Thoughts about writing, and the universe.
Spring keeps burgeoning out. Already the crocuses are a distant memory. Daffodils are fading now. In the woods, anemones and cuckoo flowers are everywhere. In our yard, a volunteer patch of forget me nots has sprung up. I'm used to forget me nots being a beautiful purple-blue, and a few of these are, but many... 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 →
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 →
I need to keep today's post short. I'll confess, as time goes on, my posts on Words Like Trees become shorter and shorter. Perhaps this is because I have other writing projects going; I haven't found it easy of late to fit blogging into my writing time. At the end of a two-week break from... Continue Reading →
I avoided Covid-19 for nearly three years, but it has finally caught up with me. On Tuesday night, I began feeling a tingle in my throat. Wednesday resembled the beginnings of a cold. My fever began Thursday. It wasn't until Friday, though, when I heard that one of my colleagues had tested positive, that I... Continue Reading →
For the last two years, I have been setting strategic writing goals for myself to help me keep moving in the direction I want to go. My writing goals in 2021 helped me increase productivity and direct my energies towards the parts of my writing work that felt most important. In 2022, I updated my... Continue Reading →
In this busy autumn term at school, I've been taking time to write when I can. I have a daily goal of devoting 85 minutes to my writing each day (and I include in that time blogging here on Words Like Trees, sending out story submissions, meeting with my writing group, as well as my... Continue Reading →
I can't stop taking scenery pictures. When a vista opens up before me, when the sky clears out crystal-blue, when birch trees turning yellow catch the light, I my phone emerges from my pocket. I say to myself, remember this moment, and I snap a picture. Hundreds of these landscapes appear on my phone. I... Continue Reading →
On Friday, we said goodbyes to our graduating second-year students. In this international community, where these young people gather for two years in a crucible of five-students-to-a-room mayhem, of intense exams capping a rigorous curriculum, of a plethora of student-organized events, of all the pangs of teenage life, the parting is hard. They have come... Continue Reading →
Typically the snow here doesn't stay. It falls, it melts, maybe in January and February we will have a few weeks of solid snow. This year, it's come early. In the first days of December, we had our first dusting, followed in the night with enough snow to cover up the grass, to make it... Continue Reading →
Words like trees 