collections

07/01/1998
Communities in Crisis

Available from Amazon.com

“Communities in Crisis” is an essay that appeared in An Appalachian Tragedy: Air Pollution and Tree Death in the Eastern Forests of North America, Ed by Harvard Ayers, Jenny Hager, and Charles E. Litter with photographs by Jenny Hager. Sierra Club Books, 1998.

The assignment to write a biogeochemical essay that would entice people to read it was a tough one.  Yet the thought of the widespread distribution that a Sierra Club book […]

04/01/1999
On Not Encountering an Eastern Panther

View full essay in PDF format. | Available from Amazon.com

“On Not Encountering an Eastern Panther” is an essay that appeared in Shadow Cat: Encountering the American Mountain Lion, Edited by Susan Ewing and Elizabeth Grossman, Sasquatch Books, 1999

“Sometimes it seems that I am the only person I know who hasn’t seen a panther in the mountains of western Virginia, where I live. Reports come in from […]

10/01/1999
To Love a Place: Cross Mountain

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“To Love a Place: Cross Mountain” is an essay that appeared in Uncommon […]

06/24/2019
Pillars of Carbon: National Forests and the Great Appalachian Carbon Commons

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“Pillars of Carbon: National Forests and the Great Appalachian Carbon Commons” is an essay that appeared in Mountains Piled Upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Antropocene (pp 175-185), Ed by Jessica Cory. West Virginia University Press, 2019.

“Dashes of red paint on occasional trees were easy to miss, and we did. We crossed the border unwittingly, my young husband […]

12/04/2020
Greatful Dead-heading: A Gardener’s Revelation

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”Grateful Dead-heading: A Gardener’s Revelation,” an essay in Better with Age: Creativity, Discovery, and Surprise, published in 2020.

“Pinch. Snip. Snap. Severed, spent flowers drop into the compost bucket like guillotined heads into a basket. I pretend they’re my bad habits, bad temper, bad hair. If only it were so easy.”

“In the dusk of my life, I go out on my deck of a […]