Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
Earlier this week, earth crossed the equinox. Days in the northern hemisphere are longer than the nights now. Here in Norway, the sea change between winter and summer is always so dramatic, and around the equinox daylight change is the fastest. We're headed into sun and light. We've had a smattering of beautiful clear days... Continue Reading →
The school where I teach in Norway is part of the United World College movement. There are eighteen UWC schools around the world, united by a common mission, to make education a force to unite people, nations and cultures for peace and a sustainable future. In these last seven years, I've been lucky to get... Continue Reading →
For the first six years I was teaching here in Norway, one of my primary roles was Learning Support, which is a role we don't quite have in the US--in a US context, learning support is special education work with students who have specific, documented learning differences, coupled with what we would call in the... Continue Reading →
A tension has been on my mind for a while, between the stories we tell in fiction and the question of meaning. It was on my mind in September 2020, then again two years later, December 2022. It seems that perhaps every year in autumn I find myself thinking about this theme. Here I am... Continue Reading →
Two weeks ago, I missed making a post. I was hurrying that weekend to revise the essay I had written in the nature writing workshop I took part in last summer. I was reworking scenes and consulting academic articles on the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. I was reading aloud in a whisper to... Continue Reading →
Every October, our school stops classes for a week. We devote the time to special projects--some students are organizing a march against human trafficking in our nearby city of Førde; some are helping out on a local farm; others are job-shadowing in Bergen; a few groups are on three-day hikes in the mountains. My husband... Continue Reading →
These last two weeks, I have been taking part in a workshop on nature writing with Granta. With about ten other writers located around the world, I am learning about the genre, reading essays by Kathleen Jamie, Jason Allen-Paisant, and others, and experimenting with how I engage with nature in my own writing. In a... Continue Reading →
On the first of May this year, Labor Day in Norway and around much of the world, the first-year class took its annual hike up the local mountain, Jarstadheia. The hike took us up 584 meters into thick snow--more than a foot along the top plateau. We formed a winding column of sixty or seventy... Continue Reading →
I post these updates on Words like Trees on Sundays, but I write them on Saturdays. I'm not a procrastinator. It makes me anxious to have things hanging over me. But today, it's Sunday. My post won't have been written yet by the time I normally would have liked it scheduled to appear. The reason... Continue Reading →
Today (and I am writing this on Saturday), shortly after I complete this post, I'm heading off for a very quick trip to Oslo. We're going to see Verdi's opera Un ballo in maschera. It's a tale of murder and splendor, intrigue and drama. I've never seen an opera before. I am ready for a... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 