One of my more enjoyable outings when I was a child was to the library. If my memory holds, my mother would drop me off at the main branch near the downtown core and leave me be to partake in its literary glory for an hour or two. It was not a beautiful building by … Continue reading In the Quiet
Category: Regular Posts
Our Proper Place
We are not very important. We do not stand astride the world. We do not sit at its peak. All of evolution does not lead to us; only a very tiny sub-branch of it does. The artifacts we create as humans are not the pinnacle of achievement or the goal of all life. Our particular … Continue reading Our Proper Place
Power Down
One of the articles of faith I have held for a long time is that we are not, collectively, going to deal with the troubles of our future willingly. We are not going to reduce our energy and resource usage in an effort to mitigate the worst impacts of ecological destruction and climate change, or … Continue reading Power Down
Notes From an Ice Storm
There is an ethereal beauty to nighttime snow. White and encompassing of the world, it captures all the available light of the dark and reflects it back out: into and through windows, against neighboring buildings, onto the clouds above. It turns the world into a film set lit for a nighttime scene, with that strange … Continue reading Notes From an Ice Storm
Lengthening Days
A few weeks ago I set off on a late afternoon walk. I wandered our neighborhood for over an hour, looping along our gridded streets and enjoying the fresh air, the sun out and shining on a bright winter day. As I headed for home just after five o’clock, I realized that despite the hour … Continue reading Lengthening Days
The Land Speaks
I have noticed in my writing that often I build a story around a particular place or landscape. It’s the story’s foundation, so to speak—in the literal sense of a founding. I start with a thought of a particular place—the first farm I worked on, the Arizona desert, the Lost Coast, the forested surroundings of … Continue reading The Land Speaks
Joel Caris - author, essayist, and publisher 