Category: Reflections

Blog

Blog: Night Music
Reflections

Night Music

Net jacket, mosquito repellent, headlamp. I’m ready. Ten of us follow Juan, our native Amazonian guide, over the stone path, past the tool shed, through the orchid greenhouse, into the night. Leaves crunch beneath our

Continue Reading »
Blog: Winter
Reflections

Winter

I try to settle into winter, but it won’t settle. Forty inches of snow last week, another nine inches two days ago. Yesterday turned cold, a chilling fog settling down on the city. Then, last

Continue Reading »
Blog: One Fall Day
Reflections

One Fall Day

The boat scraped the rocks and halted with a thud. Wedescended the ladder and jumped to shore. I’d been looking forward to this hike for weeks, but the day was all wrong. Wind, rain, choppy

Continue Reading »
Blog: Return of the Birds
Reflections

Return of the Birds

Fifteen of us, of various ages and levels of bird knowledge, face into an icy wind on Glacier Spit across the bay from Homer, Alaska. I’m bundled in three layers of clothing below the waist,

Continue Reading »
Blog: Return of the Light
Reflections

Return of the Light

Give me the light—five more minutes a day. Spring in Alaska. It’s a seduction game. Frozen nights, thawing days, another snowfall, and the cycle starts it all over again. I love/hate this time of year.

Continue Reading »
Blog: January Ice
Reflections

January Ice

Brilliant sun, mostly calm, temperature in the twenties. Nine of us, including my granddaughter Carly, home from college for the holidays, follow the ridge above Furrow Creek as it flows beneath the ice into the

Continue Reading »
Blog: Getting Out
Reflections

Getting Out

Late November. Gray sky, chance of snow, high twenties. We lose four minutes of precious daylight a day. Two voices argue inside my head. One says: stay inside, read, eat cookies, and take a nap.

Continue Reading »
Blog: One Small Thing
Reflections

One Small Thing

September. Boots, raingear, gloves, old clothes. We’re ready. Four women. Trish, the arborist, is our leader. She’s already dug shallow holes for planting. Small pots with spruce and birch samplings wait in the bed of

Continue Reading »
Blog: Tracks
Reflections

Tracks

Seven women climb up a trail in the Chugach Mountains on a sunny April afternoon. Temperature in the forties. Trail conditions: slush, ice, occasional patches of mud. On our feet, each person wears a different

Continue Reading »
Blog: Spring
Reflections

Spring

Black ice bergs flow with the tide in Cook Inlet while Sleeping Lady still rests beneath a thick blanket of snow. Forty degrees by day, twenty-seven by night. Wind, rain, mud, thawing dog poop, filthy

Continue Reading »
Reflections

Ravens

Freeze, thaw, snow, rain, repeat. March weather in Southcentral Alaska is predictably unpredictable. Today, I trek with my hiking group along Campbell Creek, a wild corridor within Anchorage’s city limits. We’re looking for ravens. Not

Continue Reading »
Blog: Losing Light
Reflections

Losing Light

The sky clears. Five women squeeze into one dusty red sedan and head for the Butte, a destination delayed too many times by bad weather. It’s late August, the rainiest month in Southcentral Alaska. We

Continue Reading »