Category Archives: Uncategorized

| | The Mississippi looks placid tonight. Not yet inked in cascading droplets of twilight, and un-addled by a 6:30AM’s blurry vision, the wide waters below undulate delicately in welcoming expanse. It was not long ago that I went in this manner — the icy cracked current flicked from view by a painter’s stroke asContinue reading “By Rivers and Rails”

Note: This piece was originally written for and published by (7/16/20) the Campaign to Save the Boundary Waters out of Ely, MN. It can be found on the campaign’s website here. I didn’t grow up Minnesotan. My dad did — a product of South Minneapolis, local public schools (go, Washburn Millers!), and only the mostContinue reading “I Didn’t Grow Up Minnesotan”

Note: Yes, I do realize this isn’t English 🙂 In the case that you’re able to read French, what follows is my final paper for my MSID Senegal Environment & Sustainability course — entitled The “Human-Nature Division.” A rough Google Docs translation is added just after the original. La Division « Homme-Nature »   ~ Une analyseContinue reading “La Division “Homme-Nature””

Note: This was written over a period of months, from August to December, 2019 — and coinciding with a number of changes: my family’s move to a new house, a new year, and a new period of life in Senegal. In my mind’s eye This almost August day A red brick dormitory looks on watchfullyContinue reading “Anthology #3”

Note (1/16/20): This was written in early July 2019 during a rare break in the busy summer season for my outdoor rec/education job with Wilderness Inquiry. Gray light      Dripping through morning window slats   Calls to mind days hung in the balance      Sepia tones and ombré shadows     Backdropped by pitter-pattering From the slate-like skyContinue reading “Anthology #2”

Note: This was completed in early June, 2019 — the below event taking place on the road back from Wilderness Inquiry staff training. Yesterday A black bear wandered across the road       Several seconds in front of our  speeding van A visceral excitement An energy    Was coursed through us travelers Witnesses to this other    Continue reading “Anthology #1”

A misty dawnand milk-sopped sunrustle their feathers over a mawof toothy peaks.A light blue t-shirtemblazoned with whitepresses sticky against his skin.The weightiness of soupy airhangs heavydamp.Step by bleary-eyed stephis group snakes up and up while the sky ladles generous spoonfuls of syrup ontoeach of their pulse-quickened heads.I ask himWhy?Why come here?Why relinquish these summer weeks?(Alternatively, why grasp them?)Why flyContinue reading “Milk and Honey”

A frost-chilled wind somersaults off the lake, up the bluff, across the town.  Many of those from my past life from my present life from my past life crack open gritty eyelids, rustle stiff limbs, and peek out windows laced with cobwebs of ice.  The breath comes  cold, then warm,  then cold again; As theContinue reading “Shorewood”

I still have bits of earth that should be of no use to me. In my bedroom cubby corner papered with a knife’s edge of dust  lay mud-caked rubber  and laces cracked like peppercorn: a pair, to be precise. Tonight, bolts of thickly-stitched fabric woven from tendriling time  and trails gone by ribbon out inContinue reading “Calls of the Wild”

I pick up Turn over Dust off An old trusted record preparing to be respun No different than any of my other since  set aside disks Of fading voices Of milestones gone by To be returned to These old records of them there are many I take each in different times with different hands  andContinue reading “As the table turns”