That’s the first I’ve heard of ice protecting a cat from a falling tree, amazing. I’ve gone through more ice melter than usual this “winter”, but nothing like the tree destroying freezing rain.
@seattlesnowflake has me under strict orders never to talk about tardigrades…
I Zoomed-visited a North Dakota high school English class and one kid asked why I write so much about one town—my reservation. And I said, "Because I know that land better than I've known any other place."
Love this piece, Monica. Lots to think about here.
We're planning to move from Iowa to Massachusetts next year to get away from Giliad theocracy and the bland nothingness of big agricultural landscapes. I imagine I will write about this place after I leave it, though I have a few short stories set on the farm where I first moved when I came here almost twenty years ago. I look forward to living in the land of my ancestors where so many of my favorite stories are set (Frederick Busch and John Updike, among others). Lately I've been working on a book about my great-great-grandfather that is set in 1880s New York and Bisbee, Arizona. It's interesting to try and capture a place and an era without using too much exposition. Here's a brief passage about the Union Pacific line moving through the Sierras into Truckee:
At Humboldt Station we acquire additional locomotive engines at the front and back of the train to push-pull us up the steep slopes and endless switchbacks. As we gain elevation, the mighty glacial peaks seem to both generate clouds and cleave them. Storms regularly blow through the passes and choke them with tons of snow, so Union Pacific has constructed enormous post-and-beam sheds of redwood to keep the tracks open in the worst places. These shed interiors are pitch-black tunnels, and as we roll through the darkness coal sparks flit past the windows like fireflies. The dim glow of the tunnel mouth explodes into shocking brightness as we exit the shed, a breathtaking vista spreading below us before we enter the next tunnel. Donner Lake is a sapphire pool in an emerald valley fringed with white glacier peaks and glossy pines. The beauty of the scene has an unreality to it as though it was an elaborately painted backdrop, clean rolling hills devoid of any human trace. I know within a scant few years it will be transformed into the familiar contours of furrowed fields staked with fences, barns and farmhouses. How quickly things are changing, how irrevocably.
That’s the first I’ve heard of ice protecting a cat from a falling tree, amazing. I’ve gone through more ice melter than usual this “winter”, but nothing like the tree destroying freezing rain.
@seattlesnowflake has me under strict orders never to talk about tardigrades…
I Zoomed-visited a North Dakota high school English class and one kid asked why I write so much about one town—my reservation. And I said, "Because I know that land better than I've known any other place."
Love this piece, Monica. Lots to think about here.
We're planning to move from Iowa to Massachusetts next year to get away from Giliad theocracy and the bland nothingness of big agricultural landscapes. I imagine I will write about this place after I leave it, though I have a few short stories set on the farm where I first moved when I came here almost twenty years ago. I look forward to living in the land of my ancestors where so many of my favorite stories are set (Frederick Busch and John Updike, among others). Lately I've been working on a book about my great-great-grandfather that is set in 1880s New York and Bisbee, Arizona. It's interesting to try and capture a place and an era without using too much exposition. Here's a brief passage about the Union Pacific line moving through the Sierras into Truckee:
At Humboldt Station we acquire additional locomotive engines at the front and back of the train to push-pull us up the steep slopes and endless switchbacks. As we gain elevation, the mighty glacial peaks seem to both generate clouds and cleave them. Storms regularly blow through the passes and choke them with tons of snow, so Union Pacific has constructed enormous post-and-beam sheds of redwood to keep the tracks open in the worst places. These shed interiors are pitch-black tunnels, and as we roll through the darkness coal sparks flit past the windows like fireflies. The dim glow of the tunnel mouth explodes into shocking brightness as we exit the shed, a breathtaking vista spreading below us before we enter the next tunnel. Donner Lake is a sapphire pool in an emerald valley fringed with white glacier peaks and glossy pines. The beauty of the scene has an unreality to it as though it was an elaborately painted backdrop, clean rolling hills devoid of any human trace. I know within a scant few years it will be transformed into the familiar contours of furrowed fields staked with fences, barns and farmhouses. How quickly things are changing, how irrevocably.