Back in the mountains

Just a quick note to say that I’ve made it to Colorado with one husband, two pairs of red shoes, three cats, four hundred fantasy novels, five dozen skeins of yarn, six wilted houseplants, an eighty-year-old violin, and a few large bottles of porter. I have my priorities. Speaking of porter, almost as soon as […]

One Last Look

After digging up the perennials and donating half of my furniture to charity, we packed all my books and cats and yarn into a small moving van, and on Thursday we left the house in Wisconsin for good. When I was teaching in Scotland, I once found myself on a train to Glasgow, sitting next […]

Chicago weekend

We went to the Chicago for Easter weekend, and the sun was shining in the city. The skies were as blue as Chagall’s stained glass windows. We strolled through the old neighborhoods where my husband used to live, taking in the museums, the aquarium, the planetarium, and the jazz clubs. And when we left on […]

Going home again

And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T. S. Eliot Four Quartets I grew up on a sheep farm outside of Fargo, and that city, on the edge of the North Dakota prairie, is my home. I say this even […]

Moving on

Lately, big changes have been brewing in Wisconsin, and we’ve decided to make the mountains our home. So we met with an agent on Thursday and listed the Wisconsin house for sale. After signing with the agent, I went home and ate cookies and sniffled. In fact, I may have even cried. I love our […]

Everglades

I finally have a chance to post some photos from our trip to The Everglades. We saw so many birds: herons, ibises, pelicans, gallinules. Here’s a beautiful anhinga: Nesting with young: A purple gallinule: And, of course, an alligator:

Key West

A few snapshots from our winter holiday in Key West. We stayed at a Bed and Breakfast called The Popular House. I hate to overuse the word charming, but the B&B was charming. Their kitchen was bright with fresh oranges and McCoy pottery: The living room was trimmed with Dade County pine and featured a big […]

In the mountains

A few of my favorite photos, taken in the mountains with my brother last summer: We took the Peak to Peak Highway up to Rocky Mountain National Park, stopping to check out this chapel with Longs Peak in the background. These wind-blown mushroom rocks stand at 12,000 feet, where it hurts almost to breathe. A […]