EMERGENCE OR EMERGENCY?
About 20 years ago, I met the Psychiatrist Dr. John Mack at a gathering to celebrate his new book, PASSPORT TO THE COSMOS, which was about his work with people who had experienced what were called “alien abductions,” and this week, I am finally reading it. I don’t...
SCARY TIMES
Years ago I had one of those life-changing dreams that happen if we are very lucky, and it is as clear to me today as it was the morning I awoke from it: In the dream I am high in the hayloft of a large barn, looking down, and below me is a circle of dancers brightly...
… AND THE REST IS HISTORY
This week I was stung 3 times—figuratively and literally. The first was an angry wasp that dive-bombed my face with its hot stinger, leaving me in pain and my lips swollen to twice their normal size. The next day my old Prius lost its catalytic converter to...
A WALK IN BAD SHOES
Years ago, a good friend and I hiked the cliff trail on the Cornwall coast in England from Land’s End to Padstow and back, then further to Tintagel—over 100 miles—and it all but destroyed me, as I was wearing new hiking boots I’d neglected to break in before the trip....
Migrations
I have just read the following sentence in a book of stories by David James Duncan: “I’ve heard that migration has been defined as a bridge—a bridge that birds, animals and nomads cross as the world behind them becomes uninhabitable. A bridge that vanishes behind them...
Back to Normal?
Back in the 60s when we were a young family starting out, we could just about afford a small house in the flats of Berkeley for $28,500, near downtown and just a bike ride away from Herb’s office at the University. We brought up our three children there, I wrote...
Confessions of a Renegade
Hello Friends,Rather than sending you all a new “vignette-type” piece, I am sending the text of the beginning of a new season of my podcast Carolyn North Out Loud. The new season will be coming out shortly, and will be ongoing until I’ve told all the stories I can...
Trapped?
Yesterday, driving out of the farm, my tires spun in wet gravel and I got stuck blocking the road by the goat meadow. No way could I get my car out of there; nearby in the meadow a young billygoat was bleating frantically, trying to extricate himself from the web of...
Darkness Before Dawn
Breakfast this morning was my usual – leftovers from the night before – which today was a stew of veggies over rice - onions, red peppers and garlic, a delicious way to start the day. As my mouth registered the layered rings of onion, the clove shapes of garlic...
Musings in Lockdown…
Still in bed on a cloudy morning, hoping for those clouds to become rain, and reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s splendid book, BRAIDING SWEETGRASS for the third time. She makes me feel like I’ve come home. With her, it is natural to settle into what she might call ‘the...
