Ralph Waldo Emerson, I’d like a word—and bring along Henry David, too, because September is National Botfly Month, at least for white-footed mice in the Brockport Woods.

Whatever the reasons—advancing age, the continuing Covid-craziness and political trauma (Marjorie Taylor Greene, anyone?), or the onrushing spring term—I am pulled by what Lisel Mueller calls “The Need to Hold Still.” And in my desire I have adopted a nearby wetland. Fortunately no formalities or approvals are required: no paperwork or financial commitments, no wetland […]

 I’ve been thinking a lot about running recently—and doing a fair amount of it along the way. It’s helped keep the Covid-craziness and my restlessness at bay, provided some normalcy and pleasure at a time when I desperately need them. (Electoral angst, anyone?) To paraphrase from a song by Wye Oak: “I have to run / […]

Lately, my mind has been wandering. (Okay, just more than it usually does.) Physically constrained as I’ve been by Covid-19, the restlessness that haunts my every spring trends exponential. On those rare days when the Brockport air is leavened by a gentle southwestern wind and the sky glows blue as robin’s eggs, the urge to […]

Recently, I had occasion to spend some time at Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi. I visited mostly in the early mornings and evenings, to escape the press of sight-seers and the worst of the summer heat. In those quiet and (slightly) cooler hours, I tracked the park’s concrete roadways through the loess hills above the city, […]