Craig Childs

Workshopping in the Gila in southern NM last week, that’s me on the left trying to pull words out of the air.

Who even dreams?

Sweet spot, getting the work done.

For those near to us, that’s the North Rim of the Grand Canyon you’re breathing right now. From 250 miles away, it smells like trees on fire.

The way to the lonely mountain.

Mountain shrines at night
teeming with unseen spirits
the place is alive.

Bashō in my hand
Along Oigawa River
Fishing for words

Look into my eye.

Last shed of sunlight an hour from home.

A month after running the Grand, one of the writing students on our trip, an artist, obviously, put her pencil work in the mail. You remember these rock angles? And the way the water goes calm for a mile or two before the next roar rises? This is what I love about human art. It takes you there.

Holed up at the library in Steamboat for a couple days writing, I had a conversation through a window this morning with a fledgeling crow while one of the parents cawed and cawed from a nearby branch, telling the kid to stay away from those damn writers.

In the numerous seasons of the year there’s this one, the late end of spring, past the cross-quarter of Beltane, more like summer but still like spring when the wild irises bloom. It’s one of my favorite fractional seasons, blink and you’ll miss it.

Taking the slow road home.

Today is the official publication date for my book on the night sky and if you’ve got a hankering for a hard, wild journey into the stars while firmly attached to the Earth, I urge you toward your nearest independent bookstore or Torrey House Press (avoiding Amazon for obvious reasons).

I’ve got a kid graduating high school today and the feels are significant. Yesterday we hiked to a sunset ridge and for at least twenty minutes, remaining unseen, we watched a lanky black bear and its cub amble along a ditch below us.

For the last week I’ve been holed up with my ma working while she got out her easel and oils and painted. “Progress?” I asked. “I put pencil to paper, yes,” she said.

To the mothers lost, the mothers found, and mine touching her canvas with a brush on a sunny spring afternoon, happy Mother’s Day.

At the foot of a sagebrush, good morning. (spotted towhee)

Gates of Unaweep Canyon the rain.

Out of New York City, past the end of the Long Island Rail Road, the coast feels celestial with bright, polished marbles.

Hello, Atlantic Ocean.

Midnight foray in Manhattan: I got a first hardbound copy of my next book this evening from my publishers/editors (Torrey House Press) who also happen to be traveling to New York City. I’m hoping it might end up in yours, and also under curious circumstances.

A line of text in some ancient, geologic tongue…what does it say?

Word from deep in the Grand Canyon. Sound on.

Tag-team writing workshop.

Southward bound across the Navajo Nation, putting on the river tomorrow into the Grand Canyon with Amy Irvine. We’re teaching writing, tumbling words downstream till they all turn to sand.

Some people have skeletons in their closet, I’ve got skulls.

Ten below this morning, watching a heard of more than 500 elk cross the basin through a dazzling ice fog and here comes the sun!

First of the season.

From the other room I hear my love say, “You keep bringing in branches and sticks.” I feel in my hair and beard as a precautionary measure.

Resistance is elemental.