hailey marie @haileymariehirst - Tumblr Blog

My mother taught me that the longer you keep that howl trapped inside your body, the more wolf you become, but she never showed me how to let the howl out. Womanhood is also this: a violence louder on the inside than it is on the outside. Smiling when truly all you are doing is baring your teeth.

Nikita Gill, This Wild Violence Visits Again

Beaver Lake, September 2025

Imprinted

Somewhere in these woods there is a tree with initials carved into it. I haven’t been able to find it in many years, but I know it was here: scabbed over and scarred, marred by the sharp blade of my father’s pocket knife.

M B 93

H R 94

I wonder if the tree fell when my parents’ marriage did. If a bolt of lightning cleaved it in two like their feuding did to each other. If it burnt to the ground and left the surrounding saplings scorched.

Even if it’s gone, I imagine that the imprint of all our initials is still written in the grove somehow. That if all these aspens are connected at the roots, then we are still scrawled on every sapling that reaches towards the sun.

September '24 - the garden's crescendo

August 16-18, 2024 family camping in the rainy rockies, hiking through enormous cedars, scratching bug bites and wringing out wet socks.

8.24

I got chills tonight, standing in my garden.

It was the sound of wind combing through green strands of corn—that gentle rustle of enormous leaves brushing against each other in the swelling darkness of night, stalks standing shoulder to shoulder but only just touching—that made me shiver.

If you’ve ever lived somewhere that’s reigned by the summer call of a rainbird clicking away as the sun droops towards a horizon, you know this sound.

You know how corn grows like giant blades of grass, like an enormous version of the soft lawn where you laid a blanket down to kiss while your parents watched the news on tv inside, blind to the world outside the curtained windows.

You also know how quickly those sharp leaves can cut.

You remember how your wrists stung when you ran through rows in flip flops caked with mud, while a farmer yelled out his back door that you better get lost as he watched the shape of you jump and cling to broader shoulders in a soft tee shirt. You know that all he saw was a piggyback silhouette against distant street lights while you felt laughter bursting from your throat.

You know that all those sensations feel nestled together now. Still, it surprises you how easily that one gentle rustle of wind moved you back in time.

You stand a moment, swat a mosquito away and watch the last light of sunset swirling in ripples of the backyard pool you always wanted. But still, you remember how it was then. You remember the tender yearning of youth. You remember how it felt to grow together there, your swaying arms falling close enough to find each other in the darkness.

7.18.24

I love summer nights and two-year-olds, and pulling over on the long drive home to brush their teeth and happening upon places like this—the moon over the lake and the perfect dock just there waiting.

This lake feels a lot like something I wrote once in the margins of a school notebook, where the wind is warm and the crickets sing; like this moment was a long forgotten dream somehow stumbled upon.

Had we left when we planned to, or been travelling without the kids, we wouldn’t have gone on this route or made this stop. But we did. And I keep coming back to this particular photo of all the ones I took there.

There’s something about the slope of her tiny shoulders and the dirty foot caught in motion as she runs with a daisy in her hand, that warmth of the southern horizon, and the possibility that the dock holds for her ahead. It all makes me feel so much.

The truth is, I’ve been struggling to truly experience Joy with a capital J while the world burns around us, but this brief magical burst of it snuck up on me and I don’t want to forget it.

Happiness Music Fest ‘24

My river city in its sun-baked glory, cooling with the hush of dusk along the river.

I forgot about the heat of this valley—how heavy it presses on midsummer afternoons. And then: the relief of that flowing water, the shade of a cottonwood, the drip of melting ice cream.

Stanley summer, part 4

A sunrise hike, cocktails in jars for a lake picnic barbecue, yarrow and sandy feet, and learning how to be the openers of the gate.

Stanley summer, part 3

Stanley summer, part 2: A day at the lake

Stanley summer, part 1

Home, with her, watering plants with borrowed shoes put on the wrong feet. Life is sweet.

Time

I hear my watch ticking on the shelf and I'm back at my grandparents' house on that slender country road. There are snapdragons growing in the gravel driveway there, and inside, past the sleeping cats in the garage, clocks are always ticking a steady beat through the hallways. Over the carpet and into each room, a steady subtle click falls into the quiet carpet as the smell of the morning's bacon fades to the summer scents of alfalfa and cow manure drifting in through open windows.

I wonder: how many times have I been there? And then — how many times will I get to go back?

This place lives so wholly unchanged in my mind that it feels permanent. I can close my eyes and be there in an instant, tucked under fresh sheets and a flowered quilt. But I know now that I've grown up and moved across a border to another city far from the cows, there's a finite number of times I might park in that driveway again and pour a glass of orange juice in the spotless kitchen. After all, we're all just passing through.

9.27.23

If this day in Boise was a poem, it would be

pots of flowers on cracked pavement

ketchup stains on a picnic table

tater tots and a carton of milk

family photos on the wall

and soft crumpled quilts for blanket forts and a park lawn dinner.

The day is healing me, expanding me, orienting me in a lineage that diverges and unites, plotting me inside a community, reminding me of the best parts of my childhood and days with grandparents that carry no blame but hold immense peaceful presence. There is comfort and connection here on the shaded sidewalks. There is time to stop and lay down for a while.

September song / Tofino, Vancouver Island

The last golden days that feel like summertime with cousins at the beach, morning fog and drizzling rain, fancy shoes and dancing through the dark of night.

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