DECEMBER 2022 BOOKS

Returning from the Gila wilderness, over 100 miles of winding roads through aspen and ponderosa pine; in the valley, massive cottonwood trees drink along the banks of the shallow clear-running Gila River. …

The sky and the grass were rushing with waves, as was the lake, waves upon waves in the waves, the sky and the grass, my hands, all waves. I waved my hand to wave the waves, waved away they waved. Upon the wavy grass I waved, intermittently running down to…

At a family reunion last year, eating meat sandwiches on a molding picnic table, a massive black fluorescent flying beetle lands on my shoulder. It’s a shock. I jolt, perhaps release a yip. I am at a table of elders, great aunts and uncles, all of whom overreact in choral…

The mystery and awe of the heron, a bird who can remain so still and move so slowly as to disappear. The heron is a magician, once there and once gone in the cattails. My eyes always attune to their shape, the long neck that stretches in curiosity, and the…

Over the past decade I have made it a point to travel, live and write about those spaces we forget in our definition of America. From my second home in Albuquerque, where indigenous culture and history are a daily reflection, to New Orleans, living in a bus for weeks in…