US Represented

Nature

Nature

Nature

Be Careful of Little Lives

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: Which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, [and] gathereth her food in the harvest. –Proverbs 6:6-6:8 Scripture praises ants, children are mesmerized by them, and yet ants in the garden are so commonplace as to be easily

Read More »

Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred

The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I

Read More »

Ode to the Great Black Swamp

The classroom rug was a little crusty, stamped with squared-off primary colors. At its far end, the beautiful Miss Chantry sat cross-legged in white stockings and a plaid wool miniskirt, while the rest of us sat “Indian style” upon the rug before her. From a stack of old favorites, she selected a crisp, clean book

Read More »

Recycling a Well-Tended Garden

Recycling a Well-Tended Garden She side-bends and stoops after decades of puttering limber-up work-in-dirt yoga, knee bends to growing graces. Her garden sprawls on its back, open palms to June sun, humming a hover and rest like the blue darner. Her fingers spread compost, sifting the strumming of vegetable patches into mantras – mantras learned

Read More »

Mongolian Shamanism: A Return to the Beyond

The revival of an ancient religion has taken Mongolia by storm. Decades of oppression and religious conversions could not stop Mongolia’s first religion, Shamanism, from surviving. The hundreds of years of Chinese influence over Mongolia before the turn of the 20th century brought in heavy pressure for the region to convert to Buddhism. A majority of

Read More »

Be Careful of Little Lives

Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise: Which, having no chief, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, [and] gathereth her food in the harvest. –Proverbs 6:6-6:8 Scripture praises ants, children are mesmerized by them, and yet ants in the garden are so commonplace as to be easily

Read More »

Vacant Lots: A Butterfly Hunter Considers the Sacred

The simplest definition of “sacred” in the Oxford English Dictionary has always seemed to me to be “set apart,” and that’s probably why I’ve never felt very happy with the word. I’ve never much liked the idea of things being “set apart.” Somehow, in my staunchly Republican family, I acquired a stubborn egalitarianism. But I

Read More »

Ode to the Great Black Swamp

The classroom rug was a little crusty, stamped with squared-off primary colors. At its far end, the beautiful Miss Chantry sat cross-legged in white stockings and a plaid wool miniskirt, while the rest of us sat “Indian style” upon the rug before her. From a stack of old favorites, she selected a crisp, clean book

Read More »

Recycling a Well-Tended Garden

Recycling a Well-Tended Garden She side-bends and stoops after decades of puttering limber-up work-in-dirt yoga, knee bends to growing graces. Her garden sprawls on its back, open palms to June sun, humming a hover and rest like the blue darner. Her fingers spread compost, sifting the strumming of vegetable patches into mantras – mantras learned

Read More »

Mongolian Shamanism: A Return to the Beyond

The revival of an ancient religion has taken Mongolia by storm. Decades of oppression and religious conversions could not stop Mongolia’s first religion, Shamanism, from surviving. The hundreds of years of Chinese influence over Mongolia before the turn of the 20th century brought in heavy pressure for the region to convert to Buddhism. A majority of

Read More »