Douglas Wood

IN THE MIDST of a Minnesota spring blizzard, and what sometimes seems a blizzard of bad news and negativity, here is a timeless poem. Wonderful for today. For any day. A poem like this is like a message in a bottle, a candle in the night. And just as the bird’s song “sweetest in the gale is heard,” a candle’s

AT THE CHURCH O’ THE PINES this morning, silence and peace-and-quiet are not the order of the day. Rather, many joyful spring hymns are being sung and there is much welcoming back of friends and relatives who traveled south for the winter months. A rambunctious ruby crowned kinglet sings from the pines and balsam firs by the riverbank. Our little

IT IS A FINE DAY in the Pine Point woods, as two of our favorite migrants among the passeriformes—perching birds—have returned. The little yellow-rumped (Myrtle) warblers have traveled from the southern US and Mexico, on their way to the North Woods of northeastern Minnesota and Canada. They are usually the first of the warbler tribe to push the boundaries of

THERE IS A WAY of looking at the world around us that is so old and honored, so wise, so self-evidently true, that it is almost completely at odds with the way we normally live our lives. It is a way in which we see and acknowledge Nature as being inhabited by teachers and teachings, and more than that–as a