Content Categorized ‘Out of Place’

There is always something missing. Is there always something missing? Yesterday I was lying in a hammock in a beautiful courtyard. It is summer now, but it was a coolish day, and a row of birches stood off to my left,…

Five years ago this spring, the Georgia Review ran a special feature called Culture and the Environment. The corner­stone of that feature was Scott Russell Sanders’s essay, “Simplicity and Sanity,” which described how Henry David Thoreau’s words might help us…

We live in a time when essays are often bullied into being articles, when the marketplace and the Internet, both ever-hungry for action, serve to cattle-prod the lounging essayist out of his or her natural ambling pace and into something…

I In the evenings, when I read and take notes in my journal, I am showered by applause. As you can imagine, it’s a warm and rewarding feeling. I work outside, or as close to outside as you can get…

I live in a development where all the streets are named after birds. To get home I pull in at Ivocet, pass Whinbrel and Kestral, and take a right on my road, Petral Court. There’s only one problem. Skim through…

Today I am walking along the edge of the Cape Fear River searching for painted buntings, birds made up of patches of wild fauvist color—bluebird’s head, flaming belly, lime-green wings. But while this quest happily occupies my eyes, my mind…