The swaying trees squeak like rusted porch swings in the cool April breeze, autumn-like but with a different scent— hints of honeysuckle...

I perch on a rock and watch Austin pastel the twisted trunk of a tree; he shades and contours and cocks his head, he flicks his fingers...

Dad explains silica to me as we sit together on a slanted rock. He smiles a lot here, with science and the shore.

I was on the hunt for a yellow-crowned night heron, a stalky bird in the beloved heron family, an active hunter at all hours of the day.

I scanned the wetlands for more turtles and birds and then noticed a small, sleepy face lifted just above the concavity. A raccoon!

We stride into the cloud-covered forest wearing outfits reserved for the sun. I stuff my fingers in my vest and brace for the cold.

Hour-old raindrops fall from the rocky overhang and slam my very large leaf. All around me, leaves float on the stream and collect in dams.

A chorus of crunching on crisp leaves, like heavy, sporadic raindrops on a summer eve, sounds from the overgrown Dutchman’s pipevine.

A scraggly head poked up from the nest, and another, until all three mango colored bills were visible. They yawned at the great big sky.

The sun is setting, but the only orange thing we see is a fluorescent fungus, a gorgeous specimen with overflowing folds.

“Slurp, burble, gulp,” my sister Danielle chants as the slippery mud swallows her Vibram sneakers with every step. “It’s eating me alive!”

She twists her head and stares at me with clouded eyes, then proceeds cautiously onto my skin, each movement meditated.

Soft wings slap my arms and face like miniature kites in the wind; ants bite my belly; but still I prefer this solitary space.

Middle Tennessee is a verdant wet, a palate of green dripping with spring and sugar.

I decided to start this blog to ask questions existential and rhetorical, to muse and marvel, and to share adventures into the wild.