Douglas Wood

SO THERE’S THIS THING trees do. They reach for the light. Habitually. Always. Relentlessly and inevitably. This imperative may also be called aspiration. As in, trees aspire toward something. Toward the sun, of course. They never reach it, the trees, not all the way to the glowing sun. But they reach towards it. They aspire. And in doing so they

ON THIS BLUE-SKY, warm-wind Earth day, I wish you beauty. I wish you the secret space between two pines, there to wander through and discover a new world. Perhaps to discover the very first bloodroot blossom of spring, or the very last scarlet cup of late winter. The shiny rabbit-ear leaves of the early wild leeks, or the tender, spotted

AT THE OLD CABIN in the Church O The Pines by the Mississippi, an April breeze tosses the pine tops. But not enough to deter an eager paddler from slipping the Bluebird II into the water, for the first Spring outing. It was a long, hard winter in Minnesota. And it is always a thrill to feel the first pull

TODAY IS A VERY DARK DAY for those who love the North Woods, the Canoe Country, protected wild places, and particularly the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The Republican Party has, as is their custom of late, engaged in a great betrayal. A betrayal of all those people mentioned, of the state of Minnesota, and of the United States of