All Because of a Little Fire

The springtime landscape in rural Iowa wears a mosaic of ever-deepening swaths of green broken by plots of freshly turned fields and charred black ditches. Growing up, I saw the burns and wondered why people, including my farmer-grandparents, endured the stress of...

She Needed Me to Play

Sometimes, when we head west, we land for a few days at a cabin. In a meadow in Custer National Forest, it’s far enough from civilization that the siren song of phone, internet, and television falls silent, replaced by the gentler sounds of wind in the trees and...

Tracks in the Snow

The twelve-passenger van made its way down Yellowstone’s snow-covered road not on traditional tires, but on treads meant to traverse the groomed roadway. Gone were the crowds and the fly fishermen of fall, replaced by seas of white broken by swaths of evergreen and...

Because

Because the things of earth end, because beginnings arrive disguised as endings, because this week brings both to our family in the form of college–a repost. It made sense when I was young. The cicada’s song signaled school’s imminent return. I enjoyed school,...