Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree

We are running now, running toward the halfway point between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Easter has come and the green blade rises along every hill and dale. Our days are long. They are long and they are good. Walk through a field or forest this time of year, along the stone walls and hedgerows, scan the the hillsides, and your wandering eye will be met with nothing but green, long...

Months ago, I read as someone scoffed at the photographs depicting the life of a man I admire, Simon Sarris . Simon is, like me, a father in New England who loves the natural world and appreciates beautiful things. He is a photographer and writer whose home and family seem to exist in a state of timeless, composed grace. The cynical detractor wrote something to the effect of “His life is only beau...

My littlest girl stirred late last night. Just a minor fuss, a pouty lip and a tiny toss. Enough to wake us up however, enough to get me to blink the sleep out of my eyes, to look outside and notice the snow falling thick in the moonlight. Yes, it’s still snowing on and off here in the hills of Vermont. The winter has been long, cold, proper. The daffodils are beginning to sprout, the crocuses are...

They loom, the buildings. Impossibly tall and getting taller, plastered with flashing advertisements that never cease, urging, urging, urging you always to consume more. Our technology is wearable and in some cases even embedded into our very flesh. The mega corporations have outsized control, reaching for the stars while people hunt for pennies in the gutter. Simultaneously growing ever further f...

We demand so much of poor March. The equinox arrives, we whip out our smartphones, and tap the weather app: our winter-pale faces illuminated by the glow of our little oracles. “It will be fifty tomorrow!” we feverishly, frothingly declare. We eye our gardening tools and put the heavy winter coats away in their trunks. Lured by the promises of warm weather we step outside expecting fields of golde...

Tomorrow is the vernal equinox when your day and your night will be the same length. It is an event embodying harmony in what can often feel like an increasingly discordant world, a world that feels increasingly complex, wounded, unbalanced. Regardless of your ancestry, religion, or culture, you likely have rituals surrounding this period, surrounding spring. The recognition of birth and rebirth t...

“It wasn’t always like this.” I looked up from the litter I was collecting in the park. Discarded trash was a constant battle in the city in which we lived before returning home . It became so bad that my wife and I organized events to pick up litter in the park followed by yard games with other families. The voice belonged to a very old man and I asked him what he meant, fully expecting to hear a...

“The world you were born in no longer exists.” A now common phrase spoken with weary certainty, heavy with both nostalgia and resignation. It is said when people watch their hometown haunts replaced by parking lots, when the pace of life has quickened beyond what they feel they can keep up with, or when they simply want to invoke rage in you to sell you something. It is more often than not an earn...

We are all oracles now here at the end of winter. We look out our windows, go for walks, step gingerly through the still deep snow looking for the signs, trying to divine spring’s arrival. We have many methods for this divination. We look to the bird feeder and wait eagerly for the first sighting of the robin. Some of us are lucky enough to live where snowdrops bloom. We listen for the trickle of...

The weight is real this year. A blizzard roared through this weekend and left its mark, laying down an inch of snow an hour until it felt as though our little rolling hills here in Vermont were flattened out in white. The drifts reach my waist in places, and the driveway, deck, and paths are a daily battle against accumulation. I am running out of places to put the snow; there is no conquering win...

No one seems to know what to do here in the dead of February. You can look to the calendar and find no answers there, only more questions. Superbowl? Groundhog Day? Valentine’s Day? What is February even about ? We look to the woodline and the fields, but February holds her secrets in silence. There are hints, however. Clues to the mystery, a bridge of cold light where winter loosens its grip but...

The days are changing. There are more tracks in the field, the light lingers a little longer, and we never quite know what to expect from Winter here at his bitter end. Winter in February is a man who has learned that he is dying. Faced with his mortal coil, he is unpredictable, dangerous, liable to do anything. He may lash out in his rage and bury you in sleet, he may succumb to his sorrow and pl...

In less than one week you will be halfway between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. You will have the same amount of daylight you did at Halloween. January ends, the days grow longer, and now you have one less month to achieve your resolutions, to plan your moves, to bring something into being. To conceive. That is ultimately what this time of year embodies: conception. You are emerging...

I am running out of firewood. It is not an emergency. It is not really even a problem; we can always heat with the oil furnace. We enjoy heating with wood though, and it allows us to cook, melt snow into pure water, and heat our home in the event of a long term power outage. We always keep a good supply on hand. Nevertheless, this year was busy and I did not begin cutting wood in earnest until lat...

We do not stop. Not these days. Not lately. Not really. The perpetual demands of modern life tell us to go, produce, consume. But then it snows. It snows hard , turning the roads dire and bringing the well oiled gears of modernity to a frozen halt. Schools close, evening plans are cancel, and families, once scattered to the winds of competing demands, find themselves unexpectedly gathered at home....

“They’re dying out there, alone.” She sighed and gestured out the plane’s window to the darkened hills of Vermont. My seatmate on a flight home from Christmas travel, she was a visiting nurse to the elderly and explained that nearly all of her patients had no one. Their children had heard the siren song of the interstate and never came back. Most of her scheduled visits these days resulted in an e...

Walk through a field this time of year in search of foliage or the last warm days of the year and you will find time to reflect now that the droning din of insects has faded and the biting hosts have mercifully receded. The leaves gently fall, the hayed fields easily yield to your footfalls, and our New England vistas open before you in a riot of gold and crimson. There are fewer things more pleas...

You can feel it now, even if you do not want to admit it. The hint, the suggestion, just the slightest note of autumn. August is close and with it you will be closer to the autumnal equinox than you are the summer solstice. Harvests of the literal and the figurative now begin. The hay in the fields, the berries in the briar, the trees destined for the wood pile by the cellar door. First we see the...

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....

Hearth Fathers is a podcast where rural fathers are asked to reflect on their relationship with their home, land, and legacy. In a fast world, Hearth Fathers is a slow and deliberate podcast; our conversations are not rushed but instead seek to glean wisdom about life from fathers who live in the country. Before you listen, consider pouring a drink, getting comfortable, and slowing down yourself....