Erin Bow

I write books and geek out about stuff.

[erinbowbooks]

I have a few hours in Portland this afternoon so naturally I went to Powells Books, where I have never been. Look what I found! Staff pick SIMON SORT OF SAYS on an end cap display! it’s like going to the Vatican and discovering that they made you a saint!

[erinbowbooks]

Sometimes my #sketchbookjournal is about things that are on my mind rather than things that are in front of my eyes. It It’s not as satisfying as drawing from life, but it still helps me mark and keep what’s interesting about this day.

Here: bearded vulture nests full of 700 years of human artifact; a fragment of the Iliad in an Egyptian grave; the technology that can track how long again of sand or a fragment of pottery has been in darkness.

Is there a grave goods poem in all of this? Is it also goose-bumping to know the sand grain tech can be used for dosimetry, that is, to track your own personal radiation exposure?

[erinbowbooks]

Clamming!

To go clamming, you borrow wellies from the residency, cross the road, walk down a forest path for five minutes, and reach the bay. There are maybe 100 m of tidal flat. Walk out onto this. Some of it is sucking mud, and you will sink a boot deep and think about the Great Grimpan Mire from Hound of the Baskervilles. Some is Sandy. Some covered uwith 2 inches of water and streaming with eel grass, scuttling, crabs, spiral shells, Nematodes.

to collect clams, crouch, and dig your hands into the silty muck until you feel something hard. The rake is for amateurs.

[erinbowbooks]

One of the first things I noticed about the landscape here was moss on broken lower limbs if the pine trees, and the pale bright hanging curtains of a lichen called witch’s hair moss.

There are a dozen kinds of ferns, too. For weeks I have been watching them slowly uncurl.

I find myself looking up the evolutionary ages of things. Moss: maybe 400 million years. Ferns: perhaps 430 million.

These ancient things seem to slow me.

I had a set of edits for Butter and Owl book two to finish here, and I did, but rather than charging into book three, I have been fern uncurling, inching my way into something brand new.

[saucefunk]

launch day

[erinbowbooks]

We were all doing dishes last night when someone spotted bears by the pond at the bottom of the slope. A GIANT one and a smaller one. We all went out into the rain to watch from the top of the slope. The giant one even stopped to rear up and scratch her back on a tree trunk.

For hours I kept grinning and exclaiming “bears!”

[clevermanka]

Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts

Crossbow bolts, sandals, slingshots, and more.

Among the centuries’ worth of eggshells, prey remains, and natural nesting material, researchers identified 226 objects that were either made or altered by humans. These included weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot.  Using carbon dating, the team determined that the items also had a huge age range. For example, a shoe made from twigs and grass is around 675-years-old, while a basket is estimated to have been woven about 150 years ago. Beyond the manufactured relics of our species’ past, archaeologists also catalogued 2,117 bones, 86 hooves, and 43 eggshells. They even located 11 hair remains among the nesting layers. More analysis will provide a look into the surrounding area’s past environment, as well as its various flora and fauna.

[erinbowbooks]

The Horses Edwin Muir

Barely a twelvemonth after The seven days war that put the world to sleep, Late in the evening the strange horses came. By then we had made our covenant with silence, But in the first few days it was so still We listened to our breathing and were afraid. On the second day The radios failed; we turned the knobs, no answer. On the third day a warship passed us, headed north, Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter Nothing. The radios dumb; And still they stand in corners of our kitchens, And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms All over the world. But now if they should speak, If on a sudden they should speak again, If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak, We would not listen, we would not let it bring That old bad world that swallowed its children quick At one great gulp. We would not have it again. Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep, Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow, And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness. The tractors lie about our fields; at evening They look like dank sea-monsters couched and waiting. We leave them where they are and let them rust: “They’ll molder away and be like other loam.” We make our oxen drag our rusty ploughs, Long laid aside. We have gone back Far past our fathers’ land. ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍ ‍And then, that evening Late in the summer the strange horses came. We heard a distant tapping on the road, A deepening drumming; it stopped, went on again And at the corner changed to hollow thunder. We saw the heads Like a wild wave charging and were afraid. We had sold our horses in our fathers’ time To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield Or illustrations in a book of knights. We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited, Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent By an old command to find our whereabouts And that long-lost archaic companionship. In the first moment we had never a thought That they were creatures to be owned and used. Among them were some half a dozen colts Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world, Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden. Since then they have pulled our ploughs and borne our loads, But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts. Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.

First published in 1956, in the Muir's book One Foot in Eden 

[erinbowbooks]

My residency at Willapa Bay includes a lot of birds. The residency has a Haikubox that records and identifies birds by their song — 50 or 75 species a day.

I have seen a half dozen kinds of birds that are new to me, including those I draw here. Not that they are rare; rather that I am far from home. Their small wildness makes me feel the bigness of the world.

[erinbowbooks]

Borrowed the residency’s old Toyota and drove into town. A block past the pharmacy and the bar and the weird grocery store (Jack’s) — the ocean. A small river spreads thin and crosses a huge flat stretch of sand. Crab shells, brown pelicans, cold sharp wind and a roar of waves.

[erinbowbooks]

Sketchbook diary: gifts Yesterday at dinner the UPS truck pulled up. It had a box for me, from M — the earrings I didn’t get to pick up from her after cancelled Chicago trip, a d a set of Caran D’Arch colors she brought back from Geneva. I used them to draw this gift of time and space.

[nevver]

Liminal Bingo, Pat Perry

[ekbelsher]

Tiffany Aching and You, the white kitten she gives Granny Weatherwax in Wintersmith. I loved this series so much 🖤 GNU Terry Pratchett

[erinbowbooks]

#sketchbookdiary with some home-based stuff redacted. To get my head into the space where I am, I walked down to #WillapaBay bay and sat a long time by the water. I sketched. Better.

[erinbowbooks]

My writing cabin has a tiny visitor who has been here almost every day. Bird is hummingbird-sized and acrobatic, and comes and lands at the windows all as if to say hello. I am not sure what it is but it cheers me.

[erinbowbooks]

#sketchbookdiary May 2: I tried raw oysters for the first time. I wasn’t expecting to like them. They look like snot with organs. But, a secret for an interesting life is to say yes to weird stuff that lands in your lap, like eating the oysters that were harvested literally across the street.

Reader, I loved them. They taste like eating the sea.

[todayintokyo]

Carp banners in Yamaguchi, Japan, by ZEKKEI Japan