Writing about place, people, and whatever parts of the universe I'm lucky to see.
I remember a fable I heard once, from some origin that I can no longer locate. I think I was told this story by a speaking voice, perhaps by a teacher at school, perhaps elsewhere. The situation of its telling has thus vanished, but I remember the story perfectly. Let me share it with you... Continue Reading →
Words like Trees began two and a half years ago, December of 2018, as a way to build some kind of an online presence for myself and for my writing. I was planning at that time to be applying to MFA programs in the near future, and I was focused on the science-fiction novel I... Continue Reading →
In the north of Minnesota, lakes patchwork the great conifer-birch forest. Land lies flat to the water like it might buckle and sink down, and sphagnum bogs pull the water up and inland, drowning trees and leaving old gray skeletons. Water insects ride the surface tension in great swarms, dotting it like rain does, to... Continue Reading →
I am writing this post early, on Thursday, July 15. When it posts early Sunday morning, I'll be in a tent in northern Minnesota, hopefully sleeping soundly. This trip with my dad and father-in-law was meant to happen last summer, but Covid restrictions postponed our plans a year. Now we are sorting through our final... Continue Reading →
My parents moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin just a few weeks before my husband and I moved to Norway. My childhood home was thus relocated four hours to the east, the base I return to now a place I have never lived. But people make places what they are, and my parents’ presence and the... Continue Reading →
One more post about my time in Montana--I can't not write about this. On one of the last days of our visit, we drove along the Beartooth Pass from Montana into Wyoming, on the route that leads to Yellowstone National Park. The mountain road twisted past colossal scree slopes, crisscrossed the still visible paths of... Continue Reading →
In the first years of our relationship, my husband and I went camping several times, and these were ambitious, multi-day, backpacking-style trips. We were bold. We were excited to traverse difficult terrains, to boil wild rice for forty-five minutes in the rain unsure whether it would ever finish cooking, to brave the mosquitoes and ticks... Continue Reading →
It was two and a half years ago that I made my first ever Words Like Trees post, written here in Billings at Christmastime. A three hour drive to Bergen, followed by eighteen hours of airport-hopping, and we reached Billings this time in its brilliant summer heat. Because of the pandemic, we haven't come here... Continue Reading →
Spurred on by an IB Extended Essay I am supervising, a couple of months ago I waded precipitously into Gayatri Spivak's 1988 essay "Can the Subaltern Speak?" In this vitally important essay on the West's erasure of non-Western women, Spivak makes the case that colonial ideology stops Westerners from knowing anything about the most disenfranchised... Continue Reading →
I thought the last few weeks, with IB exams finished, wrapping up loose ends of the year, I thought the last weeks would be calm and quiet. I thought I would have time for myself, for writing and thinking, exercise and sitting doing nothing. There certainly were a few calm days, but things have reared... Continue Reading →
Jimmy Kindree 