through the dark toward the incessant pounding, wanting only to find it and make it...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Aug 13, 2013 | Uncatagorized
A trail’s name hints at what lies beyond. Usually it’s the destination: Mallard Lake. Sometimes it’s that the trail won’t be level: Mount Washburn. Occasionally it’s a warning: Seven Mile Hole. Hikers need more than a hint. We need to...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Aug 8, 2013 | Uncatagorized
Every summer the cicadas sing their song. Every summer it starts too soon. Every summer it makes me sad. It made sense when I was young. The cicada’s song signaled school’s imminent return. I enjoyed school, so maybe it didn’t make sense, but as a child, it was the...
by Natalie Ogbourne | Jul 23, 2013 | Uncatagorized
Mom and Dad first took my brother and me to Yellowstone when he was eight and I, twelve, to show us a world away from our little town but the showing began long before we packed the car and went west. When I was young we lived for a short time on my grandparents’...