Writer, occasional wanderer,
enthusiastic noticer.
I write about place, the natural world, and how we make a life. Currently working on a collection of essays about the California coast.
Most mornings, you’ll find me walking by the water.
Most afternoons, moving a sentence around.
A stack of field notes. An excellent pear.
A sentence that still hasn’t found its ending.
There is a turn in the path where I stop looking at my feet. The houses fall away, the water opens up, and the day becomes a little less complicated.
I have walked here in the fog and in the heat, in a hurry and with nowhere particular to be. I used to think repetition was a way of missing things. Lately, I think it might be the only way to see them.
Last week, a wildflower came up through a crack I had passed a hundred times. It was so small that I almost made a metaphor of it. Instead, I stood there for a minute. Then I went home.
The beach rearranges itself overnight. A log moves twenty yards. A line of seaweed appears where there was only sand. Our footprints, which seemed so definite yesterday, have become a rumor.
I carry a notebook, but I rarely write in it out here. There is something about trying to keep a moment that can make you lose it. Better to look. Better to come back with sand in your pockets and the beginning of an idea.
This morning, the tide left a piece of green glass. I held it to the light, then put it back where someone else might find it.
The first thing I did in the new house was open every window. Before the boxes, before the books, before I decided where the table should go, I wanted to know how the air moved.
A place introduces itself slowly. One room gets the morning; another keeps the afternoon. There is a particular sound the garden makes at five, and a patch of floor that belongs to the sun for exactly twenty minutes.
I am learning that making a home is less about arranging what you brought and more about noticing what was already there.