Category: Country Life / City Lights

Where I live – there’s heresy in trees, An orange apostasy amid the green denominations. At first it’s just a single branch In some dank corner of the lowlands – A nickering doubt in the clicking of crickets That gets a nod from the goldenrod, A pang of white-haired dread in a dark night’s frost… Read more

Sailing is a selfish pleasure, and often a solitary one for me – as yesterday, when the list of to-do’s as long as my arm suddenly faded in front of 22 knots of westerly wind.  Jumping aboard, loosening the lines, raising the sail, and backing her off the mooring – I have escaped!  The boat… Read more

I live in so many lives — the one I just finished as a learning facilitator for month of Sundays in lively and balmy Australia was fun, enlivening, tiring, and of course an ego boost; being the center of attention is exhilarating but also draining. One’s ego comes to earth very quickly on arriving home,… Read more

It’s a truism where I come from that if you spot the moon and want to know whether it is waxing or waning, just draw a line along the flat side. If it makes a small ‘p’, it’s ‘progressing’ (waxing), and if a line along the flat side makes a ‘d’, it’s ‘decreasing’ (waning). That… Read more

About four this winter morning, I stumbled into the bathroom to alleviate the pressure of Saturday night’s wine (pausing to remember Rumi’s assessment of human beings: a machine for turning the finest Shiraz wine into rank urine). I heard an odd sound, and looked around – where could it be? it almost sounded like someone… Read more

Ahead of the storm, it was so still and cold that the first inhale you take outside has the shine and consistency of mercury. Whatever animals catch your attention first – the birds, the horses, and rabbits – get their food and the activity moves the cold to your skin and then out of you… Read more