Lessons from the Wild… People Still Get Polio 11 Jan 202111 Jan 2021 I discover a skinny desert path on my first morning walk in the Arizona neighborhood. The trail’s opening looks menacing in that brutal desert way, but further up the hill…
Lessons from the Wild… Once in a Lifetime 9 Jan 20218 Jan 2021 Marine biologists said it would only happen once, a phenomenon, swarming of bait fish off Cape Cuvier along distant Western Australian coast. A desolate, rocky place, few got to observe…
Lessons from the Wild… The Unraveling 2 Jan 202127 Dec 2020 Kingfisher was putting on a show. Circling overhead as I soaked my parched skin in the rocky pool, fed by the hidden spring. They landed on a branch near…
Lessons from the Wild… An Olfactory History of Cantaloupes 27 Dec 202027 Dec 2020 Cantaloupe sprouts smell like fully-formed cantaloupes when I water them. The air in the greenhouse is already heavy with moisture; the thermometer says 90 degrees by 9am. Water hits the…
Nature Flash Fiction… I Think of Night 15 Nov 20209 Nov 2020 Here comes a woman, her legs like lamp-posts and her teeth bared. We feel bad for whatever we’ve done, we’re in trouble now. She’s got the look of a…
Nature… 3 Broadsides 11 Nov 202011 Nov 2020 By Margaret McCarthy Margaret McCarthy brings the eye of a poet to her photography, exploring archetypes of myth and dream in her imagery. Exhibitions include: the Fogg Art Museum, The…
Nature Flash Fiction… A Walk on the Wild Side 30 Oct 202024 Oct 2020 I’m lucky. I live in beautiful Hunterdon County, New Jersey. And there’s wildlife everywhere. On my daily, early morning walks, I see deer, rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, even a…
Nature Flash Fiction… Mother and Child 29 Oct 202018 Oct 2020 I was born on a spring morning when the leaves were half-sprouted and the frost was still sparkling on the grass. My mother, thirsty with pain and exhaustion, licked it…
Nature… Obituary: A Tree 28 Oct 202018 Nov 2020 Her birth was born in scat. A seed that had passed through the inner lining of a grey fox that had gulped her up on accident as he, in turn,…
Nature Flash Fiction… The Garden 26 Oct 202015 Oct 2020 The quote on my teabag reads, “A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul” bringing about a memory of my grandfather kneeling at…
Nature Flash Fiction… Why the Creek Weeps 23 Oct 202015 Oct 2020 Photos and Story by Ricardo Jose Gonzalez-Rothi An academic physician and scientific writer, Ricardo has had his fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry featured in the U.S. and in the U.K.,…
Nature Flash Fiction… Crow and Sunny 19 Oct 202013 Oct 2020 I used to watch her running through the dog pasture. She was shaggy. Her ears dark and long, almost to the ground, stuck way out from her head. Seven or…
Nature… behavior in crisis 13 Oct 20209 Oct 2020 Poem by Ruth Mota Ruth Mota lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California where she writes poetry inspired by the wildlife around her. She enjoys facilitating poetry circles to…
Nature… Kindred Spirits 9 Oct 20206 Oct 2020 I woke from a bad dream to the sound of a buzz saw to discover the mangled corpse of chopped wood chunks and strewn branches, the remains of the beautiful tree that protected my balcony. The former golf…
Nature… The Ivory Elephant 5 Oct 20205 Oct 2020 My father often said, “You can’t really understand someone unless you walk in their shoes”. I didn’t understand what this meant until the day I went with my mother to…
Nature… The Walking Cure 5 Oct 20206 Oct 2020 Losing an arm wasn’t a problem, the Army told her. Look up the names: Horatio Nelson, Álvaro Obregón, Stonewall Jackson. All of them men, but never mind. There was a…
Nature… The Guardian 4 Oct 20202 Oct 2020 Sometimes you just know that you are walking into a magical fairy place. You see the signs and feel the vibes that invite you in and welcome you. At first,…
Moss and Mushrooms… Moss & Mushroom Flash Fiction 24 Sep 202015 Sep 2020 “A rolling stone gathers no moss” or so the saying goes. But what does it mean? A Google search reveals a definition from Oxford Languages: “A person who does not…
Moss and Mushrooms… Only the Deer Ticks Pray 17 Sep 20207 Sep 2020 The Last State Park closes on a Tuesday. The woman shuts the gate behind her in khaki-colored reverence. She is the last one to enter, this woman who searched for…
Moss and Mushrooms… Philo 13 Sep 20204 Sep 2020 When my mother, a naturalist, tried to grow a moss lawn, she prepared the concrete patio with her own urine. It just seems like I can never get enough, she…
Moss and Mushrooms… Terraria 13 Sep 20201 Sep 2020 Photograph by Erica Plouffe Lazure Terraria Janissa skipped the aerated charcoal. The most crucial layer of a terrarium and she forgot it. Again. As though the tiny black moisture-sucking, oxygen-supplying…
Moss and Mushrooms… The Stinkhorn 9 Sep 202031 Aug 2020 In Ryan’s world, being quiet is relative. He doesn’t talk much––in fact, when he turned three, he ceased to speak at all, which was when his autism was first detected.…
Moss and Mushrooms… Morel 7 Sep 202030 Aug 2020 The package arrives special delivery. He reads the return address before he opens it, vivid memories flooding up from that most distant time. His childhood neighbor now owns the woods…
Nature… Black-Eyed Susans 28 Aug 20206 Aug 2020 There is a mangy farm cat that found its way to Bethesda in the undercarriage of a pickup truck.Having found sufficient sustenance, (scraps thrown out by Pam’s diner in a…
Nature… Piotr’s Paphiopedilum 26 Aug 202018 Aug 2020 William's body now lies freezing at the foot of Volcano Mount Sinabung in Sumatra and all for what? For the sake of a damned inflorescence, that is all. As I…
Nature… Fragments gathering 22 Aug 202017 Aug 2020 We waited for the bats to emerge from the cave below. Stephanie and I had backpacked all over that summer, out into nearby mountains and mesas—the Franklins, Sacramentos, Black Range…
Nature… Tableau 21 Aug 202017 Aug 2020 The aurochs of Lascaux cave or the ghosts of Hiroshima or the figures of Basquiat are records on soot greased walls, and likewise the poems I have no choice but…
