I have always liked the word “foothill.” It evokes not only the low hills at the foot of a mountain, but the pleasure of footing over them. When the hills turn soft and green, I like to imagine placing a marble at the top of a hill and watching it roll. Last weekend, I followed […]
Back in 2019 I interviewed two prominent skunk researchers, the wonderfully-named Dr. Ted Stankowich and Dr. Jerry Dragoo. After talking to them I decided that if I were going to devise a Marvel-style comic book avatar for myself, it would be “Skunk Woman.” Rather than mostly in-the-way, non-aerodynamic objects of unwanted attention, my breasts would […]
Just down the road from my house, there lived a bull. He had a massive, muscular neck and a glossy black coat that rippled as he strode around the pear orchard that served as his pasture. In fall, when the pears ripened, the bull rubbed against the old trees, shaking their trunks until the fruit […]
As the days get colder and darker, and the escalating pandemic keeps me homebound, I’m trying to make the most of what I can see through my windows. Last week I bought a beautiful vintage hummingbird feeder made from a blood-red glass bottle with fluted sides. I filled it with sugar water and hung it on my back porch, where […]
Last week my mother and I drove up into the Sierra Nevada and stopped at a creek lined with aspens, their leaves falling on the water like lucky gold coins. We passed a wedding party, bridesmaids clutching bouquets with one hand and using the other to keep their sheer purple dresses from flying up in the wind. Minivans, […]
The slow stretch of river where I like to swim gleamed copper yesterday morning, reflecting sunlight tinted red by wildfire smoke. I sat and drank my coffee as the sun rose, watching the silhouette of a hummingbird zip across the dun-colored sky. Four mergansers cruised across the pond then dove underwater, leaving barely a ripple behind them. “Must be nice to be a boat, a plane, and […]
I can tell I’m going to need a stash of new vocabulary words to get through this pandemic. “Dumpster fire” and “shitshow” are worn thin from overuse. “Stressed” and “overwhelmed” lost their meanings months ago. Luckily for me, a fresh, unfamiliar phrase recently leapt out at me from a paper I was idly perusing in the journal Aging Cell. The name […]
I am writing this post from bed. I can’t get up, because (shhhh) there’s a kitten purring on my chest. We picked her up from the animal shelter yesterday. There were dozens of kittens vying for adoption, but as soon as I felt her nudge my hand — polite but insistent, green eyes steady — […]
