I’m delighted to announce that the 20th Anniversary Edition of The Living Great Lakes will be in bookstores everywhere on May 14, 2024. I’ve updated it and written a new introduction that discusses what has changed in twenty years, including where the Malabar is now and what Hajo and a few other crew members are doing. And I’d like to add, in case it isn’t obvious, I can hardly believe it’s been 20 years. Quite a ride this book and its author have been on since 2004.
A Passion for Books
Glenn Wolff and I love working with legendary printmaker and letterpress maestro Chad Pastotnik of Deep Wood Press. In the midst of these difficult times in America and the world—and in large part because of them—we’re doing several projects with Chad this year. The first launches today: a broadside titled “A Passion for Books.” Because we staunchly […]Read More »A NEW BOOK (FINALLY!)
I’m pleased to announce the publication of my new book Up North in Michigan: A Portrait of Place in Four Seasons (University of Michigan Press, hardcover, 186 pages, $24.95). This one’s been in progress for a number of years and finally came together during the pandemic. I’ll always remember it as my Covid book—the one […]Read More »IT'S A NEW, NEW YEAR
“Doing okay,” is what most of my family and friends say whenever I ask. And none of us forgets that if you’re okay you’re one of the fortunate ones.But even those of us who have stayed healthy and not lost our jobs, homes, or loved ones have faced extraordinary challenges. If there’s been a time […]Read More »Time Marches on, a Sad Loss, I'm Wearing My Editor Hat Again, and Reader's Block Ends.
IT’S BEEN A MILD WINTER so far here in northern Michigan. We’re in “deep winter,” about midway between the fall and spring equinoxes, when we usually have temperatures in the teens and lower 20s and there should be a couple feet of snow on the ground. In fits of whimsy I’ve sometimes imagined (in The […]Read More »Lake Michigan in Winter
(January, Cathead Point, near the tip of Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula) IT CHANGES EVERY MOMENT. It’s a thousand lakes, changing faces with every shift in wind and light – flurried by offshore wind, white-capped in squalls, colored flannel gray or pearl white or stormy black beneath the winter clouds, a dozen blues when the sky is […]Read More »LOON SONG
THEY SAY SPRING ADVANCES fifteen miles a day, about the pace of a steady walk, which explains why I could experience three springs that year. The first was in March, in Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie’s Maumee Bay, where I stayed in a small cabin near the bay to watch new grass sprouting […]Read More »THE RESTLESS SEASON
WHAT IS THIS ENERGY that floods our veins in autumn? When the nights start turning cold and the trees are showing their first reds and yellows, I find myself rising at dawn and hurrying outside to cut firewood and install storm windows, then rushing off to spend the rest of the day fishing on rivers […]Read More »SANDBLASTED
WE SPENT THE NIGHT with our friends Betsy and Eric in a cottage they had rented on the shore of Lake Michigan near Point Betsie. The cottage was a 1950’s-era Cape Cod perched on a dune a pebble toss from the waves breaking on the beach. The lap siding was old enough to have been […]Read More »LIQUID RUNS OF MELODY
If you’re like me, not even the recent spell of cold and snow can push away the stirrings of spring fever. My symptoms always include greater than usual obsessions with birds and fish and morel mushrooms. Today it’s mostly birds. With that in mind, maybe it’s a good time to revisit a couple of my […]Read More »SPRING ARRIVES!
Ah, the season of promise. Is it any wonder we grow impatient for it in March, when the last winter storms close roads and snap trees beneath their weight? We step outside hoping to hear the bassoon rumble of frogs mating in the neighbor’s pond—and instead are struck by a cold wind from the north […]Read More »THE HOURS IN WINTER
IT’S AN ILLUSION, of course, but winter hours seem longer. In summer, when daylight lasts from five in the morning until ten at night, there’s not enough time in the day for everything you want to do. But in winter, time languishes. You can work eight hours, plow the driveway, prepare dinner, eat, clean the […]Read More »LAKE SQUALL, 1967: WHEN SALMON ANGLERS ENCOUNTERED THE POWER OF LAKE MICHIGAN
WHEN I WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD I was eager for adventure. My family lived on Long Lake, where any ordinary day offered opportunities for exploration and discovery. But ordinary days bored me. I longed for uncommon experience. When storms chased the summer people inside their cottages, I wanted to be on the shore of Lake […]Read More »FISHING THE JAM: A DESCENT INTO THE DARK SIDE OF SALMON FISHING
When the urge to spawn came over them, salmon ran up the rivers by the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. They also ran up any creek, slough, channel, and ditch they could squeeze into. My friends and I used to stalk them in rivulets so shallow the fish were virtually stranded, and still they shimmied […]Read More »A SPORT OF KINGS: THE SALMON OF ICELAND
When you mention salmon in many parts of the world, from the northeastern U.S. and Canada across northern Europe and the remote nether reaches of Russia, everyone assumes you mean Atlantic salmon. Although they are a close relative of coho, Chinook, pink and other Pacific salmons, there are differences. The most significant of them biologically […]Read More »LITTLE GIANTS: THE UNLIKELY JOURNEY OF PINK SALMON IN THE GREAT LAKES
Biologists and anglers had attempted to plant salmon in the Great Lakes for more than a century before the spectacular success of the coho and Chinook programs of the late 1960s. Those earlier attempts had always failed, with one notable exception: the accidental release of a species that established itself in all five Great Lakes […]Read More »A BOLT OF BLUE: Coming Down with a Case of Coho Fever
Fifty years ago the biggest story in the history of freshwater fisheries was unfolding in northern Michigan. Vast numbers of coho salmon had returned, were feeding rapaciously, and anyone who cast a lure into the water could catch them. “Coho fever” went rampant. Anglers from across the country hurried to Frankfort and Platte Bay, launched […]Read More »"That Wild Flash...That Lightning Crack": Writers on Writing.1
IT’S A LONELY BUSINESS, being a writer. Little wonder we’re hungry for words of advice and encouragement. I’ve collected those words for more than thirty years, writing many of them in longhand on the inside covers of my journals and adding others to digital files. I go to them sometimes when I need a chuckle […]Read More »My Bay Life
SO I’VE BECOME a homebody. Nobody is more surprised than I. But if you saw my home, you’d understand. You’d understand especially in summer, for everyone wants to be in Traverse City in the sweet season. Can you blame them? Days on the bay and the inland lakes, evenings downtown at theaters, breweries, bookstores, and […]Read More »SANDBLASTED
WE SPENT THE NIGHT with our friends Betsy and Eric in a cottage they had rented on the shore of Lake Michigan near Point Betsie. The cottage was a 1950’s-era Cape Cod perched on a dune a pebble toss from the waves breaking on the beach. The lap siding was sandblasted smooth and worn to […]Read More »YELLOWTHROATS AND AGATES
IN MAY Gail and I like to go to the eastern Upper Peninsula to watch birds. We do a sort of Grand Tour, from Mackinac State Park to the Seney Wildlife Refuge to Whitefish Point. Whitefish Point is a funnel for migrants, and on some days you can see hundreds of raptors soaring in “kettles” […]Read More »Quiet Hours
YEARS AGO, when my wife and young sons and I lived in the Old Town neighborhood of Traverse City, we often walked to the Carnegie Library on Sixth Street. On winter evenings we would bundle up in coats, boots, hats, and mittens and set out through the snow. If it was very cold and much […]Read More »DECEMBER NOTES, ON THE EVE OF CHRISTMAS
Here are some notes from my journals, Decembers 1990-2016. Some of them appeared in the “Field Notes” section of The Windward Shore: FIRST SNOW, barely an inch deep, and suddenly the world is pristine again. Climbed the hill out back and looked down on the land rolling beneath its new white coat and could see […]Read More »CAN WE INSPIRE A NEW GENERATION OF STEWARDS?
OF ALL THE CONTRADICTIONS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR, our relationship with nature is surely the most contradictory. We can’t decide if we’re part of it or apart from it. We love it and hate it to death. We abuse it heartlessly and defend it ferociously. We annihilate species, tear down mountains, poison oceans and rivers, and […]Read More »NOVEMBER NOTES, WITH THANKS
ON THE EVE OF THANKSGIVING, in this year of complexity and setbacks, when I have more to be thankful for than ever, I’ve found myself going through my notebooks looking for observations from previous Novembers. Here are a few of them: The trees as bare as bones, standing shocked, and the hills are blank and […]Read More »MAKING A LETTERPRESS BROADSIDE
GLENN WOLFF AND I have been making limited-edition broadsides for awhile now. First with Chad Pastotnik over at Deep Wood Press (“The Trout in Winter”), and now at our own Big Maple Press. What’s a broadside? We get asked that a lot. In short: a one-page work of art and text suitable for framing. But […]Read More »LITERARY FEASTS (REVISITED)
Literature and music come closest of all the arts to matching the creative opulence and diversity of nature. Just as the 117 elements in the Periodic Table are the raw material for all physical matter, the 26 letters in our alphabet create a spoken/written universe of virtually endless variety. Putting letters and words into new […]Read More »THE FRINGE OF AUTUMN
EVERY YEAR THERE’S A DAY when summer gives way suddenly to autumn. Last year it began before dawn on September 30, when the temperature fell from the fifties into the forties and a powerful wind funneled down the Great Lakes. By midmorning, waves had reached twelve feet. NOAA measured one rogue near the center of […]Read More »THE COLOR OF WATER
LAKE MICHIGAN IS BLUE TODAY, the color of robins’ eggs and summer sky. Other days it shows blues as varied as a painter’s palette. I have never seen it match the electric indigo of the Gulf Stream or the surreal carnival blues of Caribbean flats, but I’ve seen it as powder blue, baby blue, and […]Read More »"POSTSCRIPT" BY SEAMUS HEANEY (THE BEST THING I READ TODAY)
Postscript by Seamus Heaney And some time make the time to drive out west Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore, In September or October, when the wind And the light are working off each other So that the ocean on one side is wild With foam and glitter, and inland among stones The surface […]Read More »MURMURATIONS (AND SHOUTS) IN THE VIRTUAL SKY
A few weeks ago I got “schooled” in social media. The occasion was my first blog post for Mother Earth News, “A Murmuration of Starlings”, about the swirling, shifting, switching formations of starlings in large flocks. My point was about looking at the glass half-full: That starlings are invasive species and a scourge, yet in […]Read More »HILLTOPS AND RIVERS
IN THE JACKPINE AND ASPEN COUNTRY OF CRAWFORD COUNTY a hill rises between cedar swamps. I was poking around there in early May not long ago, searching the woods for morels, and decided to climb the hill to get some perspective. At the top I discovered the place I’d been looking for. You can […]Read More »SPRING: LOON CALL
They say spring advances fifteen miles a day, the pace of a leisurely walk, which is why I could experience three springs last year. The first was in March, in Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie’s Maumee Bay, where new grass was sprouting in farmers’ fields and clusters of broad-winged hawks circled overhead in […]Read More »WINTER AND WHITE SPACE
WINTER IS A GREAT TIME FOR NOTICING the little things. Maybe a clump of snow dropping silently from a bough. Maybe a red fox trotting up the driveway. Maybe the shimmering snow crystals called “diamond dust” that sometimes, on very cold days, drift down from a blue sky. For years I’ve been trying to simplify […]Read More »WHAT'S LIGHTING US UP: ANNE-MARIE OOMEN'S LUMINOUS CONTRADICTIONS
With “What’s Lighting Us Up” I’ve been inviting some of my writer friends to report on any books, music, movies, moments in nature, or life events that have been making them come more alive than usual. Here poet, essayist, and playwright Anne-Marie reflects on a difficult challenge in her life and discovers that there can […]Read More »THE BEST DAMNED THING I READ TODAY
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic for putting me on their review list (because of my interview with Jim Harrison here). They just sent an advance uncorrected proof of Harrison’s new collection of novellas, The Ancient Mistral, which will be released in March, 2016. The title novella, which poses as memoir, contains this, the best damned […]Read More »from WINTER COMES TO THE KEWEENAW
…In the morning the cabins were new to us. It was as if we had awakened in a different place altogether. Rain streamed down the windows, and the waters of Agate Harbor were gray and wind-streaked and bordered by rock formations capped with golden tamarack and black spruce. Beyond the mouth of the bay, in […]Read More »WHAT'S LIGHTING US UP: SYDNEY LEA’S ESSAYS AND THE MAGIC OF BIRD POEMS
I’ve known Sydney Lea for many years, from time spent together at the Bear River Writers Conference and through intermittent correspondence about our shared passions for fishing, birds, bird hunting, and books. Syd’s a wonderful poet and essayist, a Pulitzer finalist and a contributor to The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many other publications, and […]Read More »ON THE GREAT LAKES: THE STORMS OF NOVEMBER
Every year on November 10 countless people remember the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in Lake Superior with 29 crewmen on 11/10/75. I remember also November 10, 1998, when I drove to Whitefish Point during one of the worst storms since 1975, saw Lake Superior in turmoil, and met a man who was caught in the […]Read More »OCTOBER FIELD NOTES
Up before dawn this morning full of plans, oh I am industrious, I am such a hard worker, I will never die. Stepped outside to see what kind of day it would be and across the darkness heard a barred owl call from the spruce trees beyond the old barn. That cool hollow inquiry, “Who, […]Read More »AUTUMN ESSAY: A RIOT OF COLORS, WITH VIOLINS
ONE DAY LAST FALL we were paddling across a small lake in northern Michigan when my vocabulary failed me. It was a bright October afternoon and the woods were in full display. To say they were “ablaze” with a “riot” of colors would be inadequate. Pathetic, really. I plucked a brown leaf from the water […]Read More »A WORLD OF DISTRACTIONS, AND THE BEST THING I READ TODAY
BEACHES TO WALK, rivers to paddle, trails to hike. The pair of red-headed woodpeckers that nested in our yard. Warblers. A red-eyed vireo laboring to feed a fledgling cowbird half again its size. Visits from friends and family (everyone wants to visit Traverse City in the summer). Neighbors’ lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chainsaws, chippers. Women’s […]Read More »SUMMER AND SLOW TIME
SUDDENLY ITS SUMMER—and not just the season of blue skies and verdant woods, of songbirds in the morning, thunderstorms in the afternoon, and fireflies at night, but the languid interlude we remember so fondly from childhood. Then as now it can seem timeless, lazy, as far removed from the productive seasons as the apple tree […]Read More »Night Watch on the Malabar
WHEN I WAS A KID I wanted a life of adventure. What kid doesn’t? But I had the wrong idea about it. I thought you had to risk your life. I thought you had to travel to distant places and throw yourself into difficult situations. I didn’t know that ordinary moments can be adventures, too. […]Read More »WHAT'S LIGHTING US UP: KEITH TAYLOR'S GLADNESS
I WAS A FAN of Keith Taylor’s nature essays and poetry for years before we met, so it’s probably not surprising that I liked him from the first time we shook hands. It was at the first Bear River Writers Conference, on Walloon Lake, Michigan, in 2000, and I liked him so much that I […]Read More »WHAT'S LIGHTING US UP: Joshua Davis, pixies in a tub, and why Homer couldn’t see blue
Next week Keith Taylor weighs in with a wonderful tribute to what’s lighting him up (a clue: it has wings). Until then, here’s what I’ve been enjoying this week: Millions of people have been lit up this spring by the singer/songwriter Joshua Davis, who is one of six remaining contestants on the television talent show, […]Read More »WHAT’S LIGHTING US UP: Mike Delp’s "Work"
Every week, starting this week, I’m asking friends to comment on the books, movies, music, art, natural events, and creative projects that they’ve been finding most interesting and inspiring. For the first post, I’m honored to present a powerful new poem by Michael Delp. Mike’s an old friend and fishing pal and a terrific writer […]Read More »GETTING THE SENSE OF A PLACE: A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN MICHIGAN
Today I’m thinking ahead to the University of Michigan’s Bear River Writer’s Conference on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey, Michigan, which will be held May 28-June 1. This is among the finest writing conferences in the country, and I’m pleased to have taught workshops at it every year except one since its inauguration in 2000. Our […]Read More »WHAT AWES YOU?
A study in the journal Emotion (as reported in The New York Times) suggests that the sense of awe might be beneficial to your health. As we all know, awe is one of the upbeat moods, along with joy, pride, contentment, enthusiasm, inspiration, amusement, compassion, and love. Most of us have probably suspected that staying […]Read More »WE LAUNCHED A SMALL PRESS AND ARE PUBLISHING BOOKS SOLD ONLY IN INDEPENDENT STORES. ARE WE CRAZY?
Yes. But it’s a good kind of crazy. Artist Glenn Wolff and I have made our livings illustrating and writing books for nearly 30 years. In that time we’ve witnessed the publishing industry go through the most dramatic changes since Guttenberg. When we met in 1986, Glenn and I could not have anticipated how much […]Read More »WHAT A GLORIOUS MISTAKE A TITLE CAN BE
Glenn Wolff’s and my “forgotten” book has just appeared for the first time in paperback. The Bird in the Waterfall: A Natural History of Oceans, Rivers, and Lakes was published in hardcover in 1996 by HarperCollins Publishers, on the heels of our national bestseller, It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes. We were scheduled to launch Bird […]Read More »WOKE TO A WHITE WORLD
Sometimes the world slips through the window and joins us where we live. And, of course, the more fully we live, the more often it joins us. In December 1991, in the final sprint to finish my first big book, I found myself becoming more alert than usual. It was my first experience with the […]Read More »MAY I LIVE IN YOUR BOOKSTORE, PLEASE?
If you own a bookstore you’d be very smart to hire me. I would never be late for work and would cheerfully clean the bathroom when necessary and add pennies from my own pocket to the take-a-penny dish. I would make your customers feel so welcome that they would run home and get their sleeping […]Read More »The Best Thing I Read Today
“In thin oils she depicted clumsy beaches and clouds. Their foregrounds and middle grounds showed jetsam and wrack, stained waves, brown bottles, steamer shells, broken china, waxed paper, church keys, foil, nails sticking through in lumber, clamshells, tires, purses, shoes – only two or three objects on each canvas. With a sable brush she graphed […]Read More »Hail the Unfinished Project
With labor day behind us and the first autumn leaves skittering across the patio, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get to work. I’m not all that ambitious by nature, so it must be the cooler temperatures that have me energized. Or maybe it’s a residue of all those years of summer vacation […]Read More »The Beauty of the Mysterious
I’m not sure if we should be lionizing our geniuses, but in the face of all we don’t know, what else can we do? Albert Einstein is the nearest we’ve come so far to a secular wise man. Here he is on the subject he spent his life pondering: the mystery of the universe: “The […]Read More »Former Luddite Goes Cyber; Sort of Likes It
With two new websites, an electronic newsletter, and a Facebook page churning away via mysterious processes it seems I’ve parachuted into a futuristic cyber age powered by steam engines and magic. What’s next, a Tweeter account? Yes, if the wizards at Chelsea Bay Design and Maue Design have their way. In recent months Chelsea and […]Read More »The Moment When a Book is Born
Sometimes you can pinpoint the moment exactly. Glenn Wolff and I remember the genesis of our first collaboration, It’s Raining Frogs and Fishes, which was originally published in 1992. It began when our mutual friend, the artist Bernie Knox, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the telephone in her house. She placed the receiver […]Read More »GETTING LOST
Here’s what turns my crank: Free-flowing rivers in wild country, ponds hidden in tamarack swamps, campsites under white pines swaying in a breeze, trout gulping mayflies. I like pushing off in a canoe. I like slinging a backpack onto my shoulders. I like knowing that if I find a woods or a pond or a […]Read More »The Best Thing I Read Today
“It is possible at last for Masa and me to imagine a little of what the ancient – archaic — mind and life of Japan were. And to see what could be restored to the life today. A lot of it is simply in being aware of clouds and wind.” – Gary Snyder, final lines […]Read More »On the Eve of the Opening of Trout Season 2013
"I don't know why I need to fish so much. For the good of my soul? The question makes me skittish. I prefer to think of fishing as a restorative to some vital thing -- maybe soul, maybe heart, maybe vitality itself – that dwindles when we spend too Read More »A Cure for Writer’s Block
Writer’s block is your body’s way of telling you to go fishing*. But if you’re in a northern latitude in March and it’s 19 degrees outside and the wind is gusting at 25 mph and snowdrifts are thigh-deep across your driveway, your body is telling you to cook. So pour a glass of wine, turn […]Read More »The Best Thing I Read Today
“Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, […]Read More »CABIN FEVER!
Alaska’s shotgun divorces are rare here in northern Michigan, but our fever can still take alarming forms. Now that we’ve passed February and begun the brutal home stretch, my friends and neighbors have begun exhibiting a variety of symptoms: – dragging the canoe into the living room, setting it on sawhorses, and spray-painting it yellow. […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: BORGES' ANIMALS (AND THE BEST THING I READ TODAY)
I’ve been studying the history of taxonomy lately and reading Aristotle, Pliny, Linnaeus, and others who have labored mightily to make order in the universe. But no study of the systems of classification would be complete without mentioning the Jorge Luis Borges story posing as an essay, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins.” In it […]Read More »Items from a Literary Junk Drawer
Every writer has such a drawer. A repository of miscellaneous fragments, discarded first drafts, odd midnight jottings. A seed bin. A garden plot starting to sprout. A cabinet of literary curiosities. I have many such drawers. One is an actual drawer. Another is a wire in-box tray stacked high with hand-written and printed pages stratified […]Read More »The Blizzard of '88 and the Word "Blizzard"
As the North digs out from last night's blizzard, maybe it's a good time to share an excerpt from It's Raining Frogs and Fishes about the mega-storm of 1888 and the rather obscure origins of our word "blizzard":
Read More »Making Art Along the Cedar River
Among my greatest pleasures in a long and pleasurable career has been collaborating with artists Glenn Wolff and Chad Pastotnik. Working together in the hemlock and cedar woods along the Cedar River at Chad’s Deep Wood Press, we’ve done three projects together: a limited-edition book (Winter Walks) and, now, our second limited-edition broadside. This broadside, […]Read More »THE MOST SORROWFUL MAN IN THE WORLD
I was born on Columbus Day, 1954 and as a child was more than willing to accept the conventional hero stories of that era. Later, when my friends and I were old enough to read objectively and think for ourselves, many of us became appalled, as are countless others, by the real story of Columbus: […]Read More »SEASONAL
When I was a kid I liked fall best, October especially, month of my birth, of crisp nights and colored leaves, of Halloween and apple cider and firewood to be split and stacked before winter. Summer was trivial, made for children and tourists, but autumn was somber, solemn, mature. It made me impatient to grow […]Read More »FRIDAY LIST: FAVORITE PHOBIAS
On the “make lemonade” premise I considered writing a diet book, one that was sure to hurl to the top of bestseller lists. It would be titled: Lose 10 Pounds in 8 Hours! The Contaminated Food Diet! Instead I’m content to live the rest of my life with an abnormal fear of turkey-and-hummus roll-ups left […]Read More »LINES BORROWED FROM OR SLIGHTLY ALTERED FROM SHERWOOD ANDERSON'S WINESBURG, OHIO(PLUS THE FRIDAY LIST)
Winesburg, Ohio might be the most haunting book I’ve read this year. A nice surprise, considering that I last read it 30 years ago and remembered only that it contained vivid sketches of quirky people. But it is, of course, much more than that. The “quirkiness” turns out to be the peculiarities of people who […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: MISCELLANEOUS USEFUL FACTS
three R’s (reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic) three points in a good landing Three Signs of Being in Buddhism (impermanence, suffering, absence of soul) four seasons four classical elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire) four states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma) four humors of Hippocrates (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, blood) four temperaments of Hippocrates (sanguine, choleric, […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU GOOGLE “MY HEART IS LIKE”
“My Heart is Like a Zoo” – children’s book by Michael Hall “My Heart is Like a River” – song by Rebecca Lavelle “My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water’d shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit; My heart is like a […]Read More »THOUGHTS IN THE POND
“As for the wellsprings of wonderment, they run deep. The quiet mind, the youthful heart, the perceptive eye, the racing blood – these conflow to produce wonder.” – E.B. White, The Points of My Compass “Solitude. Where does its value lie? For in solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: EUPHEMISMS FOR BOOLY-DOGGIN'
…and, of course, the other topic dear to the heart of poets: bang bone belly-bump booly-dog boozle buff the floor do bouncy-bounce do a bit of hard for a bit of soft make carnal acquaintance cavault do the conjugal act consummate coot perform the culbatizing exercise do the four-legged frolic frick frigg do ficky-fick do […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: EUPHEMISMS FOR KICKING THE BUCKET
Yeats or maybe Auden or perhaps Pound (probably all three) said that the only subjects worthy of poetry are sex and death. Thus, in honor of those great poets, a list to draw on: depart expire croak keel over kick off bite the dust pass on pass away perish succumb answer the final summons answer […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: PARTY TIME
““… Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: MORE AND MORE AND MORE, APPARENTLY
Things the Consumer Society Thinks You Should Own (based upon advertisements in a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly): – a stone from Hadrian’s Wall – a hood ornament from a Mercedez-Benz – a Blackberry – Bose Quiet Comfort 2 Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones – a clarinet – Junghams Apollo Mega Multi Frequency Atomic Watch […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: PUT THAT NOTEBOOK TO GOOD USE
For a writer, of course, it’s a necessary tool. For many years I’ve kept full-sized spiral notebooks as idea banks – where I jot random thoughts, dreams, rough drafts, quotes from my reading, miscellaneous observations, overheard conversations, phrases that have become stuck in my head, arcane information of all kinds – anything I consider noteworthy. […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: WAYS TO LOOK AT A RIVER
Last week Glenn Wolff and I posed as poster children for an upcoming campaign by the Grand Traverse Conservation District to raise awareness about the beautiful and fragile Boardman River. We spent a pleasant couple hours in the evening fishing on the upper river, just above Ranch Rudolph, while photographer Andy Wakeman shot us casting […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST: VELVET THIEVERY
What inspires you? The late fiction writer Edward D. Hoch, who published more than 900 mystery stories, including one every month for 35 years in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, must have found his inspiration in hardware stores, Walmarts, old Sears catalogs, and his own garage and attic. Hoch’s obituary in the New York Times (January […]Read More »THE FRIDAY LIST
You know how it is. You’ve worked hard all week saving orphans from fires, framing condos, sewing up knife wounds, digging coal from deep caverns, painting interior walls and trim for senators, forging steel death machines, composing reams of prose that will probably win a Pulitzer – basically being industrious and brilliant, just like Mom […]Read More »Guys Grillin'
Burritos! Quesadillas! Flank steak on the grill! Anything on the grill! My friends and I were tending the grill while our wives drank wine on the patio and we fell into discussing the cultural phenomenon of men taking over in the kitchen. Just about every man we know under the age of 60 does most […]Read More »BOUNTY IN THE WOODS
Ah, the season of bounty! Morels started popping weeks ahead of schedule here in northern Michigan and are still going strong. I found a couple on March 26, a consequence of that freakish spell of hot weather that everyone is still talking about — first time ever I’ve found them during that month when the […]Read More »A Reader Checks In
What an honor it is for an author to learn that his work is giving a reader he has never met some much needed comfort in a comfortless place. This is a young soldier named Nick Warren, on patrol in northern Afghanistan, reading my memoir of growing up outdoors, A Place on the Water. Nick […]Read More »BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Favorite Books Now and then I’m asked to list my favorite authors and books. The answer’s always tricky because the list is quite long and, besides, often changes. To narrow it down for the most recent request (five favorite books for the Horizon Books website) I went to my bookshelves looking for the books that […]Read More »BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Abundance: The Documentary Many days I would cheerfully trade my pen and paper for a state-of-the-art video camera. Cinema is so clearly the dominant artistic medium of our age that we who practice older arts often wonder if we’ve become irrelevant. Not yet! I shout, despite the seeping doubt — and the tottering piles of […]Read More »BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Simplify, Simplify For years Gail and I have been trying to simplify our lives, but we haven’t made much headway. The effort always makes me think of Thoreau, who famously scolded us to “simplify, simplify,” then set to work weaving a deliciously intricate tapestry of a book. It’s as it should be. Books are like […]Read More »BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Just Curious We’re drowning in information but we don’t know diddly. For a few thousands years we’ve labored tirelessly to fill our libraries and databases with notions, theories, observations, opinions, wishes, dreams, passionate outcries, wild imaginings, shameful whining, obstinate dogma, and pointless babble — but we still don’t know how we got on this rock […]Read More »BOUNTIFUL WORLD
More of the Harmoniously Random Here’s the word-drunk philosopher and novelist William Gass, in one of my favorite quirky and hard-to-classify books, On Being Blue, his single-breathed triumphant aria in celebration of every blue thing under (and in) the sky: “There’s the blue skin of cold, contusion, sickness, fear… absent air, morbidity, the venereals, blue […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Encyclopedias of Everything, Part 2 Taking inventory is not only an act of organization, but an acquisition. Listing the multiplicity of things in the world makes them our own, and we own the list as well. Taken to its extreme such a project naturally presents logistical problems. Where do we draw the line? At what […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD (THE MEANDERING PATH OF A BOOK IN PROGRESS)
Encyclopedias of Everything Lately I’ve been dipping into the great encyclopedias, and I’m pretty sure I’ll never be the same. Last week I revisited two old favorites, Aristotle’s History of Animals and Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. Yesterday I spent seven hours reading from Alexander von Humboldt’s magnum opus, Cosmos. By the end of the […]Read More »THE COMBINATORY AGILITY OF WORDS
The Combinatory Agility of Words
There are certain authors I can’t read at night because their fountains of language induce an electrically charged insomnia. Whitman, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Beckett, Cormac McCarthy, and others have cost me many nights’ sleep and thousands of dollars in lost income. My attorney is looking into a class-action suit.
Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD (THE MEANDERING PATH OF A BOOK IN PROGRESS)
With spring about to bust loose around us, it’s hard to get away from birdsong. Here’s another look at the subject, adapted from “Reading Nature at Pine Hollow,” a chapter in my forthcoming book about winter on the Great Lakes: Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, Mahler, Ravel, and other classical composers were inspired to incorporate birdsong into […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD - (THE MEANDERING PATH OF A BOOK IN PROGRESS)
Virtuoso Performers I was up early this morning, listening to the dawn chorus. Is anything more emblematic of spring than the singing of birds? Several people have written to say that they enjoyed the links to bird songs in Friday’s “Liquid Bars of Melody” post. Steve Tracey reports from the Upper Peninsula that he staved […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD - (THE MEANDERING PATH, WITH CURIOUS DIGRESSIONS AND COLLECTED ABUNDANCES INCLUDED, OF A BOOK IN PROGRESS)
Liquid Runs of Melody I was awakened early this morning by a cardinal and a titmouse singing in the walnut tree outside my window. And I could hear also, in a kind of counterpoint to those bright and piercing notes, the tap-tap-tap of dripping eaves. Is it possible? Are rumors of spring true? Birdsong has […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Harmonious Disarray What do artists’ still lifes, jazz, Japanese gardens, and literary lists have in common? The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley identified one thing, at least, in a letter in verse he wrote in 1820 while staying at the house of his friend Henry Revely (Henry once saved Shelly’s life after he fell into a […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Literary Feasts Literature and music come closest of all the arts to matching the creative opulence and diversity of nature. Just as the 117 elements in the Periodic Table are the raw material for all physical matter, the 26 letters in our alphabet create a spoken/written universe of virtually endless variety. Putting letters and words […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Armloads of the World That there is something rather than nothing has nailed many good philosophers to their chairs, but equally befuddling is matter’s refusal to remain an undifferentiated mist adrift in space. Lucky for us that individual atoms dance with other atoms, adhering, combining and recombining, arranging and rearranging, shuffling among themselves, piling likes […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
The New Lyceum A nice invitation has come my way from Northwestern Michigan College to speak May 17th at TEDx Traverse City, a local version of the acclaimed TED conferences that bring people together every year to share inspiring ideas. The national conference, TED2011, was launched yesterday in Long Beach, California, and runs through this […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
The Naming of the Shrew In the beginning was the word, and it’s a good thing, because above all else we are creatures of language. Adam’s first act was to name the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, and in so defining the things of the world he made it come […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
THE HUMAN PAGEANT Who is not fascinated with the variety of people in the world? For years I’ve collected literary celebrations of the human pageant — a bookish variation on watching people on the street. Here are a few of my favorites: Virginia Woolf, from Orlando: “At the carnival in the Royal enclosure in London: […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
SHAKESPEARE’S BIRDS The European Starling We meddle. Apparently we can’t resist. Consider Eugene Schieffelin, the amiable lunatic I mentioned yesterday who is so often accused of trying to bring all the birds mentioned by Shakespeare to America. Although there’s some question about his Shakespearean connection, there’s no doubt that he kidnapped his share of birds […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
Flocking Starlings I was driving along I-75 north of Bay City, Michigan, in an area of open fields in the flatlands of the Saginaw Valley, when I saw what I thought was a distant swirl of black smoke. I looked more closely and realized that it was a single flock of thousands or maybe tens […]Read More »THIS BOUNTIFUL WORLD
How I got this far, so far…and Hooke’s Micrographia A toast to plenty! To variety and diversity! To the astonishing multiplicity of things in the universe! To Cornucopia, our ancient symbol of abundance and all our dreams of wealth! To relief at last from the tyrannies of want and hunger and… what? Our eventual annihilation? […]Read More »