Chuck > Recent Status Updates

You can’t tell when an insect is in pain
but he must have been and you put him
in the grass so softly
where I found and stomped him.
And I think it surprised us
what we each defined as mercy.

Touch-starved as he was, he couldn’t bear to let us go, his embrace becoming panicked and painful. As he grew, we began to fear the strength of his sadness.

“Bear beauty for as long as you are able and if you spot a sunning warbler glowing like a prism, remind yourself— joy is not a trick.”

I am in desperate need of a week in the woods with no cell service, a hammock, and a stack of books.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the result of African exploration was not only mapping the continent but seizing it, region by region. By the time of Burton’s death, it was clear to every European nation not only where Africa’s lakes and rivers, mountains and forests lay but that it held vast, enviable natural resources…