The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water and the great heron [...]

I’m writing from a small hotel room on the chilly edge of Lake Superior. I see seagulls swooping, the wooded shoreline that leads to Dylan’s famed Highway 61, the jagged rocks, the chimneys of the mansions from the steel industry that left decades ago. And I remember summers, heading North (and still further and further [...]

When I spotted this photo of myself trudging up our old road with Natalie on my back, I couldn’t resist posting it. Because for me, at least, it captures what life feels like so much of the time: one foot-in-front of-the-other, straight up the mountainside. This has been a year of transition, of climbing and [...]

In our new house, we have been blessed with a long (maybe 1,500 foot?) meandering driveway. When I first saw the house, I thought, “Oh, no. Who is going to lug the garbage all the way down to the curb?” But then, when life was most hectic, I found myself volunteering to take the garbage [...]

In about a month, we will stand on our front lanai to welcome our friend Fr. Kaleeg and his three young children back from Canada. We will follow a simple Hawaiian ritual to unite our families: we will open our front door and and our arms and say, “We receive you into our home.” I [...]