I don't know what gladness is or where it comes from, this splitting open of the self. It takes me by surprise. Not an awareness of bea...

A single burnished leaf from the oak in the front yard floats down and comes to rest in a pot of bronzey chrysanthemums on the threshold. Th...

You will never be alone, you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes. Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums, or the silence after lighteni...

Spatterdock or Yellow Pond Lily ( Nuphar advena )

Spotted Jewelweed or Touch-Me-Not ( Impatiens capensis ) There is a whole thicket of these colourful critters blooming in the moist earth al...

The earth offers gift after gift—life and the living of it, light and the return of it, the growing things, the roaring things, fire and ni...

This week's word is one of my favorite words in the whole English lexicon, in part because of the notions of careful thought, deliberat...

To enrich the earth I have sowed clover and grass to grow and die. I have plowed in the seed of winter grains and of various legumes, their ...

A family around the corner keep this gem in storage much of the year, but they are about to set out on their annual summer road trip, and th...

Male American Goldfinch ( Spinus tristis )

Long before writing was invented, human beings read their world. They interpreted their dreams and the flights of birds. They read the inte...

Here I am, trying to describe something in the great wide world that is quite beyond description. I know it is so, but I carry on anyway, an...

Summer sings its long song, and all the notes are green. But there’s a click, somewhere in the middle of the month, as we reach the turning ...

On a fine morning in August's middling pages, a weathered stump along the trail wears a carpet of haircap moss ( Polytrichum commune ). ...

There is no mystery in this association of woods and otherworlds, for as anyone who has walked the woods knows, they are places of correspon...

For most of the year, I adore the old crabapple tree in the garden, its whiskery branches in winter, the new leaves and blossoms in springti...

We awaken to skies that would make an impressionist painter feel like dancing, to Canada geese singing in unison as they fly up from the riv...

Some say it’s in the reptilian dance of the purple-tongued sand goanna, for there the magnificent translation of tenacity into bone and grac...

Male Swift River Cruiser ( Macromia illinoiensis )

An annual cicada's song is the quintessential music of August, a sonorous vocal offering from exquisite little jeweled beings who emerg...

Heal-all (woundwort, heart-of-the-earth) ( Prunella vulgaris ) This wild purply herb grows almost everywhere here. It goes by many names, an...

The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To ...