inquire

This magical spot is part of the farm I grew up on in eastern Kansas.  Going there I am renewed and encouraged because of the message it sends through the seasons.  The creek is not spring fed, and only has water when we have abundant rain, this is spring and late fall into winter.  The flowing water, with its music over the rocks, completes the magic.  This non-permanence of the water is a lesson.  Life flows.  Sometimes it flows with enchantment, sometimes it flows without, but be patient: the enchantment will return.

Duane L. Herrmann is a father and grandfather.  He has been a teacher of all ages from Headstart through college.  He has worked for the state and federal governments, built the house around his family, is now a writer and started farming at age 13.  His work has been published in a dozen countries in four languages and is increasingly cited or quoted.  He finds inspiration in the scriptures of the Bahai Faith.  (Photo by Trosten Herrmann.)

I love it when I can wake up early enough in a place where the sunrise will play tricks in the sky. This is the far eastern desert of Nevada looking out from Wheeler Peak down to the basin below. No one else was awake and I walked around camp, surprising a turkey and four deer by the stream. It was still cool out, and the stream made noise as it fell down the canyon. The desert is not always hot and dry, which I like to remind myself occasionally.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry and photography. Nearly 200 of her poems appear in over 100 online venues and in anthologies. The natural world is generally her framework; she both writes about it and captures it visually. She has over a dozen pictures online in various journals.  She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

Cedar Bush Bay, NC — Everywhere we go in Pamlico Sound looks like a postcard, but it’s places like this I love the most. On the southern tip of Roanoke Island, a series of sandy spits breaks up the swell and provides habitat for red-winged blackbirds and unusual species of gulls. The water is salty. We have the warm breeze all to ourselves.

Beth Browne writes fiction, non-fiction and creative non-fiction and the occasional poem. In her first career, she was a photographer and it is her special delight to combine words with images. When she’s not writing, she can be found working for a small publishing company, homeschooling her two teens, managing her great-grandfather’s farm or sailing Pamlico Sound with her partner, Eric. Find Beth on the web at www.bethbrownebooks.com.

Triple rainbow over the Joides Resolution, drilling on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, 30°N. (Hint, the second rainbow in an inversion of colors inside the first and the 3rd is the faint rainbow outside the other two.)

Dear Harvey,

Here I am in Paris, 10th Arrondissement in Cyril’s apartment – great view of the rooftops and the Eiffel Tower.  No matter how many times I see it at night, I run to the window at the top of the hour to see the sparkling lights, over and over again.. I feel like a kid at fireworks. Funny how I love Paris almost as much as I love the wide open spaces of Wyoming. There is a bakery across the street that sells a magical raspberry rose macaron – when you bite into it you hear the angels singing. It would be fun to be in Paris together. I’d share musical history in that amazing city, and you’d tell me about poets and writers. And we’d eat too much, of course.

xoxo,

Annie

Narsaq, tropical southwest Greenland.  The Icebergs around Narsaq move only during the full moon so every month there is a new pattern of bergs in the bay.

This is the view from Enzo’s in Tuscany, where we go each summer, as night arrives. After a day out exploring the countryside, eating well, looking at art and at least one swim in the pool, we sip local wine and watch the light fade. We are warm through, and truly relaxed; we are counting down the days until this year’s visit – our eighth or ninth.

I was a member of the 2004 expedition that collected this deep-sea coral in the Gulf of Alaska using the submersible Alvin. Here is what I wrote about my Alvin dive: “On Wednesday, a kilometer under the surface of the sea, we glided over a Seussian landscape of pocked manganese-covered boulders on which corals and sponges had found a foothold to grow. Many of the sponges were towering white inverted cones, slender at the bottom site of attachment, and widening as they reached up into the water column. Others were squat, white and puffy, or bright yellow and fabulously ruffled like a flamenco dancer’s skirt….We had reached a coral paradise, with delicate filigreed white primnoids, the bulbous pink paragorgias (bubblegum corals), and both branched and unbranched bamboo corals. The unbranched ones were slender pale commas, spirals, or question marks. The branched bamboos were majestic candelabras, many adorned with the sweeper tentacles at the base….Sprinkled among this framework of sponges and corals were red spider crabs, little darting shrimp with demon-red eyes that glowed in the reflected light, fat white starfish that looked like pin-cushions, orange tufted anemones, and the sinuous arms of sea stars. Often these creatures were festooned over the larger corals, perhaps using the elevation to reach a more favorable spot in the water column. The crabs were frequently seen with their claws extended out into the current, maybe waiting for a meal to float by. The dominant fish seems to be the rat-tail; we would see their long dark shapes swishing over the sea floor. One swam right under my viewport, and I could look down on its bony head and enormous dark eyes.”

Photo: Gulf of Alaska Seamount Expedition.  Large paragorgia coral with galatheid crabs in a sponge forest on Welker Seamount at about 700 meters depth.  Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Alaska.  (Public domain: By Gulf of Alaska 2004. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration)

Clouds of an approaching storm engulf Doan Peak in the northern Teton Range.

Silence interrupted by breezes rolling off distant waves, my lover and I carved messages into the undisturbed sands of this low-tide desert, our bodies sweeping aside the wrack washed ashore with yesterday’s storm. Winged shadows flash across our darkening flesh as silver fins dot the horizon, we gaze upon the world unfolding before us, leaving the trappings of twisted society behind.

CHESTER HOPEWELL is a poet, photographer and visual artist. Most known for his Telephone Pole Project, aimed at bringing poetry to the streets, Hopewell constantly chases down inspiration and reframes those sources to spark alternative ways of thinking. He recently published his first collection of poems and photographs in a limited edition of 100, along with an accompanying audio CD. We Must Fight to Run Away is available at etsy.com/shop/ChesterHopewell. Follow him at chesterhopewell.com and @ChesterHopewell.