From the recent rains the leaves looked glossy in the forest, the spiky sala and leaning ferns, and it was easy to imagine all the plant life felt happy. And how these species of flora weren’t much different than what… Read More ›
Creative Nonfiction
Last quarter
I walked to our neighborhood park, the one on the lake by our house. It gets a lot of traffic this time of year with the early morning anglers fishing off the dock and the teenagers and toddlers who flock… Read More ›
Little Fury Things
At the right angle with the morning sun coming through the Tiffany lampshade looked furry due to a thin layer of animal hair attached to the glass by grease or film. You could say the same for most appliances in… Read More ›
Ancient flags and dragons
8/9/25 The sound of the owl in the middle of the night is a distant probe, a pulse. In the east on the bottom of the horizon there are two new stars, maybe a planet. The sun rises closer to… Read More ›
Grounded
It is now the time of the wildfires and web worms. The digital map of fire shows their size and location, and we look surrounded—though the air quality is still good. The web worms gather in clumps on certain kinds… Read More ›
The dark magic of the garage
The garage was fucked. The garage, that dumping ground for all our excess, for all we could not process or endure. The garage was the physical manifestation of our gluttony and waste. The garage was bombastic in scale: a proud… Read More ›
Seven weeks left
The fact they released a 4-LP set of Nick Drake’s first album Five Leaves Left didn’t make it any easier; I was rushing fall. It’s a deeply unpopular thing to do in the Pacific Northwest, to summon autumn before summer’s… Read More ›
Pipsee’s View
Up and down Tiger Mountain there are memorials to local hikers and friends of the mountain, volunteers who gave their time to keep it maintained. Like Murat’s Bridge, Anschell’s Allee, or Pipsee’s View, a modest overlook of a brushy cove…. Read More ›
One last time to Shy Bear Pass
There were two places I wanted my ashes spread. One was our favorite camp spot on the Washington coast, Oil City. No oil, no city. A bad name for a beautiful place. The other, less exotic spot was right here… Read More ›
The hissing of summer lawns
I loved bulking up before a big backpacking trip and then eating like a beast afterwards. There was no way to make up for those burned calories but boy I liked trying. My phone gave me an award for setting… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 