Writing Through the Pandemic

So… how are you? I mean it. How are you? In my quiet household, where the animals don’t seem to be aware that anything’s wrong (except for Mowat’s amped-up need for evening cuddles as I watch The National), we are muddling along. Talking every day with my mom, texting with my mother-in-law who is in […]

Melt

Despite the Arctic airmass that’s been hanging over us, plunging temperatures into the minus double digits, spring is coming. The snow is ever-so-slowly receding towards the forest shadows, the geese are returning, and the other day I saw a seagull soar over our house. Mowat is also fully spring fevered, visiting Gus, the golden retriever, […]

Writing is lonely. But it’s worth it.

I’ve been returning to the roots of writing practice lately. To the book I bought and cracked open as I was crossing the Georgia Strait between Tsawwassen and Vancouver Island on my way to Salt Spring Island, circa 1993. Back then, as I read the first pages of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, a pair […]

Come for Tea?

I’m stuck on Chapter Four. Partly because I’ve spent the past five days working to eradicate some of the beige that covers every wall (well, except for bathroom’s combo of ’80s aqua and stark white and the kitchen’s half-and-half neon yellow and, again, stark white) in our new-to-us home. All the while, my mind’s been […]

Genuine Choice: Why I Quit Twitter and Facebook

The ground is under my feet. Snow turning soft, ridged snowmobile trails collapsing into black earth in the fields where we run our dog. In the early morning, the blue jays show up to eat the sunflower seeds that the red squirrel has knocked out of the feeder. Chickadees and nuthatches flit around, and a […]