Writing about place, people, and whatever parts of the universe I'm lucky to see.
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 →
As the end of May approaches, I have been springing ahead to try to meet my monthly writing goals. I set these goals at the beginning of the year in order to keep myself making progress on my writing journey. I posted an update in January, but the months have been racing by and it... Continue Reading →
Last weekend, my husband and I took a short hike up the first slope of the mountain next to campus, to where a lookout point shows campus like a toy village, to where the valley as a whole structure becomes visible, and the lip of distant mountains, not visible from the valley floor, peaks over... Continue Reading →
We have catapulted into spring this week, with warmth and sun bounding forth. The trees, which have been holding their thousand green fists tight for weeks against the cold, they now are opening their fingers. The waterfalls have been reduced to trickles. The students are abuzz with life (exams are nearly finished; last night was... Continue Reading →
Jimmy Kindree 