Tag Archives: Mt. Jefferson

“April is the cruelest month,” wrote T.S. Eliot exactly one hundred years ago in the opening stanza of The Waste Land. The famous first line reads like an indictment of the fourth month as Eliot yearns to stave off vernal rebirth and remain in the stillness that precedes spring: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead …

Five fire seasons weigh upon me. My knees, though they have only seen 24 summers, creak and snap with each step; my wrists, elbows, and shoulders crackle from having absorbed the shock of uncountable swings of my Pulaski into compact, dark earth; my feet bear the memory of miles, flayed raw. Five fire seasons in the Pacific Northwest, and my …