Morning Light: Wildflowers, Night Skies, and Other Ordinary Joys of Oregon Country Life

by Barbara Drake

Overview

In stories about subjects ranging from training herding dogs, constructing a good well, and neighbors who are careless in their target shooting, essayist Barbara Drake ruminates on rural life

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780870717604
Publisher:	Oregon State University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2014
Edition description:	1
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Barbara Drake was born in Kansas in 1939, moved to Oregon in 1941, grew up in Coos Bay on the Oregon Coast, and earned BA and MFA degrees from the University of Oregon. After teaching at Michigan State University, she returned to Oregon in 1983 to develop the new creative writing major at Linfield College, where she taught until retiring as Professor Emerita in 2007. Drake has published poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and a widely used college textbook, Writing Poetry. Her book Peace at Heart: An Oregon Country Life was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999.

Table of Contents

Preface 1

The Visitor 10

The Water Question 13

The Dowsers 22

The Well 31

Living with Oak Trees 39

Siena 51

The Dog Diaries 53

Who Goes There? 81

Coyote Wars 86

A Tale of Two Roosters 92

The Old Sheep 98

The Downfall of Boss Rooster 103

The Proof Is in the Blackberry Pudding 107

Equinox Soup 112

Bonfire 114

Grandmother Trees 120

Nature and Nurture 122

Poison Oak 130

Country Business 139

Shots 149

At Home in the Universe 154

Cats That Stray and Cats That Stay 159

Grace 166

Everybody Talks About the Weather 175

Epilogue: A City Excursion and Some Country Life Lessons 185

Acknowledgments 191

Editorial Reviews

"To see the world realistically but without grimness, to praise Nature without sentimentality, to enjoy living without recourse to illusion, to be aware of the sacred without needing churchly sanction, and to meet hard times with humor and good humor—that takes a mensch. Barbara Drake is a mensch, and Morning Light is a happy proof of that." —Ursula LeGuin


"Oh my gosh, I love this book so much! Barbara’s beguiling voice, her eye for the intimate beauty of country life, her poignant thoughts about the aging of people, of animals, of places—every part of Morning Light gave me such great pleasure. I’ll be pressing this book into everyone's hands for years to come." —Molly Gloss, author of Falling From Horses and Jump-Off Creek

As a genius nature writer, Henry David Thoreau made good use of his New England backyard and didn’t choose to explore the wild frontier that beckoned to the west in the mid- 1800s. He loved the way nature ceaselessly encroached on civilization: “There is something indescribably inspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of new towns.”

Barbara Drake can relate. In nearly thirty years of living on a small farm in rural Oregon with a husband and border collies, she has trained her eye on the natural world sharing her beloved place. The lichens and mosses thriving on the forest floor of their large groves of white oak, for example, or the quick work a couple coyotes can make of sheep or chickens, the anxiety accompanying drilling a well for water, her satisfaction in recognizing stars and constellations in a brilliant night sky—this is the stuff of Drake’s life. Her many years teaching university-level English brings a sprinkling of Tennyson, Leopold, Eliot, and others, lending a commiserative voice to her warm, restrained, marvelously grown up way with words.

--Foreword Reviews
 

From the Publisher