Getting Outside
Getting Outside Saturday: The Hissing of Summer Lawns
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Actual footage
I mow as little as possible, or actually quite a bit less than as little as possible. My lawn is only partially grass, and you don’t really need to mow moss, or cinquefoil, or gill-over-the-ground, or white clover, or all those other things probably ever. But to keep the forest at bay, to keep the historical clearing, to keep light on the garden, to make a place for tumbling, and then soccer in the fall, well, you gots to mow. Last year I used 2.5 gallons of gas to do it. The whole summer. But it was dry-ish. Crazy lawn this year. Anyway, this is a mowing poem. The smell, the heat, the boredom, I recall those days forty-five years ago when I mowed the Smith’s lawn for $2.50, and the Holmes’s lawn for $2.00. Neither took me long. You’d walk the neighborhood with the machine, a rotary roar machine, very proud of your status as a working man. Green sneakers, that’s what you’d end up with. And green fingers from clearing the chute. And rocks flying a hundred yards when you nailed them, and the roar. Also the stripes of lawn, 24″ at a time. You worked out the most efficient pattern over time, and knew right where all the stumps and rocks were, and right where the swan hid next to the pond, the one that chased you up the hill in a swan rage. If your sprinted, you could do a two-hour lawn in fifteen minutes, meet your girl for a smooch, and no one the wiser. Today, my friends, I know there are suburban neighborhoods where I’d be in big trouble, but I love to let the dandelions go, the black-eyed susans, the daisies, queen-Anne’s lace, the hawkweed, the fabulous hawkweed, then the grass itself. What’s more lovely than a grass plant in flower? When I finally mow it’s more like haying. But you do have to keep that athletic field open when your kid is 12! She follows the mower doing cartwheels in the fresh. And come morning I’ll rake up the cuttings and mulch the asparagus. It’s a mine, that lawn, and spins gold. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Secret Sharers (a Photo Haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Woodchuck. Waddled out of the lettuce, across the lawn, and into this little tree. I let him go to chomp another day.
Be a part of the Debut of Iota: The Conference of Short Prose
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Campobello, site of Iota
I believe short forms are worthy of a long weekend.
That’s why I set out to create Iota: the conference of short prose. We’ve got a unique little focus: short writing. Iota celebrates and inspires an economy of words in a largesse of place. We’ve recruited Sven Birkerts (essays), Arielle Greenberg (poetry and hybrid forms), and Lewis Robinson (fiction) to spend four days working with participants on how to say more with fewer words. You can write in the morning, then attend workshops and cross-genre discussions in the afternoon. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Things in NYC that Reminded Me of Dave
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Up at dawn! (Sunrise over Central Park, 5:25 a.m. I? Well, I went back to sleep.)
Writing from Inside: “Best Friends,” by W. Wrighter
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[This piece arrived from the following prompt: “Write about a person, an object, or a place over a period of years, landing briefly to examine it, then fast-forwarding a few years to see it afresh.” W. Wrighter chose to look at her changing “best friends” over the course of her life. It’s the story of a downward spiral that ends on a hopeful note, despite the final landing spot–MW.]
Best Friends, by W. Wrighter
She was younger by four years, my only playmate, the one who was spared from beatings by my back, shared secrets and whispers, the one I would die to protect, at age seven
…my sister Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Why I Climb
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Rosie on the wall
I started dancing at age 4, first ballet, then tap and ballet, then just tap, then tap and climbing, and then just climbing. I know I stopped being a dancer and became a climber when I was 14. But I don’t know when I started feeling like a climber—that could’ve been earlier. My dad taught me how to climb (starting when I was seven) and his dad taught him how to navigate the mountains and in turn my grandfather’s dad taught him how to enjoy the outdoors, I suppose. My dad finds solace in the mountains along with his dad, hiking through the snow, ice and sometimes rock of the North Cascades in Washington. For me, well, I find solace there too, but prefer to be high up on the vertical spires of granite, sandstone, and limestone protruding from the spine of Mother Earth herself. We could be called the evolution of the vertical life, moving forever upward in our quest for freedom in nature. But this process hasn’t been generational in the sense that climbing on its own has been passed down to me over the years. Rather the need for adventure has been passed on to me, the unadulterated respect for the environment and the continued quest for freedom. Continue reading →
Meet the Authors
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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The gents have chivalrously agreed to post some writing from a group of women inmates whom I work with in a program called “Meet the Authors.” (The women don’t have internet access, but your comments will get back to them, through me, after being vetted through the chain of command.)
The program runs in 12-week rounds, two hours per week, with a different group of students for each round, always with a few repeaters. We read the work of Maine women writers, who come to discuss their work and offer a writing exercise in their respective genres. The women then write short pieces, using prompts from me or the guest writers, and revise them according to feedback from the group. The guest authors’ books, I should add, are purchased by a generous couple from Portland, who have been steadfast supporters of this concept. Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Wet
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The path’s a brook
Getting Outside Saturday: Debora Bikes Steamboat Springs (a photo haiku)
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