Standing between the hot, vibrating fender and the seat, there was just room enough for me to ride beside my father on the tractor. At three miles an hour, we went up and down the vineyard rows, transported by the mellow, acoustic hum of the gas engine as dozens of blackbirds crowded behind us to hunt for worms and bugs in the newly turned soil. This, too, was paradise. There […]
Looking back, if I think of each insect and bird, each leaf and handful of soil, each mountaintop and white puffy cloud as an ancient scroll waiting to be read, then my daily childhood surroundings on the farm might be seen as a kind of living, breathing Library of Alexandria. And I had it all at my disposal without a single bit of advertising — no pop-up ads, unless they […]
I saw the lizard exactly one-quarter of a mile north of the center of the road in front of our house, resting on the dry ground within inches of the rusted peg my father had pounded in before I was born to mark the place where our farm ended and the two neighbors’ began — one with a vineyard to the west, the other with plums to the east. I’d […]
A sailor on my mother’s hip, sailing in the mother ship, through the kitchen, down the hall — I was that many years old. Now she’s gone — or so I’m told. She didn’t like our old blue boat. I remember once her calling it an egg crate. I loved the term. A faded wooden vessel twelve feet long, with bright-white eggs several deep packed in tightly all around, and […]
Was I awake, or asleep? Was I there, or somewhere else? Banish the word or and the answer is clear: there need be no answer. That, in its own simple, strange way, is the story of my life. My grandfather, emerging from the sycamore shade on the south end of his house, barefoot and carrying a shotgun in one hand and the bloody remains of a robin in the other, […]
One day, at a very early age, I reached the conclusion that I would live forever. I remember saying to myself on that occasion, in all simple certainty, I cannot die. It was a revelation, not a plea, one which arose not from long deliberation or fear, but from the earth itself, and seemed to emanate from the palm of my upheld hand. This startling new truth was borne out […]
It takes time to learn carpentry; algebra; to build bridges; plant a vineyard; fly to the moon. But to live simply and joyfully, to be kind, to breathe deeply, love, and be free, time is not needed at all. Peace is not a matter of identity, struggle, or effort; ask any tree or ever-changing cloud. You are here; the date, the hour, need not be recorded; the world need not […]
The great naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, has died. But the world has not lost him, as the common phrase goes. He lives on his books, in his colleagues, and in the countless people he has influenced and taught. He lives on in the environment and ecosystems he helped and is still helping to save. It is not necessary to meet and know someone personally to benefit from his or her […]
More snow during the night — about an inch, maybe a little less. Thirty degrees on the front step; barefoot down to the end of the driveway, and then back up, possibly a little colder. Still, relatively speaking, the weather is mild. Real cold — Solzhenitsyn’s cold and Jack London’s cold — is not a joke. It is not to be trifled with. It’s easy to walk barefoot outside for […]
I first clicked “like” in 2010. I have no idea how many times I have clicked it since then, but it surely numbers in the thousands. When we lived on the farm, I clicked “like” in another way — with a pair of sturdy wooden-handled pruning shears. I clicked my way through the damp, foggy winters, up and down rows of vines and trees. Those clicks may well have numbered […]
William Michaelian 