Babes in the Woods
Toilet paper and trowel. . . check. Sleeping bag, sleeping pad. . . check. Rain gear, flashlight, emergency blankets. . . check, check, check. Whistles and mini-blast air horn (couldn't hurt) for...
View ArticleCabin Fever
On a summer sojourn to Virginia, sitting on the slanted porch of a centuries-old log cabin, I am transported more by time than place. My husband and I had escaped to the Blue Ridge Mountains for...
View ArticleWhere the Wild Things Are
I like the nightlife, but lately things have been getting out of hand. "Hey, did you hear that?" I mumble to my groggy bedmate in the predawn dark. The alarm is about to go off, but it's been preempted...
View ArticleTomatoes for Casey
My friend Debbie is one of those dependable Southern women who always shows up at the right moment with the just-right offering or gesture. One sad night last month, Debbie dropped by to pay her last...
View ArticlePlumes of Despair
The satellite images are almost beautiful -- a swirl of indigo, dynamic, graceful, as if a batik of inky color saturating silk with lines softly bleeding. The reality, however, of the Louisiana...
View ArticleUnder the Weather
As I tap on my keyboard, rain pounds the skylights. Moments ago, the intolerable South Carolina heat melted into a torrential downpour. Lightening frizzes the afternoon sky; the heavens grumble as gods...
View ArticleGreat Green Room
In the great green room, there was a telephone, and a red balloon, and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon, and three little bears sitting on chairs, and a comb and a brush and a bowl full …[Read...
View ArticleNatural Flavor
There are numerous strategies for dealing with global warming, but here on the sultry South Carolina coast, where mid-June is already steaming and heat advisories trap my kids inside, there's only one...
View ArticleInto Thin Woods
The cool breeze at dawn. A whiff of wood smoke, charred and sharp. Wet morning grass, dew-stuck to my bare feet. Skunk. Even the subtle scent of shade, a hint of forest on this otherwise sun-baked...
View ArticleMissing Links
I've just returned from the annual end-of-summer ritual: Fact and Fee Night at my daughter's school. Classes start next week and this is the exciting preview, the night she gets her schedule and tours...
View ArticleCore Matters
My eyes are out of shape. My legs and lungs are holding their own as I hike through Costa Rica's Volcan Tenorio Park Nacionale, but my eye muscles are lagging. I can't take it all in: the art-deco leaf...
View ArticleThe Surge
The view from my bedroom is breathtaking. If I stand just so and peek through my neighbor's fenced yard at the right spot on a sunny day, I'm blinded by a dazzling shimmer. Charleston Harbor. A...
View ArticleA Wing and a Prayer
I have a heron. A gorgeous, mysterious Great Blue. In the mornings when the sun is bright, I pull back my bedroom drapes and look first thing. He's an early bird, and often he's already landed,...
View ArticleAnd Heaven and Nature Sing
The tree is up. Those four words, punctuated by a huge sigh of relief, mark the true launching of my Christmas season. It can be mid-to-late December but before the tree gets planted in the living room...
View ArticleThinking Little
The eights are about to do me in. We sailed through the perky paired-off twos, the odd but seemingly wholesome threes and the no-problem fours. Fives were a flash, easy as pie, and even the sixes and...
View ArticleThe Renewable Power of Yes
Whew, another Earth Day has come and gone, and I, for one, am relieved. Now I can go back to the humdrum dragging of my blue recycling bin to the curb, minus the pomp and circumstance. I can poke...
View Article
