Orion

I HAVE PLACED my hand upon a sheep, but that’s about it. By this I mean I have not known a sheep, have not tended to one in any formal capacity. I’ve not, for instance, drawn milk from one or scraped the rot from one’s foot. I’ve not cradled a newborn lamb in my elbow. I’ve only watched from a distance as a flock was steered by a dog across some verdant hills in the Himalayas, and I was never asked to shear any of those, or any others. I have also not visited northern Europe on the eve of the solstice, when it’s said that sheep are enchanted with the ability to speak human language. In some accounts, they spend the evening singing hymns or they confer about the…

RAIN WAS FALLING when I carried my two-year-old daughter and her tricycle home from the park. Her legs, galoshes swinging, straddled my pregnant belly. One small rubber tricycle wheel bumped against my shin with each step; the other spun on its axle. At that moment, I didn’t know about atmospheric rivers, about the flooding that would devastate Whatcom County. I only knew that it was raining, and my little fox wasn’t feeling well. My arms were wrapped around her orange raincoat; its tail flicked back and forth. She rested her head on my shoulder, pressed a wet fox ear against my cheek. Once inside, I shuffled us out of our rain gear and over to the sofa, where I hoped we both might nap. I could hear the rain striking the…

A TURQUOISE-COLORED plastic tube cap without the tube. The scratched barrel section of a pen. A small shell, like a tiny pearly ear. These were the first gifts crows brought to my neighbor. She’s been feeding them for months. Now, they fly in and drop objects right outside her back door, which she opens every morning to toss out their breakfast—handfuls of unshelled peanuts. Our house sits right up the hill. From my perch, I look down on her backyard and watch the crows line up along her back fence. They arrive early and stare at her house, willing her to wake up. One crow, her favorite, looks straight at her through her kitchen window when she’s at the sink washing the dishes. Caps, pen parts, seashells for peanuts. A gift exchange. Maybe, too,…

"THREE… TWO…. ONE!" Tara yelled, and on “Go!” I flung my sixty-year-old body into the air—bare arms raised, palms to the sky, bare legs kicked up behind me, off the Zodiac’s platform. I felt the little ruffles of my bathing suit flutter in the twenty-milean-hour wind and watched the deep green water of Carlsbad Fjord rush toward me. It took my breath away, an overused expression, was entirely apt when, on that thirty-six-degree day, the thirty-four-degree water closed darkly over my head. It seemed at first I would never breathe again, but then I was clawing back toward the surface, back to the boat, as alive in every cell as I had ever been. That morning, we had taken the Zodiacs out for a close-up look at the face of the…

IN MY CHILDHOOD bedroom, a small stained-glass image hung in the windowpane: a howling gray wolf, head tipped upward at an indigo night sky. Sunlight reflected through the colored glass mosaic framed in a brass oval. I stared into it often; it felt like a portal to another world. The fairy tale many are taught about the wolf—ghastly, leering, cartoonish—did not match my own perception. I fell asleep to wolf’s close cousin coyote howling outside my window. Wolf did not feel like Other. Wolf felt like Kin. I knew the story of Little Red Riding Hood and struggled to reconcile with it—a narrative that hails from Europe and can be seen as an allegory for rape, for nature as evil. The girl finds danger, personified by the wolf in the forest.…