To Hear a Forest

To Hear a Forest

One warm morning I took a break while hiking near Cardigan Mountain. I sat on a tent platform in an empty campsite and swung my boots over the platform edge. The leaves began to rustle, first faintly, then louder and louder, the way they do when the wind kicks up. I...
The Myth of American Conservatism

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...
My Secret Ledge

My Secret Ledge

Photo of the ledge by Christopher Zajac for Estuary magazine. When I go there now, two or three times every week, I walk to the end of one road and trudge up a broken old woods road into the state forest. I step over ruts, where puddles linger long and narrow in dirt...