Deep Roots
Grand Rapids, Michigan (2012) Most roots do their growing underground out of view of the observer. What mystery leads them to lengthen and sink…
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A day more beautiful
Photo: Sorbie Farm, Salem, OH, Hanna Family Archives (circa 1958) It was a day, her uncle said, more beautiful than it had any right…
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A stake in the ground
There is a stake in the ground just below the gully of willow trees, above the creek, in the back field of our farm…
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No Trespassing
Pozzi Farm, just outside of Valley Ford, California (2014) In the place where I grew up, there are many fences, barbed wires, stakes, and…
Read MoreDividing a dying woman’s land
Her eyes blur the fields. She shrinks to a seed, forgets to speak, forgets to say how footprints till the layers of her brain,…
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The Edge
Grafton, Ontario (2017) In this piece, my son Caspian stares out across the crest of a small hill to the road and fields north…
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From solastalgia to philopatria: A call to watershed discipleship
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt of a larger essay titled, “A Reflection on Isaiah 5, Ecological Solipsism, and ‘Watershed Discipleship’,” which appeared…
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Patterns of migration
She never ceased to wonder at the incredible power of birds for adaptation. These had flown perhaps a thousand miles from the South to…
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The Zilwaukee Bridge
M-13 in Zilwaukee, Michigan (September 2013) The Zilwaukee Bridge is a gateway. As most know, Michigan has two peninsulas: the Upper and the Lower….
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The Labourers
Fraser River, British Columbia, Canada (June 2016) I was out today with the camera down along one of the winding arms in the delta…
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