My first post on The Soul of the Earth was on March 30, 2015. That was the Monday before Easter and this past Monday I finished a heavenly week in the same place I was nine years ago: the Anza Borrego Desert. To celebrate this Easter, I thought I would send a bouquet of the […]
It turns out that heaven is relatively easy to find, just into Canada north of the Montana border. At the end of a beautiful drive through the prairies of southwestern Alberta, you arrive at the gates. Not pearly, as one was led to expect. Instead, the rather odd Tudor/rustic combination favored by Parks Canada. This
I have located heaven Read More »
All people everywhere possess an innate hunger for, and right to, what is sustaining, good, and beautiful.~ Bill Strickland ~ This is how the power of beauty operates. Thirty years ago this summer I was hiking through a forest in upstate New York with my 5-year-old son. He had skipped ahead around a curve and
Beauty: the great interrupter Read More »
What I remember most vividly is how green it was. I was tiny then, close to the green grass, eyes level with the leafy shrubs. Awestruck by the green-dappled blue showing among rustling leaves that seemed as far above me as the sky. The tree trunks were enormous, rough under my little fingers, brown and
A girl in the Garden of Eden Read More »
When I first described my love for the Aboriginal concept of songlines, the paths taken by the First Beings as they sang the world into existence, I said that one of the ideas I love best is that we are tasked with continuing the work in our own lives. As we walk through our days, we
Songlines 2016: landscapes of love and prairies Read More »
I’ve been a walker all my life. From grade school through college, I walked to school. As teenagers in a small town with nowhere to go, we would take walks to hang out together. I walked to my first job after college. There were a couple of years, after moving to New York City, when
The Pawnee National Grasslands were born out of grief. After years of drought, farmers of northeastern Colorado, already suffering through the Great Depression, watched as their soil literally blew away. Clouds of dirt rose 20,000 feet in the air and blew so far east that they eventually settled on boats crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Left
Parcels of prairie: the Pawnee National Grasslands Read More »
I’m still wandering the Utah desert with Moses. He’d be very used to this, but, though I love it, I’m positive I’d find forty years a few decades too many. “Well, of course,” he would say, with the air of a man who has come to grips with doing what his god says. No matter
A land of stone tablets Read More »
One of my greatest moments of transcendence happened on the Marin headlands. I was standing within view of the glittering city of San Francisco and the elegant curve of the Golden Gate bridge. It was early in March, and the wildflower season had started. I had been hiking and photographing them for three hours, working
Transcendence: surprised by joy Read More »
If you want tundra, you must either go far enough north or high enough up. So a trip up the Dempster Highway in the Yukon was perfect for my longing for arctic plants. Two days of careful driving over the dirt and gravel road will take you into the Northwest Territories and to the Arctic
The mysterious Yukon Read More »