The experience of holding an infant bear in your arms, and feeling it snuggle under your coat for warmth, is unforgettable.
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With Bears in Winter
The mountains in winter were a revelation as we climbed
Essays
Glorious Patchwork
It’s the ragged patches that make us who we are
My parents weren’t car people, and they adopted a vehicle that only a bootlegger could love.
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Winter Solstice
December light is the sun with a migraine
Technically, astronomically, the solstice lasts three days. Time stands still, sort of, before moving in the sun’s favor. So, technically, astronomically, I have two more days in which to dry wood and make a real fire.
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The Christmas Ornament
Not all holiday mementos are joyful
Yes, he broke my heart, but I survived it. And the ornament was a symbol of that survival.
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The Conversation That Continues
An old friend is the best friend
It was the fall of 1970, and we were freshmen in high school, that tender, socially feverish age when your friendships are everything and time stands still around every relationship.
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The Pulitzer Prize
A forgotten novelist is remembered through music
Thomas Stribling won the Pulitzer Prize for a trilogy he wrote about Florence, Alabama. But when I was growing up in the 1960s, no one in Florence spoke of Stribling anymore.
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