Some weeks ago a friend (an archaeologist and therefore a man of science) and I were discussing a nature writer who was coming to town to promote his latest book. I asked my friend if he liked this writer’s work. He said he did. I said that I did, too, and that I thought this writer one of the better nature writers out there. My friend agreed then added, “Although I wonder if a lot of them aren’t actually writing fiction.”
Author: Patricia Karamesines
Patricia blogged at Times and Seasons between 2007 and 2009. Patricia was born in Petersburg, Virginia, to two human parents…but was actually raised by the wild turtles of the Virginia Piedmont, which may explain her flaming biophilia. She joined the LDS church when she was sixteen. In 1976, she moved to Utah to attend BYU. Her M.A. is from BYU (creative writing), and she pursued post-graduate studies in folklore and linguistics at the University of Arizona. Her interests include folklore, language and relation, and literary science and nature writing. She has won numerous literary awards from Brigham Young University, the University of Arizona, the Utah Arts Council, the Utah Wilderness Association, and the Association for Mormon Letters, among others. She has published in literary journals and popular magazines locally and nationally. Her first novel, The Pictograph Murders, was released fall of 2004 (Signature Books). She lives in San Juan County, Utah, with her husband Mark and three children, an uncertain number of toads, lizards, and swallows, and about thirty hummingbirds that run the place during the summer. Currently, she is an adjunct faculty member teaching English at the San Juan Campus of the College of Eastern Utah, and a regular contributor to the One True Bloggernacle Arts Blog, William Morris’s A Motley Vision.
Field Notes #1
Remember the silence around Pueblo Alto in Chaco, so heavy you felt blanketed by its snows, and the desert landscape spread out below, unmoving for miles? That was silence. Not even a breeze singing on the stones. June 8, 2006 Hiked in the rain this morning.
Sweat
All winter I plotted how to improve the garden, my first focal point for exercising “good stewardship” over the acre plus we moved to a year and a half ago. Last year’s garden had gone all right. I loved every minute in it, especially the time spent with animals, like Woodhouses’ toads and cliff swallows, which helped keep the garden in good order. But I got a late start and the harvest fell short. This year, I pushed to start my tomatoes on time along with other herbs and veggies that don’t mind sprouting indoors. I schemed how to improve our red, clayey soil. I saved money to hire a local man to till our ground.