Non-Fiction
Essays
So Near the Soil
My essay about farming ambitions and disillusionment, "So Near the Soil," appears in the Winter 2023 issue of The Georgia Review.
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Night Vision
Living in a rural town with a Dark Skies ordinance gave me a beautiful view of the Milky Way. Still, I sought better ways to see after dark. "Night Vision," published in the Summer 2023 issue of The American Scholar, describes where that led me.
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"He was fast... He ran you right over"
An essay about my experience of being run over by an SUV and the plight of pedestrians, published in the Guardian's Long Read section on November 22, 2022.
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Safer Than Childbirth
At one time, abortion wasn't a polarizing issue in the U.S. "Safer Than Childbirth," in the Spring 2022 issue of The American Scholar, tells the story of a woman who lived--and died of an abortion--just when that policies and opinions were changing.
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Slow Blues
The story of searching for a rare, blue-glowing firefly while living with the all-too-common blacklegged tick in Wisconsin's Driftless region. Published in the Autumn 2020 issue of The American Scholar.
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Letter to a Young Borrelia Burgdorferi
A brief address to the Lyme bacteria, "Letter to a Young Borrelia Burgdorferi" appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of the Seneca Review.
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Good Neighbors
When beavers came between us and a farmer up the road, we knew something more was at stake. Published in The American Scholar, Winter 2017.
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Shelter and Storm
This essay, in the Summer 2015 issue of The Southern Review, braids the story of Woody Guthrie's recently rediscovered novel, House of Earth, with our experience of building a mud-brick home, which, like the characters in Guthrie's novel, we imagined would shelter us from economic and environmental storms.
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Perpetual Outsider
Part of a collection to benefit Wildlifenation.org, this essay describes what happened when I bicycled through a pack of wolves in northern Minnesota and examines the status of wolves in the upper Midwest.
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Blowdown
When a tornado tears through a beloved landscape, is it possible to just let nature heal itself? Published in The American Scholar, Autumn 2010.
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In Case of a Famine: Stalking the Wild Groundnut
How did a vital, indigenous food source, well-known to Thoreau and Native Americans, become just another weed? Published in Orion, November-December 2007.
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Saving My Breath
After a negligent doctor's prescriptions caused a life-threatening overdose, I stopped complying blindly with doctors' orders and pursued health on my own terms. Published in Creative Nonfiction, Issue 33, Silence Kills: Speaking Out and Saving Lives, November 2007.
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Knowing the Soil
What can we learn about history, botany, family, and neighbors by examining our soil? Published in Sustainable Eating, May 2006.
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Building Practice
An essay about building with straw bales. Published in Spring Wind, August 2005.
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