Category: Wild & Wonderful
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A Winter Walk
I took my dogs and my gathering bag for a winter walk in the Bristlecone pine forest behind our house. Elk have been here, browsing among the aspen trees and taking an occasional taste of the soft, nutritious bark. We shared their path for a ways. The sun dropped low as we meandered along, looking…
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19 Nature Quotes
Nature has shaped my heart and soul my entire life. I’ve always lived in it and with it, and to live without it is unthinkable. So naturally it’s a keystone of my fiction. Wild places are a main theme in all of my stories. Some characters like Tayla Lyon (Stop Down) find refuge and healing…
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Hoar and Rime
Merriam-Webster defines homophones as: words that sound the same but are different in meaning or spelling. Homophones that are spelled differently are also called heterographs, such as to, too, and two. Ever hear a story about a bare bear? Tell no tale about that tail. What about a knight who was lost in the night?…
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As Exciting as Watching Water Freeze
Sometimes winter seems about as exciting as watching paint dry, or grass grow, or water freeze — wait a second. Watching water freeze can be exciting. Granted it doesn’t have the drama of a heavy spring runoff, a summer cloudburst, or a flashflood. It’s subtle, quiet. The beauty of it can be easy to overlook,…
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Dirt on the New Year
Life is a highway, a road we all must take, and a dozen more clichés. For me it’s always been a bumpy dirt road and maybe that’s why I love them so much. Writing is another journey, one that I started fairly late in life, but I wasn’t ready for it any sooner. In both…
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Color
Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “color” as: Color: noun ˈkə-ləra: phenomenon of light (such as red, brown, pink, or gray) or visual perception that enables one to differentiate otherwise identical objects. b: the aspect of the appearance of objects and light sources that may be described in terms of hue, lightness, and saturation for objects and hue,…
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End and Beginning
As summer and autumn begin to merge, I’m taken by the subtle flush of yellow over green, the last riot of wildflowers, and the teasing of the aspens. I want to see them in all their golden glory, but then again I’m not ready yet. This special time in the high country—the gateway between seasons—always…
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How To Write Rainbows
We’ve had rain and some amazing rainbows in the high country recently. I’m always inspired by those striped miracles flashing across a rainy gray sky, but writing something that captures their magnificence, well… They’re a promise of evil washed away and better days to come. A story as old as time, told over and over.…