MAY 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. New friends were made in the collared lizards, golden eagles, mule deer, hummingbirds, and a black bear in…

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…