I am the desert wearing withered grass. You have sought to tame me time and again. Bring your livestock to graze. Clear my native flora for your wheat fields. And time and again, I have proven how wild I remain. The scouring winds delight to play across my arid beard, and see how they…

  Another jerk of the fishing rod. Another long cast beyond the rocks to the deeper water in the bay. Perhaps there will be another catch. Perhaps not.   It doesn’t matter. The time in solitude, with not another soul in sight, matters. The opportunity to slow the rush of life responsibilities to a hault…

  The mists part to reveal the ruin again. Roofless; empty arches once filled with stainglass; choked by the encroaching trees and consumed by the downy grasses of the Moors.   What transpired here?   Did banished queens live out their exiles here? Did matrons seek shelter from loveless marriages gone horribly wrong? Or was…

  It’s like any other walk through the woods. Light from a westward sun attempts to breach the canopy. It succeeds only in scattering illumination and shadow on the dirt path under our feet. The full fragrance of forest envelops us: Pine, Maple, Chestnut, Oak. Everywhere, the competing songs of robins, sparrows and Jays.  …

  It could be a path between fields in the backcountry of Portugal’s Trans os Montes. Or a trail across the frontier between Mexico and the American Southwest. Or a dirt road in a high, dry summer somewhere in mountains lying outside the Temperate zone.   Perhaps I walk the path to inspect inherited land.…