Two interesting things about living in a smaller town intersected in my mind this week. One is how much I form relationships with buildings. People do this in cities, too, but because there are so many options in cities, it can be overwhelming. In smaller places, your choices are more manageable. There are five buildings […]
Spring. I never remember what it’s like until it comes around again, and then I’m bowled over, each year as if it were all new. The scents! The colors! The bravery as daffodils get snowed on again! The first robin! The first quail (today, in the driveway, little chatterbox). Last summer my front yard was […]
I’d like to remind you that the very best time to sneak into your friends’ houses and take photographs is when they are out of town. It’s also helpful when their house-sitter is a friend and will both let you in and tidy up a bit, so laptops, nightgowns, and stray wine glasses from the […]
About a month ago there was a big demonstration, which you may have heard of or attended. The Women’s March was originally focused on Washington, D.C. in defense of women’s rights, human rights, and press freedom, the day after our 45th President’s inauguration. In the end, protest rallies were held in over 30 countries around […]
As many of you know, we’ve been wrestling with drought in California for the past several years — I think officially the number is five years. Here in the foothills, our usual natural disaster is wildfire, and drought makes fires more likely, more dangerous, and harder to fight because water reserves are low. This means […]
I have some wonderful friends. One of them loaned me her house last month, which overlooks the entrance of Tomales Bay. The town and the beach are both named Dillon Beach. If there is no fog, you can see across the bay to the Point Reyes National Seashore and then south to where the sun […]
There’s no wifi at my Aunt Mary’s beautiful old house, so we watch the tide come in and go out again twice a day. There’s a moment of stillness when it turns, the water clearly going under the bridge in one direction, and then a pause for maybe three or four minutes, and the surface […]
A long time ago (2001?), in a galaxy far, far away (southern Utah), I discovered a magical restaurant next to a stalwart lodge in a very small mountain town. “Discovered” is not the right word: my friend Julia took me there for a few days of hiking. She had come upon it the year before, […]
My sister Sarah has always been good at adventures. Both the larger-than-life experiences anyone would call adventures, and those ordinary quotidian events that she makes so much fun they turn into adventures. These photographs, (all taken by and copyright Sarah Fisk, 2016) are from a trip in the first category. Sarah and her sweetpea John […]
Over the course of my life I’ve envied several friends for their incredible sense of design. One of them is Jacquie, who lives in California’s Sierra foothills, overlooking the south fork of the Yuba River. Jacquie lives in a two-storey handmade house that she and her ex- built together decades ago. Constructed of wood and […]