News from the Woods

October 31: Before saying farewell — it’s my last week here at the Studio — I wanted to introduce you to one of my friends, who dropped by for a visit the other night. Dropped by in more ways than one: at my desk after a long day in the woods, I was reviewing the outline for the book, when he fell without warning out of my hair. Here he is saying hello:

Apparently he’s comfortable with judging a book by its outline, as he decides to take a closer look:

After a few minutes of browsing, however, he decided he’d had enough. I’m trying not to take it personally.

Like any good critic, he kept his opinion to himself upon his departure. Seems we’ll just have to wait for the print edition. And with that, it’s time to say farewell to A Studio in the Woods, and thanks for a wonderful six weeks. Further information about this book and my other work, including critical responses from the arthropod community, is available at my website. Thanks to all.

October 24: This is a short poem from early on in my time here– it’s not part of the book (so far as I can see it forming), but it’s certainly inspired by this landscape. Hope you enjoy.

♦

Neighbor

I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I’ll never see a tree at all.
—Ogden Nash

How unlike us
they are. They have no
arms. They grow all
to the same size,

with the same shade
of skin, and their hair—
how strange—it changes
color but never falls;

and when the wind
comes to bring us
news, or the waters
to feed us, they do not

bend or sway. They cannot
drink. The birds rarely
visit them, or ask them
to share in the protection

of their young nor when
the storms invite our parents
to their beds, do they
ever lie down. In fact,

all they seem to do
is be themselves, greeting
the arrival of the roads
with more offspring

yet never dropping
seed. To stand forever
in one place, the sun
raining down upon you,

the wind tousling your hair,
and never speak?
O neighbor, how lonesome
it must be to live forever.