Page Lambert: All Things Literary & All Things Natural

Cultures and communities that still live close to the land as our ancestors once did - farmers and ranchers, tribal people, rural neighbors - all know the wisdom of allowing the land to lie fallow. Even the neighborhood horse co-op that I belong to rotates our herd of horses from one mountain pasture to the next during the growing season. "Leave enough biomass  above the ground,"  traditional wisdom advises, "so that the sun may feed the roots  below the ground. " The golden grasses are dormant now - resting and recouping. The horses rest, too, conserving their energy. During a recent spell of subfreezing temperatures, each morning the herd stood quietly facing the sun, as if their bodies were living, breathing solar panels soaking in the warm rays.  Yet I often grind away at each day, sometimes not lifting my eyes long enough to feel the sun on my face, let alone rest long enough to nourish the roots that sustain me. Perhaps I need a sabbatical.  The archaic wo...

Deborah O'Connor is a gifted astrologer and, on the near eve of my birthday, I find her latest message especially insightful and wise. I hope you do, as well. The photo of the Indian Paintbrush I took on the edge of the canyon near our mountain home several years ago. I have always cherished my June birthdays, and this one seems even more impactful. Midsummer is a poignant time. Light itself moves through us and into our world with more intensity than any other day of the year. On this bright and light-filled day, we recognize that, like the sun that has been expanding itself more and more and more for six months now, we have been working—body and soul—to energize our lives. But today is a turning point, literally.  Summer Solstice begins when the Sun moves into heart-aware Cancer. This is a day when Time itself pauses to see the way forward. Since the sun began to gain light and strength at Winter Solstice six months ago, we've driven ourselves as we felt its energy fillin...

Photo by Time Magazine In 1964, the Beatles walked down the steps of a Pan Am Boeing 707 and stepped onto American soil at New York's Kennedy Airport. A few months later, my parents drove our family of four across the United States from Colorado to the World’s Fair in New York City. From there, we drove to Montreal, sold our car, and sailed on the cold waters of the Atlantic down the St. Lawrence Seaway on a steamship bound for England. We didn’t step back on American soil until 1965—one year, 27 countries, and one London Beatles concert later.   The world would never be the same—for our family, for the Beatles, for the teenage girls who swooned over John, Paul, George, and Ringo as girls had swooned over Elvis and James Dean. Those times now seem deceptively innocent, the girls with their penny loafers and ponytails, the half-grown boys with their bobbed bangs singing, S he's in love with me, and I feel fine ... She's so glad, she's telling all the world....  Ukraine i...

When John took this photo of my favorite knoll at the ranch in Wyoming, eight years had already passed since I'd climbed to her barren top and peered down at the redtail hawk soaring beneath. Yet the stories I continue to tell about this land create an ongoing dialogue that pulses through everything new. During the last half of 2021, I shrugged off guilt as each monthly blog post went unwritten, in part because new chapters of the novel on which I was working continued to unfold. The writing experience had become less about interpreting the world, and more about listening.  Immersed each morning in the novel, I listened to the Colorado wind blowing through the ponderosas outside my window and to the woman whose story I was telling. When Monique rested her hand on the back of her grandfather's gray horse, I felt the horse's warmth beneath my own.* When Monique slid onto Nishiime's back and draped her bare legs around his ribs, urging him along the lakeshore and into its ...