Browse Topics

Leaving Walden Pond

Thoreau was not afraid to die for the same reason he was not afraid to leave Walden Pond after two years, two months, and two days. Why did he leave? He said he had several more lives to lead. To be born means to die, but Thoreau was one of those who saw also that to die means to be reborn.

The Sentient Garden

The more I learn about my garden, the less objective I feel about it. Now that I can rattle off the Latin names and vital statistics of so many of my landscape plants, you might think I would regard them as botanical specimens, each possessed of a unique genetic recipe and species-specific traits. Call me sentimental: I think of them as friends.

The Other Side Of St. Francis

His father was rotting from the inside out, and much of their visits consisted of Silas sitting and waiting in the living room, trying not to listen to the sounds coming from the bathroom.

Off The Map

Last fall, after two years of escalating entreaties by my girlfriend, I finally agreed to move from the city to the country. More precisely, from San Francisco to northern New Mexico, to a desert of lunar silences and nights so black that I rediscovered my childhood fear of the dark.

Selected Poems

Seeing The Elephant

Bird Life Heart

The Meek

“A tough row to hoe” is not a casual metaphor if you’ve actually done it. Unless you’ve picked cotton. My mother picked cotton as a child. For her, hoeing a garden was leisure compared to pulling the heavy sacks and slicing her hands to ribbons on the sharp, dry husks of the cotton boles.

Walking In Tierra Del Fuego

Finally it occurred to me that the landscapes looked unfamiliar because in 1920 there were no trees. The forested hillsides and lake shores I’d believed to be ancient sanctuaries of wild beauty had been stripped bare only twenty years before my birth.

My Cockroach Diary

“Lately when I open the cupboard doors,” my wife said, “a cockroach usually falls on my head. It’s really obnoxious.” I’ve noticed it, too. Are they leaning on the doors more than they used to?