We craft and tell stories because we’ve stood on the uncertain edge between the waking world and our imagination, between enchantment and fear. And we remember other stories that help us build our own stories, scraps of lumber and fragments of narrative we gather together to make stories for ourselves.

Only the Keeper Sees

I discovered the woods by our house just as the year was turning.
I’d seen them before, of course. In any stroll along the pavement past the art school towards the conference center, looking across the brackish water of the reservoir, the woods were obvious enough. And I knew, in a vaguely academic way, that people sometimes went for walks in those same woods.

The Darkest Night of the Year

With the longest, darkest night of the year upon us, we wish you the joy of it. There’s a reason, I think, that so many cultures celebrate these nights—why such a cold, dark time is full of lights and laughter and merriment.

Mid-autumn festivals

Autumn is a liminal season, and so we turn to festivals that celebrate limninal spaces: summer and winter, birth and death, wandering and belonging, time past and time future, heaven and hell.

Two Folktales

Walking by the Phoenix Photograph by Kenny Louie.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been pondering here about stories that speak from wounded, devastated earth—that come out of a place of suffering together with the world we inhabit.