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Pocket Poetry
The workshop (uh, dining room table) has been busy lately, as I’ve been bringing some of my poetry to life by way of handmade zines featuring the RunHaiku poetry I’ve been producing over the past few years. Hand-drawn, -cut, and -bound, these little books were a lot of fun to put together, and are available…
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The Prize of Simply Seeing
Some of my favourite moments growing up involved encounters with wildlife. I poured over wildlife books, watched vigilantly from the backseat on long drives, and learned to walk or sit quietly in forest or lakeside. Wildlife rewards the observant with rare sightings. Even today, I find no greater delight than coming home to the breakfast…
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The Right Path
Lately I’ve been reflecting on a recent read, On Trails, by Robert Moor. Looks like we’ve got a little impromptu series of posts going, you can read other thoughts from this book here and here. This book’s cover, even in its Dutch form, drew me in last summer, and this winter I finally had the…
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Walk and See
The Appalachian Trail stretch 2,140 miles along the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, from Maine to Georgia. The idea of one long continuous trail was originally dreamed up by Benton MacKaye in the early 1900s to provide accessible wilderness experiences to an increasingly urban population. As told by Robert Moor in his wonderful…
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Eat (and Read) and Run
I first heard about ultrarunner Scott Jurek in Chris McDougall’s Born to Run, where he joined a small group of daring runners in a 50-mile race with the legendary Tarahumara in the Copper Canyon region of Mexico. When a friend mentioned that Scott himself had written a book, I had to check it out. Eat…
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The Tree, the Soil, and the Fruit
I love looking for connections between the books I read. When I see common themes in otherwise unrelated books, my ears perk up. To see unconnected authors’ paths cross seems to validate what both are saying. As I look back on the books I read over the past year — which varied in theme from…
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Two Goddesses
I’m thoroughly enjoying Christopher McDougall’s book Born to Run, about the hidden ultrarunners of Mexico’s Copper Canyon: the Tarahumara people. I had the privilege of hearing stories from some Tarahumara runners last week who had participated in the annual Polar Bear Marathon in Churchhill, MB, and wanted to learn more about them. McDougall’s book reads…
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New book: Pay Attention
We often find ourselves feeling distracted and discontent, bored with our everyday routines. As Louis CK put it, “everything’s amazing, but nobody’s happy”. We look for a change of scenery, or dream about a life somewhere “out there” where everything life will be amazing again. Wonder, though, is based more on posture than location. It’s…
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What I’m Reading
What are you reading these days? Last year I focused on doing more long reading, and this year has been no different. I’m convinced that despite the growing ways to consume information and the sheer volume of “content” out there, book-reading is still an important practice. In his brilliant post Why can’t we read anymore,…
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Explore the Edges
We have a great backyard, with a huge lawn, deck, and a playground for the kids. But even with all that space to run around and play, where do you think we consistently find our kids playing? That’s right, on the edges. In amongst the trees at the back of our yard, where the little…