Wilderness yesterday, wilderness today Alexis De Tocqueville visits America in the 1830’s and wants to see the wilderness. The early settlers don’t understand his fascination. The pioneers explore the wilderness for economic reasons or colonial reasons, say for logging, war, trapping, mining, but never for pleasure. It is chaos, the face of the deep, the unfettered darkness.…
Growing a Memory
Geography and the landscape of the heart Home is two places, and anybody can see a heart leaned up against itself leaves a gap in the middle. There is the Cumberland river country, a wrinkled bit of geography in southcentral Kentucky where steep hardwood ridges cradle skinny hollows pushed out by enterprising settlers. The other…
Men and Other Problems
Received an email recently noting that my favorite authors are “white men.” (The emailer found a list of author-mentors on my website.) This, I took the liberty to infer, was an accusation. It put me, a white man, in a circular conversation with other white men, who have historically held and wielded power. This might…
The Table Where I Belonged
This essay was first published on the Plough.com on 16 February 2024 On a typical morning in my childhood, I wake and trudge down to the barn to help Dad with the farm chores: chickens, two horses, a milk cow, a dog, a pig or two. I am often conveniently fifteen minutes late. When we arrive…
Sketch: Snow
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Job 38:22 Student: Teacher, what is snow? Teacher: Snow is part of the hydrologic water cycle that is essentially ice mixed with air. Supercooled droplets of water freeze into microscopic crystals, then these crystals conglomerate into a flake, forming one of six unique shapes of snowflake in accordance…
Sketch: Conversations with Developing Souls
The following has been aggregated from a small experience in working with children. Names and details have been changed to insure privacy. Me: “Hey! Good evening.” Faye: “Good. Can we pick up my friend Steph?” “If her parents are OK with it.” “She lives on the other side of town. I can show you.” We…
How the Real Alaskans Do It
Alaska has always had an aura of mythology, and it’s easy to see why. Just plop a mountain like Denali into a state and you will have climbers dying on it. Have Jack London come into the North, almost die of scurvy, then retreat to sunny California to write hairy-chested and Darwinist tales of the…
Jehovah’s Witnesses Don’t Go to Heaven
Or, How Not to Evangelize It’s been disappointing enough today, incurring debts from gracious people and otherwise being stuck a hundred miles north of nowhere. Never mind. So I’m sitting on the edge of a weathered deck, trying to pilfer some WIFI to tell my family that everything is fine, which is not a complete…
Epiphany of Fatherhood
“…parenthood is not an exact science, but a vexed privilege and a blessed trial, absolutely necessary and not altogether possible.” —Wendell Berry She cries. I cry, but not for the same reasons. “You want to hold her?” they ask. Do I want to hold my baby girl! I reach her away and it takes me five…
Nonsense
It’s a post-Covid waiting room with all the magazines gone, the television and radio playing simultaneously. I have an ear cocked to the radio and an eye to the television while passively consuming these media like a decent citizen. On the television: “Eggs are not a dairy product.” Is that why they call them chicken…