She unscrewed the cap on her Coke and it “fff’ed” as air escaped. Inflight turbulence, she reckoned. The captain had warned them at takeoff. People were unusually silent; each, no doubt, finding their own way to relax. They had descended early to fly under the turbulence. The relief was almost tangible, as tangible as the …
For our children: Tashina, Alysia, Aprile and Joshua My eyes are closed, but I can feel the gentle wind blow my hair lightly into my face. Forward, onward, it says. The fragrance of moist earth, decaying leaves and living things, envelope my senses. Branches creak and leaves flutter, letting me know what I’m leaving behind. …
I released the cold brass doorknob and walked up a half-step into an invisible wall of ammonia, iodine, freezer-burned meat and brown-sauce stench so thick and acrid that my nose burned. The floor was shiny – impeccable – the kind that looks like tiny chips of coloured pebbles with flecks of dichroic gold. The clacking …
I spend breakup at Kathryn’s cabin, at Marsh Lake, about 60 clicks out of Whitehorse. I have given up the pottery studio. It was a mistake; it was too soon; it wasn’t the right time. So I drag “Fred”, my wheel, out with me. I try to throw pots on soft ground amid the conifers. …
In 2002, I embarked, with the love of my life, on a Yukon adventure I never experienced in the 29 years I lived here. Here, I confess, we were sort of living together without a “shack-up permit.” Wonder what happened to that great old tradition … progress? We decided to go to Dawson City. Right; …
How many memories are created by a simple family vacation … Depending on how you look in the rear-view mirror, the road behind can seem rocky – one of bad luck and poor decisions – or like a yellow-brick road of which each stone is a shared experience in both its problems and its joys. …
What an eccentric thing is the sky When at close of day it dances colours for my eyes. What beauty folds itself in swaddling clouds And wraps horizon in misted shrouds. Where stars turn course, and gaily gleam, Night creeps forth its shadowed seam. Where on high the moon does glow, Silent watchman, earth below. …
Where will the ravens all gather now that the tree tops are gone? Where will they hatch their nefarious schemes and plot from midnight to dawn???Where will they watch for the dog food bowls that are left to feed pooches outside? How will they plan their strategic assaults, distracting the dogs as they’re tied???Where will …
Mid-morning … and there’s a fairy tale moon in the sky; a sliver of silver fit for cows to jump over, curved enough to hold a young boy with a fishing pole, a backdrop for ET perched in the carrier basket of a bicycle, pale and shining against the rosette glow of a mid-December morning.
There’s a coyote on the airstrip at Braeburn today, trotting north on the cleared runway with his nose in the air and his tail like a windsock. A bit of a fraud, that, for there is no wind save that of his making and he will have to rev his engine mightily to get airborne …
The fox emerges tentatively from under the Waterfront Building, making a quick, furtive survey of his surroundings, and padding to the top of the dyke. He perches there a moment, nervously alert to any possibility, and then skitters down the frosted slope and commits himself to the expanse of open ice on the river. From …
Iremember the steamboats, the old man said. I remember them coming in spring. I remember the paddlewheels churning the water and bringing us many good things. I remember us kids rushing down to the docks. each wanting so hard to be first to see what was unloaded, rolled off the decks, hearts pounding as if …
Sometimes the muse doesn’t just find you; sometimes she follows you, haunts you, tracks your every move and invades your quiet moments, ticking away inside that clockwork brain until you know it’s just no use—she’ll never leave—not until you’ve written that story, that song, that poem … and so it goes. So here it is, …
Bug time: The sun is flirting with the edge of the mountain and the heat is leeching out of the day. Insects, paralyzed by the August brilliance, begin to rise from their shelters, bobbing in the evening air like dust motes caught in the shaft of light from a crack in the window blinds. Encouraged …
