Hearing Voices

Back home > Hearing My Own Voice   My late afternoon in the back-country recently was relatively routine, epiphany and all. Leaving my home in the front-country home that day, I passed a commotion of yard workers everywhere fawning over shrubs and petunias....

Presence Among Pines

Back home >   Presence Among Pines A lazy afternoon in a hammock strapped between two lodgepole pines gave me this view—all my son Dakota’s idea. The creaking trees, afternoon birdsong, a plane passing high overhead—I found myself entirely present, devoid of...

Remembering Water

Back home >   Remembering Water Although many of us have lost touch with this notion, old-timers and anyone still tied to the earth from a career point of view (that includes farmers, ranchers, fisherman, mountain resort operators, and city planners) all know...

Sorrow to Healing

Back home >   Sorrow to Healing Only yesterday on one of the earliest spring days, I hiked my way into six inches of unexpected new snow. There’s nothing like it—clean, crisp whiteness. It was so fluffy it almost defied our footprints, moving to the side to...

Woodman

Back home > Woodman of the World   I was standing at the grave of Richard Ezra Rapp, my great-grandfather, on Memorial Day 2019 and struck by the inscription on the top of his headstone. I could barely read, “Here rests a woodman…” and couldn’t decipher the...