[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of Soundscapes, a Terrain.org podcast.
In this episode, we listen in on a conversation between writer Tamara Dean and Terrain.org reviews editor Renata Golden.
Tamara writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her 2025 essay collection, Shelter and At Home in the Driftless, describes one couple's attempts to make a home on a giant rectangle in southwestern Wisconsin, partly wooded, partly tillable, bisected by a spring fed river.
She and her partner fell in love with this part of the Driftless region, where they could spend their days outdoors, breathing fresh air with the space and freedom to experiment with natural building techniques and renewable energy.
After more than a decade on their land, they learned the hard way that the messy work of farming would not be their fate, and instead they planted a pollinator habitat that could bring a windfall for bees, butterflies, and migrating birds.
Tamara could continue to tend a garden that yielded epic harvests with enough produce to give away gifts that brought her joy.
Listen to Tamara Dean and Renata Goldin dive into the inner workings of essays that are reflective but not precious, essays that welcome the reader into a different landscape while offering something new about the natural world, all while maintaining narrative momentum and tension.
We'll start off with a poem by Sarah Fawn Montgomery.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Grassroots separate strands with turned out hands like swimming but sharper, diving into the prairie brush, bristle, bend, concentrate to isolate one from many.
Trace a finger down the length, careful to avoid the sharp edge, slick as a blade reaching ground. Push pointer finger into the soil to go further along the shaft.
Wriggle, nail and knuckle dig down, careful not to rip the knot beneath coiled and so densely matted it takes effort now, force, stamina. The sun on the prairie leaving skin slick two fingers, three dirt rising past the wrist Roots beyond grasp spur curiosity, for they hold the whole world up. An inverted tree underground forearm the tender crook of the elbow when the shoulder sticks, remove and place hands together like prayer.
Dive headfirst into the space created eyes closed, wriggling like a blind worm, feet motionless, anchored above. Try to grasp where this system stops.
Feel the route you followed. Thicken hard, controlled and decisive, an enticing leash further become small surrounded, subsumed toes slide from the soil perch there's only so much breath, so swim fast and determined to find the end of this world deeper, darker, forever lasting.
[00:03:17] Speaker C: Hello Tamara. Thank you for taking the time to join me today.
[00:03:22] Speaker D: It's my pleasure.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Pleasure is terrains.
I'd like to start by maybe asking you to describe the Driftless region for any of us who have never been there.
[00:03:32] Speaker D: Yes, the Driftless region is area primarily in southwestern Wisconsin that was completely untouched by all of North America's glaciers, which might include a few dozen, but it's unique in its topography. It doesn't look like the rest of the Midwest. You know, where I grew up in mid Michigan, it's entirely flat, entirely glaciated. But because this area had no glaciers plowing through, has steep limestone bluffs and narrow R valleys and beautiful crystal clear spring fed streams. And it's called Driftless because the debris, the sand and pebbles and boulders that glaciers push ahead of them and then leave behind when they recede is called drift.
It's an area about 8,500 square miles. It includes a little bit of northwestern Illinois, and technically its western border is the Mississippi River. However, people in the Driftless region also also consider part of northeast Iowa and southeast Minnesota the Driftless area too, because the topography is similar. Geologists technically don't because there is evidence of drift or previous glaciation in those areas, but it's well known among trout fishers and paddlers, any kind of recreationalists. It's also well known for its organic farming because these narrow river valleys and high ridgetops didn't allow for the large SC agriculture like you see in Iowa or Illinois, you know, the thousands of acres of corn or soy. So the farmers were smaller scale. And it also attracted a lot of back to the Landers through the years.
You know, it just has this magnetism. It's not only beautiful, but it's a place where people who want to experiment can really thrive. And it became the headquarters for Organic Valley, which is the world's largest organic cooperative.
[00:05:37] Speaker C: Thank you, that's lovely.
So I read Shelter and Storm at home in the Driftless with great interest, partly because the area is so fascinating and also because your experiences on the land in the region are also fascinating.
When I read so near the Soil, the first essay in Shelter and Storm, I thought of Camille Dungey's book the Story of a Black Mother's Garden, in which she uses gardening as a metaphor for planting life in an area and uses her marriage as a character in her essays.
You and your partner David lived on your property for 15 years, and it took four years from the time you moved into your house until you decided to plant a prairie rather than farm.
Those were a hard four years to establish new life on the land that you bought.
In her book, Camille writes that everyone with a vested interest in the direction people on this planet take in relation to others should Take some time to plant life in the soil, even when such planting isn't easy.
She calls this being politically engaged.
Do you feel the essays in Shelter and Storm call to readers to become politically engaged by working their land?
[00:06:55] Speaker D: I believe that there are endless possibilities for becoming politically engaged with a landscape. So I appreciate Camille Dungey's you know, exhortation to work the soil, plant something in your yard. But what if you don't have a yard? Or that's not exactly your thing. There are still so many possibilities for engaging with the land and to recognize that the land is always political. You know, we don't think of land ownership that way necessarily. But who defines land? You know, the boundaries? Who's allowed to interact with it, who decides what's done with it, who's excluded from it or has only limited access, who's been erased from it, and who's authorized to tell its history and stories for so long? Those people were the people who run government and academia, predominantly male and white.
And so my essays offer these possibilities for engagement, but they also investigate questions of power and politics. For example, probing the USDA policies that subsidize only certain kinds of farmers or crops, or exploring the possible life of a woman who died after her 10th abortion and was buried on my land in the mid to late 1800s. And then also the preferential treatment given to large scale agriculture or big enterprises in Wisconsin that are really ruining water quality for their neighbors who have less land or influence.
But some of the ways I hope my essays inspire people to interact with land and their communities include, you know, maybe regularly wading into a river. It doesn't have to be one in your backyard, it could be 50 miles away. And digging through the silt to find endangered freshwater mussels and recording those finds in an online database, because I'm sure it's similar in other states. But in Wisconsin, the Department of Natural Resources, the state agency charged with overlooking the wildlife, among other things, cannot keep up with all of its priorities. And, of course, going out and wading into streams is something that their staff just doesn't normally have the time to do. So this is where citizen scientists really fill a gap, and they're necessary. This is how people could become engaged. Or it might mean becoming part of or forming a local watershed council that helps educate landowners on planting buffer zones next to their waterways so that, you know, it reduces erosion and reduces the runoff from ag and other inputs into the waterways and makes them healthier. So I hope ultimately that shelter and Storm motivates readers to approach the outdoors with open minds and open hearts and that it ignites their curiosity and passion for connecting with nature.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Thank you. Those are all excellent points and meaningful suggestions for ways to engage.
And I understand that you have been walking the talk for quite some time.
Shelter and Storm builds on the foundation you built in the Human Powered Home, your book on sustainable living. In that book you include other voices, experts in modern pedal powered and hand cranked devices for the home.
In the book you mentioned the unique connection to processes or products that result from using human power. When you wrote this book in 2008, you probably imagine things to turn out differently in 2025, that's for sure.
[00:10:32] Speaker D: Thank you Renata for pointing that out too. I think in many ways our aspirations when we did purchase this property in southwestern Wisconsin were somewhat naive. Now I recognize they were naive, but I didn't recognize the extent to which they were. Nai I loved writing the Human Powered Home primarily because I got to talk with these amazing inventors and their enthusiasm and knowledge inspired me, as did their devotion.
They weren't inventing pedal powered blenders or treadle powered water pumps to get rich, but because they saw a need and they felt a calling and they wanted to help others. And I was delighted to bring their stories to readers.
And I wanted to go back to what you said about Camille Dungey's book because I love something she says in there or a point she makes on and off, which is that a lot of the fundamental environmental writing doesn't include other people a lot.
And I thought yeah, that's right. I mean you can certainly think of exceptions to that. But I hope that both in my essay collection Shelter and Storm as well as the Human Powered Home, I've really demonstrated how we are all connected and it takes a community to really be effective in these pursuits.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: I also appreciated how Camille in her book made her marriage a character in her essays, which was unusual to me. And she kind of went after some of the other environmental writers for not doing something similar, including how daily life can get in the way of wading in a stream looking for freshwater mussels for example.
[00:12:17] Speaker D: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
So I'm curious, do you still use any human powered devices?
[00:12:24] Speaker D: I wish I could say yes and it's in my hopes for the near future.
For a long while after the book came out I was using a pedal powered grain mill. We had one set up in our dining room, hand cranked coffee grinder, hand cranked food mill when I processed, you know, apples or tomatoes for putting up and a Bicycle wheel, Cultivator in the Garden. But as you know from reading the final essay in Shelter and Storm Slow Blues, I suffered repeated bouts of Lyme disease. Our area of Wisconsin is known as the epicenter of Lyme disease in the Midwest and other tick borne diseases. But the last or the most recent episode with Lyme lasted almost five years. And from what I can tell, it's similar to what people are experiencing now with Long Covid. I was just exhausted, you know, most of the time. And then in 2021, I was run over by an SUV while walking across a street in Minneapolis. And that took quite a while to recover from, as you can imagine.
So all that's to say, my energy and stamina haven't been where I've wanted them to be and haven't positioned me well for operating human powered devices lately. But I do still have them and I hope to use them.
[00:13:41] Speaker C: Say that you wrote about that experience in Minneapolis in the Guardian and that was to me, terrifying. I can only imagine what it was like from your side.
[00:13:50] Speaker D: Well, the advantage is I have no memory of it. You know, I still have no memory of the three hours starting just before I was run over and then when I came back to semi consciousness in the icu. And so it was probably harder for my loved ones in some ways than it was for me, although the multiple brain injuries were difficult to recover from.
[00:14:15] Speaker C: Well, I'm glad you're doing so much better and are back to writing.
[00:14:19] Speaker D: Thank you. Me too.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: A lot of research goes into your essays. I'm thinking of your essay in Shelter and Storm on the Hopnes Plant, as well as your essay on Prairie Fire.
I find that when I dive deep into research, I can end up with much more information that I can use in one essay.
All the essays in this book are so informative. I'm wondering if you have to make some difficult choices about what to include and what to leave out.
[00:14:48] Speaker D: Yes. As you know from your own writing, the amount of information that appears in a published essay is really a slight fraction of what the writer learned about a topic while researching it. And when I teach creative nonfiction, I often say that it's mainly a matter of scope and selection.
That makes it sound easy. It's certainly not easy to decide what to include and what to leave out. But I also like to paraphrase a bit of advice from Tennessee Williams, the playwright. I'm modifying this a little bit, but basically your only job is to not bore the reader. You know, sometimes I say to myself and to other authors, please tell Me, a story I've never heard in a way I couldn't have imagined.
As I referred to earlier when we were talking, that's one thing I love about your essays. I learned things. You know, this is a story I've never heard before. So those are the kinds of aspects of writing I like to keep in mind.
But, you know, that's boring. The reader is entirely subjective.
And, you know, my tolerance for ecological facts is very high. But how much botany can an average reader take? Or how much history about the use of fire and prairie restoration?
So I try to include only the necessary fascinating bits. So in the Fire and Time essay, I learned and was amazed that some Wisconsinites who understood the importance of fire to prairie survival before anyone else did became vigilante arsonists. And they would go out and burn prairie relics by night.
And they saved some of those remnants because of their activity, so that I included that in the Fire in Time essay. And finally, you know, before I even submit a piece, I'll pass it by my trusted writing friends in my writers group, and they'll let me know if, you know, there's just this big clot of information that's slowing things down. The editors of a journal will also pare it down if it needs to be or ask me to add information because I've been so conscious of not boring the reader that I've left some things out.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: Someone I went to graduate school with said the most important thing is just tell a good story. So I try to keep that in mind.
[00:17:07] Speaker D: Yeah.
And I like approaching essays like fiction.
So I hope that each of the essays in Shelter and Storm acts like a little mystery story, beginning with a question or a mystery that I pursue and. And following me along as I do. Which isn't to say that anything's made up, it's all true.
I'm sort of a compulsive writer, so that I write down every day the interactions I've had and even bits of dialogue right after I have a conversation with someone.
So that I do have this repository of material.
[00:17:44] Speaker C: I find it interesting you've said that you started your professional writing life as a fiction writer.
And I find it interesting how your approach to fiction informs the essays in Shelter and Storm.
[00:18:01] Speaker D: Yeah, I really want to grip readers from the beginning. I want them to be in scene with me. You know, there's that old axiom, show, don't tell, but I think it's more accurate to say show and tell.
I want tension to escalate. I want drama to pull people forward and I want meaning to deepen.
And sometimes. Sometimes that means that my essays end up far from where they begin. But I think that parallels my process of discovery in experience and research, it seems.
[00:18:35] Speaker C: Sometimes you start with an idea that requires research, and sometimes that research draws you into another area that's different from where you first started. I'm thinking of your essay An Ordinary Woman, which was originally published in American Scholar as safer than childbirth. This essay kind of backs into the subject of abortion. You start by wanting to know who is buried in an old cemetery on your property where a 1978 flood washed away some of the grave markers. A casual conversation at the county Historical Society leads you to the history of abortion, which takes you in interesting directions.
Surprise seems to find its way into several of your essays.
[00:19:20] Speaker D: Thanks for noticing that. I have to say that it seemed in rural Wisconsin that all I had to do was walk out my front door and something dramatic and amazing would happen. So on that day, I finally went to the Historical Society after living on the property for at least 10 years.
After neighbors had said, well, there are Civil War soldiers buried in that cemetery, but their gravestones washed downstream. I decided to go to the Historical Society to find out who these people were. And when the curator handed me the list of people recorded as buried in my cemetery, I read one name aloud, a name I had never heard. And by the way, there were no men on that list, no Civil War soldiers. And the woman who was sitting next to me doing genealogical research said, oh, she's my husband's great, great great aunt. And then she said, and she died of her 10th abortion.
That was in the public record. And that just led me on this trip to. Of research. And this is an essay I wrote entirely for myself. I didn't think that anyone would want to publish it. I only wanted to understand this woman's life. And I contextualized it with more research.
But friends encouraged me to send it for publication, and it was accepted. And I'll tell you, as a writer, the danger of writing only for yourself is maybe you're not as scrupulous about recording your sources. Not that I didn't have sources, but I. I wasn't ready with that list when they offered to publish it anyway. I think any great writing day is marked by some kind of surprise for the writer.
So I love ending up in a different place from where I started, and I hope that readers enjoy that.
[00:21:06] Speaker C: Too much of what you have written about has special relevancy now, or at least I think so.
In your essay about abortion for Example, you quote Leslie J. Reagan, author of the 2022 book When Abortion Was a Crime, as writing she wrote, anti abortion activists pointed out that immigrant families, many of them Catholic, were larger and would soon out populate native born Yankees and threaten their political power.
You also quote a doctor from the American Medical association who initiated a campaign to end abortion in 1850 as asking whether the regions west and south of New England would be, quote, filled by our own children or by those of aliens.
You probably weren't expecting our current administration to make this essay more topical now.
[00:22:01] Speaker D: No, indeed I wasn't.
And until I researched the history of the woman's life, the woman who was buried in my cemetery, I hadn't understood how interconnected anti abortion and white supremacist ideologies or anti immigration ideologies have always been in this country.
So that Horatio Storer quote about should this country be filled by our own children or by those of aliens is something that many people who study abortion history know about. And he also provided language and inspiration and support to state legislatures. One of them, Wisconsin's, where I live, followed his example. No one in the state at that time in the mid-1800s had wanted anti abortion legislation. Even the churches weren't asking for it. It was entirely driven by the ama.
But no, I didn't anticipate how this pairing of white supremacy and anti abortion ideologies would re emerge. But I've never felt confident that women's right to bodily autonomy was assured.
I was a young child around the time of Roe v. Wade, and my mom, who was a defiant pro choice feminist, had a bumper sticker on our Buick station wagon that said every child a wanted child.
And when abortion rights were threatened in the mid to late 1980s, I was marching and volunteering with pro choice organizations.
And then in the 1990s, a writing teacher dismissed one of my stories that featured a woman's controversial decision to have an abortion by saying, well, that issue has been decided and put to rest as if we don't need to look at it anymore. But I really didn't think so. I thought people will keep trying to erode women's rights because women can only be fully controlled once their fertility is controlled. But. But as my essay describes, for women in the mid and late 1800s, even the early 1900s in this country, any such laws are going to be minimally effective. Women will always find a way to do what's best for their health and well being.
[00:24:16] Speaker C: Well, I appreciate that essay, so thank you for writing it and pursuing that history. And bringing it into the present.
I appreciate how you reveal your process in your essays.
You talk about the friends and family you had conversations with. I'm thinking about the essay about ground nuts, for example, and how becoming part of the chain that would create a market demand for groundnuts wove its way into the essay. Through your conversations with friends, you even write about the laborious process of preparing the ground nuts to eat at a party. Sort of like revealing the sausage making that goes into the sausage.
The groundnuts that you prepared were so delicious, your friends joined you in foraging for more. And I have to say that comparing that essay with the story about the.
The hazelnuts that a neighbor up the road was planting with no understanding of the market, and he had, he had been planting hazelnuts for nine years and he still thought that that was kind of early on in his process, right?
[00:25:25] Speaker D: And remarking on that, you know, I talked about the hazelnut guy in the first essay, so near the Soil, as I was looking at potential crops for my property, you know, I visited him and I asked him, how much have you invested in this? And he said, $70,000. And it had been nine years and he had made no profit off of it. And I thought, I just don't have the faith or risk tolerance to do something like that. Meanwhile, friends up the road who had planted hazelnuts had their entire crop wiped out in a flood. And I knew, you know, these chronic climate change induced floods were not going to stop. And it was a big risk for us too. So. But back to your point about the way I'm writing essays. I love to bring readers along on my own journeys of discovery, so that means scenes and dialogue and characters and tension and all that. But I only hope that my narratives don't become plodding recitations of and then, and then and then. Because truly my life in the country often felt that way. I don't know if that comes out in the essays, but oh my gosh, so many days of clearing brush or chopping wood or mowing or pruning fruit trees or weeding or planting, harvesting, canning. It was a lot of drudgery and hard work.
But I try to convey those kind of laborious undertakings in a efficient, aesthetically pleasing way. I hope that's true. And anything that feels repetitious or otherwise energy sapping in the narrative has to go.
[00:27:06] Speaker C: I didn't get that feeling at all. I found all the essays very informative and I learned quite a lot. For example, I learned a lot about Beavers. In your essay Good Neighbors, in my book Mountain A Field Guide to Astonishment, I write about the animals that I feel are undervalued, like prairie dogs and ants and snakes. But actually, I think undervalued is not quite the right word. It's too mild. Most people would rather see some of the critters that I write about dead rather than alive.
What was your motivation behind writing about beavers, which you admit is not really an essay about beavers?
[00:27:45] Speaker D: Right. And I have to say the questions about a species value felt especially significant in your essays Hammer Test and what the 2% are saying from Mountain Time. So I've been thinking a lot about this issue since reading your essay collection.
As environmentalists, we want people to understand a creature's underappreciated features and functions. So, for example, my neighbors might have thought of beavers only in the sense of being a nuisance. You know, they re engineered a landscape, or maybe they were good for their pelts, which at the time might have gotten someone $25 a piece at the best time of year.
We also don't want to reduce animals to their utility. I mean, everything has an inherent value that isn't related to what we can make of it or what it does to us. In fact, I feel that referring to soil, water, air, plants, or animals as resources, like a lot of us do by habit, presupposes our entitlement to manage or use them as we see fit. And I think that's something we do well to question.
[00:28:55] Speaker C: So in that, say you talk about the neighbor who had asked you to remove some beavers, which you did at first, and then your ingenious husband invented this way of solving the issue without removing the beavers. And you talk about how you didn't realize that the neighbor had other issues going on that were affecting the way that he was approaching you and what you were trying to do with your land.
So what I see in your book the past informs the future, and sometimes with hindsight, the reverse is also true.
You write, the past exerts itself. It affects me.
I am also affected by the past, and I respect the amount of history in your book. In Mountain Time, I found that digging into the past is inescapable when trying to understand the present well enough to be able to write about it. You mention your parents in some of these essays and how their decisions affected the choices you had. You also allude to genetic memory or ancestral memory. And your essay Slow Blues, which I love, by the way.
Do you still feel the presence of Ancestors in your new home.
[00:30:09] Speaker D: I love that question. And yes, I do.
I appreciated the idea you raise in mountain time of not being a great student of history until you perceived it through the lens of a landscape. I was the same. You know, for example, discovering that a sharp bend in an old oak slim on our property pointed the way to a freshwater spring that someone long ago had made a geographical marker out of that branch. That just made history come alive for me. I could imagine those people.
So now I live in Madison. You know, the last essay in Shelter and Storm hints at that heartbreaking decision to leave the countryside. But here, too, I sense the presence of the land's first inhabitants. A short walk from my house overlooking Lake Mendota are ancient effigy mounds. But I'm also aware of the developers who came along much later and turned a creek down the block from us into a street and the hillside a few blocks west of us into a little quarry. So history continues to echo and present itself.
The house where I live now was built by a renowned University of Wisconsin statistician, George Box, and his wife, Claire. I've met Claire, but her husband died in 2013.
But George is famous for writing, remember that all models are wrong. The practical question is, how wrong do they have to be to not be useful? This is more often paraphrased, as all models are wrong, but some models are useful.
I don't grasp all the statistical implications of his claim, but it does seem applicable to what I mentioned earlier about the land, depending on constructs that we can question.
So in what ways are our definitions and limits useful, and in what ways are they harmful?
And as I sit right now in the same home office where George worked and welcomed students, I do sometimes imagine him urging me to think beyond conventions.
[00:32:14] Speaker C: Slow Blues again, the essay that I like so much. Among all the others, you recognize that staying on your land became unsafe for your health.
You're right. We might sacrifice, among many things, the potential for regular awe. I wasn't sure I could make the trade, but then you end the essay with a statement. I felt sure that no matter where I went, I would experience awe if coupled with fear, as long as I kept paying attention.
Are you still finding time and opportunity for awe? These days I am.
[00:32:49] Speaker D: And that's a gift that living in rural Wisconsin gave me.
You know, awe was ever present.
For example, we were just sitting in our living room, looked out and saw these raccoons swinging like monkeys through the top of an oak tree. Or when I discovered this blue glowing firefly that only Lives in the dripless area, or, you know, just walking down the front walkway and coming upon a turtle digging her nest and laying eggs right in the front yard. Living there made me alert to these moments.
And I continue to spend time in nature regularly. I'm a little warier. The paths I choose are, you know, a little wider and maybe gravel covered. But I still do get out there. And so while the setting is less dramatic, I'm still captivated by the observations. I'm still discovering new aspects of nature, and I still return from walks and hikes and record what I've found.
So, yeah, I think it is a matter of being open to awe and paying attention.
[00:34:00] Speaker C: I understand how difficult it is to leave a place that you grew so attached to and put roots down in.
And I find that I am now in a new area as well.
And there are always still new things to discover and new opportunities for awe that can be just right down the path.
[00:34:24] Speaker D: Yes, and as I mentioned in Shelter and Storm, I think it's an idea I first heard about in one of Bernd Heinrich's books. But we still don't know some basic facts about field mice. You know, there are so many things left to explore, and yet we're trying to go to Mars. I find it a little odd. At least we could look down, look around right on this planet for wonder.
[00:34:52] Speaker C: There was a new species of tarantula just recently discovered in my area, and I think it's a very beautiful tarantula.
[00:35:02] Speaker D: Wow. And maybe you'll come across it.
[00:35:04] Speaker C: That would be lovely. I would love to.
So thank you, Tamara, for spending time talking about shelter and storm at home in the Driftless.
[00:35:15] Speaker D: It's been my pleasure, Renata. Thank you for having me.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: That was Tamara Dean in conversation with Renata Golden. We hope you enjoyed this conversation. We'll end with a poem by Anna Laura Reeve read by the poet.
[00:35:30] Speaker E: This is Anna Lara Reeve reading the poem. Box elder season in the Tennessee Valley.
Jesus.
It's Palm Sunday and the Spanish bluebells stand so tall and straight.
A bluebird perches there in the pine, watches, dives for an insect returns.
[00:35:55] Speaker D: To.
[00:35:56] Speaker E: My right unlend like pink azaleas glow like drag, Extravagant plush lips pouting.
I can hardly look at that ease of being.
A friend sends a poem, a podcast, a song.
I startle horrors.
What if I break boxelder inflorescence drops like tassel, Earrings like tasseled pasties like joy.
I pick them up to study for a moment in a gloved hand.
Certainly the fringed daisy fleabane just lifting its pink lashes will be the same.
Certainly the bluebird chicks will hear soon as the father bird lands with three worms streaming down his chin.
And as I'm on the subject, this boxwood, how many times I've tried to kill, keeps doing this.
It keeps living.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: You can read and engage with each of these writers
[email protected] all the poems from today's episode were read by the poets who wrote them.
These poems, as well as the transcript from our conversation with Tamara Dean, will be
[email protected] thank you for listening. We'd love to hear from you. We hope you'll join us for another episode of Soundscapes. Until then, here's to understanding that we each find our own ways to live on and off the land.
