Get This . . .
Morning person? No. Night owl.
This morning, I tried solving the daily Wordle puzzle before I got out of bed. It took me three times as long, and I almost didn't get it. I actually had predicted this might be true. I wake up slowly. My brain just seems less flexible until a few hours after I wake...
Writing below a mountain
A birch and a pine grow next to each other below Mount Cardigan, Alexandria, New Hampshire. I just returned from leading a writing workshop for the Appalachian Mountain Club. The AMC and I began Writing from the Mountains in 2016. The year before, we had brainstormed...
New fiction in next year’s Running Wild Press Anthology
My short story, "Pumping Station Road," about a trail runner whose ambition to run the entire width of Connecticut from east to west causes havoc with people he loves, will appear in the seventh Running Wild Press Anthology of Stories coming out in October 2023 from...
Update, early spring 2022
Above: Annie Gribbins with some of her husband's emergency rescue gear, which has inspired us to think of new coping strategies as the pandemic winds down. My sister Anne Woodside Gribbins and I have published a new essay about coping strategies in the pandemic age....
Two weeks ago, as thin ice layers melted on the newly fallen leaves in New Hampshire's Crawford Notch, I said goodbye to a group of writers who'd spent the weekend with me for another Writing from the Mountains. These creatives were at varying stages of ideas and...
News
Welcome! I am a writer, editor, and workshop leader based in New England. I explore people’s relationship to their landscapes. I hope you will stay here a while and sign up for one of my Writing from Nature workshops.
My next book is a memoir of my evolution as a wilderness trekker, from following others to taking my daughters to going alone. It comes out next year from Appalachian Mountain Club Books.
I always wondered about my grandfather who decided to leave farming after his family had done it for 200 years. I am researching and writing a long piece and I hope a book about what would have happened if Grandpop had stayed. I have contributed a chapter in a book for Rutgers University Press (coming out soon) about New Jersey’s environmental past. The chapter explore struggles of small farmers in southern New Jersey at the dawn of the industrial age.
I am the editor in chief of Appalachia journal (submit button at the bottom of the page).
I teach at the University of Connecticut.
Libertarians on the Prairie, my book about the lives and collaboration of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, has established itself in scholarship of the mysterious and gripping “Little House” books. I talk about limited government and the Little House books in this episode of Sean Braswell’s podcast, “Flashback.” Libertarians on the Prairie is available in hardback and a paperback edition with a Foreword by Stephen Heuser. Order one today.
Going back in time a bit: I appeared in Don Bernier’s 2005 film, “In a Nutshell,” about a brilliant, eccentric artist who found herself homeless in her 90s. A clip here.
Writing Workshops
The next Writing From Nature workshop will be January 14 in Connecticut.
Libertarians on the Prairie
by Chris Woodside read more
New Wilderness Voices
Collected Essays from the Waterman Fund Contest Christine Woodside, editor; Amy Seidl, foreword A literary celebration of the Northeast’s wild places Guy and Laura Waterman spent a lifetime reflecting on and writing about the mountains of the Northeast. The Waterman...
Strangers Helping in a Most Respectful Way
Wild ponies in the Grayson Highlands, southern Virginia. One hot July afternoon earlier this summer, my husband Nat and I were huffing up the Marlborough Trail on Mount Monadnock in southwestern New Hampshire. I spotted four men above me, heading down. I pulled myself...
A Deadly Mix for Boaters: Distractions, Alcohol and No Life Jacket
On a warm, slightly overcast Sunday afternoon last August 8, boaters near the Salmon River boat launch on the Connecticut River in East Haddam noticed a personal watercraft drifting without a rider. Less than an hour later, state environmental police recovered a man’s...
The Myth of American Conservatism
Laura Ingalls Wilder was an American farmer and small-town farm journalist who rarely got involved in 20th-century politics. She was not an activist for the vote and only entered in politics in old age, when she ran for a paid local office — and lost. And yet for...
Climate-change Prep Has Missed the LGBTQ Community
When it comes to environmental vulnerability, one group of people society often marginalizes has started to act up in Connecticut. Activists say one major category is missing when policymakers look at climate change preparation: the lesbian, gay, bisexual,...
