My phone informs me nearly every day that I’ve been sedentary too long. I don’t really need the notification. I feel it in my back, my shoulders, the particular heaviness that settles in after a full day of digital work. But then I guess I do need it. The...
Dad joke anyone? I’ve never slept outdoors a night in my life. I’ve spent dozens laying on the bare ground or in a tent, though, eyes wide open, waiting for morning to come. That wasn’t true when I was younger. But over the past few years, it’s...
Late yesterday afternoon, a gust blew down a wasp nest. Not a little one. We found it on the grass over toward the river in the park in front of our house, a gray paper mass roughly the size of a basketball, torn open by the fall. Inside were layers of hexagonal cells...
I’m offended by the smoke that has invaded our valley. I’ve heard all my life that smoke follows beauty. Around a campfire, it’s an old joke. If the smoke drifts your way, you move to another log and let someone else become the punchline. This week there is no other...
I spend a lot of time outside—enough that I should probably worry more about skin cancer than I do. I’d always figured my coloring kept me on the safer end of it: brown hair, hazel eyes, skin that browns before it burns. Then someone close to me had a melanoma...
If someone asked for volunteers to run laps around the high school track, I’d be the last hand up. The reaction comes before the thought — flat, physical, immediate. Not fatigue. Something closer to boredom that has weight to it. The repetition, the grind, the...
