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.

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.

The Bones Sang

August 20, 2010 --- Dinosaur skeletons in the desert --- Image by © MARK GARLICK/Science Photo Library/Corbis

Every day at 5.30 p.m., just outside the university campus where I live, someone blows up a mountain.