The On This Land winter writers series weaves stories of connection between people and place. From family homes to prairies, hidden lakes, and faraway lands, nature becomes a venue to explore our collective humanity.
Each of the below pieces was generously contributed to be shared as a part of the project by supporters of McKenzie River Trust. We hope you will join us in celebrating the deep and nourishing connections that are formed on this land we call home.
Water Questions
by Kelly Terwilliger and Eve Müller
LETTER FROM EVE TO KELLY
The dirt road winds up and up.
Your small car passes through the colorless landscape and I think
of silent films unspooling themselves
black and white scene after
black and white scene
colors of breath and dusk.
Maternal Geographies
By Lacey Johnson
Fireflies lit up the thick space of the sweaty summer night sky. I roamed solitary across the empty grass lawn scooping them into my hands with little effort. I used to collect them in a jar, holes carved into the lid, until I learned, with remorse, that glass was no home for a firefly. So I let their tiny weight imprint in my hand and released them.
Rock for the Road
by Jenny Potter
“Hi, I’m returning your message from a couple days ago,” a woman’s voice says on the phone, “about ordering some rock for John Potter?”
“Yeah, thanks for calling back. I’m his daughter.” My eyes blur and my heart tilts. “He asked me to order a few loads of gravel for our roads.” I laugh at the ridiculousness of this conversation and try to speak. No words come out. I try again, and say hoarsely, “He passed away yesterday. But literally on his death bed, he asked me to order some gravel.”
Selected Poems
by Tim Whitsel
SELF-ARREST
we come to the river alone
while the dew is still on the ridges
the river paraphrases her past
a balm fledges in the hemlock branches
we come with aches for marred lands
Selected Poems
by Sara Burant
AT MEADOWLARK PRAIRIE
This remnant of native prairie looks
east, orange sunrise, blue foothills
& the high peaks i can see on good
air days, Three Sisters that remain
themselves, though glaciers tatter,
a volcano simmers in the middle one’s
gut & when fire feasts on their
forested cloaks we can’t find the sky
in our throats, can’t find enough
words for loss.
Petrified
by Tom Titus
After an arduous afternoon toting heavy objects out of my childhood home, I was relaxing alone on the back patio, legs outstretched, listening to Pacific treefrogs singing from the farm pond just beyond the backyard fence. Nightfall gentled into the McKenzie River Valley like an old memory.
Threads
by Tim Fox
Outside the window, wet feathery Cascade Mountain snowflakes fall from an overcast January sky. Inside by the woodstove, a brittle stalk of dried stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) crackles as I split it lengthwise to peel out the inner pith; the first step in preparing the outer fibers for twining into cordage. This stalk is one of several dozen specimens gathered from a small, wild patch growing in a wetland not far from my house and has been drying since mid-September.
Go Take a Hike—With Anxiety
by Jeaux Bartlett
Fresh from a restorative night of non-parenting, my spouse, Adam, and I take on the Trail of Ten Falls, at Oregon’s Silver Falls State Park. We’ve escaped our house and its adolescent miasma for an overnight getaway. It’s a crisp winter morning, a few days into the New Year, and we’re curious how far we can go. I’m starting off 2020 with some soul-replenishing forest bathing.
This Poem is a River
by Margo Solod
THIS POEM IS A RIVER
This poem is not the river I left behind,
its stanzas contained within a single county.
This poem is 187 miles long, carves its way
through an entire state. This is not the poem I waded across
The Bridge
By Kim Kelly
THE BRIDGE
The Bridge is old and cranky and weary
of separation from the land.
The moss takes its toll silently,
Daily.
Nature Guides
by Nicole Noceto
When I think back, though, the experience that truly showed me what it meant to be connected to Nature occurred around the time I was 9 years old, after the sudden death of my 62-year-old grandmother.
Selected Poems
by Mona Lydon-Rochelle
SNOW BY THE SEA
Yesterday, in silent
snow laden maples & elms,
we laid a spray of bittersweet
on his headstone.
Four years had passed
since his death.