The Rivers in My Life

“The tale that River told was so strange, so mysterious, that all the listening in the world did not explain all that was in it.  Even River, who seemed to be doing just as he liked, was not entirely his own master . . . . something that the sea had said had got into [...]

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A Tree Full of Grace

For weeks our home has been surrounded by silence—the silence of deep winter.  Only the whoosh of wind outside our windows, the whisper of sleet and snow, and the strident caw of hungry crows have broken the lifeless hush which set in around late November and continued through the darkest December days—into the new year. But suddenly, last week, the silence [...]

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My Big Elk

A beloved treasure is our Big Elk River, just around the bend from the bay at our northern Wisconsin home.  Soon the ice will go out, and we’ll be heading north to savor the sights and sounds upriver.  In canoeing weather we like to go up-river at least once a week, to see the changes in flora and fauna.  [...]

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Soporific Summer Days

Finally it’s summer!  Gone are those 40 degree mornings, and raw days which threatened to be all we would get this year.  We are having beautiful days, in the 80s.  Soporific days of fishing, reading, sleeping, and lollygoggling about on the screen porch.  Our Denver grandsons, Nathaniel and Joel, arrived yesterday.  When they are here, [...]

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Friends are returning . . . .

Our home sits on an incline, overlooking the bay and lake.  Along the shore is a marsh which skirts our front (lake side) yard, and covers most of the eastern side yard–under the driveway and out to the road.  Now, as every year in May, our marshland is covered with butter–that glorious butter of blooming marsh marigolds, sometimes called cowslips.  [...]

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The Faces of Spring . . . .

The green face of spring (pictured above) is three weeks away, along with the time of bursting buds and wildflowers rejoicing in the meadows and woods. Now we’re enjoying the tawny face of spring.  Tentative green shots appear in areas, but we are still in the stage of post-winter brown.  I love each face of spring as [...]

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Currents of dreams . . . .

Mole:  “And you really live by the river?  What a jolly life.” Ratty:  “By it and with it and on it and in it . . . . What it hasn’t got is not worth having, and what it doesn’t know is not worth knowing.”  Kenneth Grahame, THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS ——————————————– “The tale [...]

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