I had just returned home from a trying day at the office—something of a laughable concept as I’m there only one day a week and I’d spent several hours wandering backroads on my return leg—and sitting down to supper barely able to keep my eyelids aloft heard a slight tapping, a gentle rapping at my … More Once upon an afternoon weary

 Lately I’ve been trying to find a way to inhabit this new body of mine, not so much in circumventing its foibles or overcoming whatever limitations treachery and old age have in store but simply in understanding where I fit in and how the two of us might function as a whole. Or parts of … More Reclamation

     Well, the first round of thunderstorms wasn’t nearly as impressive as they looked on Doppler radar, and the amount of rain they produced nothing like predicted. Weather forecasting has always been a crapshoot and I for one am glad it’s not my responsibility to divine the proverbial tea leaves. I’d hate to be … More Discoveries and disgust during disciplined spring cleaning

“I don’t believe in anything anymore: god, country, money or love.” – Dorianne Laux       This is the life I always wanted but never knew how to dream: Rabbits in a two-acre yard with a view of the northern edge of the Flint Hills and a wide river a half mile away, a … More All that matters I hold in my hand

It seemed like another lifetime, tinted with a faint sepia tone like an old faded photograph, impossibly distant, but not so distant that its details failed to surface as we replicated each somber step of the journey. Ours was a slow and stately procession, or would have been if not for the road’s adherence to … More Consigned to this fair land

       If the new metropolis is a cultural stew, rural America, at least in my neck of the prairie, is a goulash.       Frankly, this surprised me. From what I’d seen over two decades of annual visits, northeast Kansas was predominantly white, Protestant, friendly and Republican. (Which proves that there’s no … More The world’s first but not the last

“They’re just a big pile of rocks,” my friend said. “What’s the big deal?” Responding to such a concept—that the Rocky Mountains were nothing more than a jumble of boulders—left me all but speechless. My friend, a man just turned 35 years of age and never having once seen a mountain or a foothill, was … More Why I’m here, why I’m not

A black cat killed a rabbit last week, my neighbor said. Did it right over there—pointing to a shallow roadside ditch abutting his garden. The ditch was a wild tangle of elms, mulberries and Osage oranges, a place of concealment and cover for predator and prey alike. I hadn’t seen it around before, he said. … More A wary and uncertain contentment

Rain turns to sleet turns to snow turns to bright sun turns to howling south winds bringing the smell of salty Gulf moisture. One afternoon I hobble through the yard plotting a garden and the next I shovel snow from the driveway. Scheduling an outdoor photo shoot is little more than a gamble because the … More Preparing for the worst

I’d like to say it was a bittersweet moment when I slipped the key from my key ring and deposited it in my boss’s inbox, said goodbye to one of the office staff working late and exited out the back door without fanfare, pealing trumpets, drum rolls or stirring soundtrack to mark the occasion. Had … More The nature of doors