For two mornings in a row, I stayed in bed longer than usual. Not long enough to constitute a new discipline, but enough to make me curious about what was happening in that space between waking and getting out of bed. So I lay beneath the covers and listened. The property was already awake. Hundreds of birds live around us—robins, geese, doves, and more varieties of little chirpers than I could name. Across the creek, mooing cows occupied the property on the other side. Beyon

Last spring, Selena was in the process of planting our garden. One day, she added forty tomato plants. I was especially looking forward to all the soups and sauces that would come from them. Everything in the garden looked perfect. Until it wasn’t. According to the almanac, we were safely beyond the danger of frost. Winter had released its grip, the days were getting longer, and everything around us seemed to agree that the growing season had begun. That night, the temperatur

This morning, I noticed an unusual squash among the pile of squash and pumpkins in our mudroom. It was large and yellow, with several pieces of wire protruding from its sides. Most squash do not come with hardware, so I picked it up for a closer look. The wire had not been wrapped around it after harvest. The squash had grown within one of the fence openings, expanding until the wire became embedded in its sides. Its smooth shape was interrupted by narrow channels where the f

I was pumping wine at the winery when the power went out. There was no warning. The pump simply stopped. For a moment, I stood there listening to the absence of something I had not been listening to a second earlier. The equipment that had been doing exactly what I expected it to do was suddenly doing nothing. My mind moved much faster than the electricity had. We have backup generation, so I immediately began working through what would need to happen next. What was running?

The flash of orange showed up miles before anything actually changed. Against the muted colors of late-summer grass, it was almost impossible not to notice. Orange cones stood along the shoulder, one after another, stretching farther ahead than I could see. Nothing appeared to be wrong with the road. The pavement beneath me was still smooth. Both lanes were open, but the speed limit had already dropped and traffic had slowed with it. There were no workers, no equipment, no to

Selena and I recently watched Napoleon Dynamite again. I have seen the movie enough times that some of its jokes arrive in my memory a few seconds before they arrive on the screen. Still, Uncle Rico standing alone in a field with a football and a camcorder makes me laugh every time. Rico carries his equipment into the grass and creates what appears to be a private scouting combine. He plants a tripod in the ground, points the camera toward himself, then backs away with a foot

It stood just beyond the reach of my headlights—a narrow green rectangle holding three white numbers. I saw it for less than a second, and then it was gone. The road continued beneath me, tires humming against the pavement while the darkness absorbed whatever the headlights could not reach. Less than a minute later, another small green sign appeared along the shoulder. Then another. I had passed hundreds of them on that trip. I noticed almost none of them. That is the strange

I like beginning grape runs while most of my corner of the world is asleep. Usually, I leave around one in the morning, when the roads are quiet and mostly clear. Construction sites that will become crowded with workers and equipment a few hours later sit vacant. The air is cooler, traffic is lighter, and the steady passage of mile markers offers a kind of company without conversation. If I become tired, I pull over and take a ten-minute nap. I have learned not to negotiate w

Selena and I spent Labor Day laboring. We had the address of the family’s forty-acre property and knew the names of the two gravel roads that met at its corner. Our GPS knew the roads too. What it could not seem to decide was which of the two corners belonged to the address we had entered. There is something familiar about a washboard gravel road. Its evenly spaced ridges feel like evidence of trucks and cars traveling faster than the surface was willing to allow. Our tires r

The fifth-floor button was already glowing when someone pressed it again. I had parked in the basement lot of an apartment building and entered the elevator alone. I pressed the button marked “5,” and the orange glow inside the clear plastic announced that floor was now a future destination. The doors closed, and the elevator started upward. When it stopped on the first floor, two people stepped inside. One pressed the button for the third floor. The other pressed the button

There are millions of grasshoppers in Stillwater County. Only one of them attached itself to my day. I had just picked Selena up from a fiber conference at Graycliff Mill when we stopped at the grocery store in Columbus. While she went inside, I waited in the truck. A grasshopper landed on the driver’s-side window, climbed toward the upper corner, and settled in. When Selena returned, I pointed him out. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I remember what I thought: he w

Photo credit: Keith "Giligan" Geier Before we have words for it, we learn the comfort of returning. A small child wanders a few steps from a parent but looks back for a familiar face. A traveler crosses miles knowing there is a place waiting at the end of the journey. We leave, explore, and discover, but there is something reassuring about knowing there is a way back. Perhaps that is why the places and people we return to matter so much. They remind us that we are known. The

There aren’t many places where you can pull off the interstate and find an entire town hidden in plain sight. A small sign near Greycliff pointed toward a prairie dog town. I had driven past it before, but this time I decided to stop. The afternoon was hot. The thermometer read 101 degrees. From the parking area, the prairie looked almost empty. Dry grass stretched toward the distant hills. Hundreds of small mounds interrupted the landscape, each one just high enough to catch

I was at Fred Meyer recently when I heard someone whistling. Not humming. Whistling. The source turned out to be a very tall man wearing oversized black headphones, tattered jean shorts, flip-flops, and a faded tank top that simply read, “Excuse Me?” He pushed his shopping cart through the produce section with the unmistakable contentment of someone who had absolutely nowhere else he needed to be. I found myself watching him for a while. He wasn’t wandering aimlessly. Quite t

A few days ago, I noticed a bird’s nest lying on the ground beneath a tree. The truth is, I had noticed it before. But I hadn’t stopped to really look at it. It wasn’t until this morning that I found myself wondering where it came from and what story had brought it there. The nest was remarkably intact. Nearby were two broken eggs. My first instinct was to look up. Surely there had to be a branch directly above it. There were dozens of branches, and I searched from one to ano

Parades have a rhythm to them. Sirens pass. Children wave. Horses clop down the middle of streets that usually belong to cars. Candy flies through the air with surprising generosity. For a little while, complete strangers seem remarkably interested in making children smile. I was watching one of those parades recently when something unexpected caught my attention. During a lull between floats, a single Tootsie Roll came rolling down the street. Not tumbling. Rolling. Guided b

I went to the rodeo recently. The grandstands were full. Children waved cowboy hats. Announcers boomed through loudspeakers. Horses thundered around the arena. Bulls did what bulls have always done. By the end of the evening, a fine layer of dust had settled over everything. Like everyone else, I watched the competition. Then I found myself watching something else. One of the events featured young riders climbing onto sheep that looked only mildly interested in participating.

I have spent an embarrassing amount of time watching ants. I still do. Not because I’m studying them. Not because I’m trying to unlock the mysteries of insect civilization. I simply find them fascinating. I always have. As a boy, I could kneel beside an anthill for what felt like hours. The ants never seemed to stop moving. They moved with purpose I couldn’t understand. Some disappeared beneath the ground carrying burdens larger than themselves. Others wandered aimlessly befo

I have a confession. I notice shopping carts in parking lots. Not the groceries. Not the cars. The carts. Some people faithfully return them to the cart corral. Some leave them balanced carefully on a curb, perhaps believing gravity has agreed to finish the job. Others abandon them so creatively that I can only assume the cart has entered the federal witness protection program. I don’t know why I notice these things. Perhaps it’s because shopping carts reveal something about

A few days ago, I watched two men talking in the parking lot of a grocery store. One of them was laughing. The other wasn’t. If I had been in a hurry, I would have walked past without another thought. Instead, I found myself wondering what had brought them there. Were they lifelong friends? Brothers? A father and son? Had they just received good news? Bad news? One of them reached out and placed a hand on the other’s shoulder. The gesture lasted only a second. Then they climb