In a cave, human senses are altered. Sight is no longer as important. Sound, smell, touch rise to the surface, relaying information to the body and mind. My experiences in caves have changed me in many ways over the past three years. I have learned from deep silence.

Over the weekend, I attended my first concert in a cave. Joseph Kuipers and the Texas Cellos performed in the Throne Room deep within the Cave Without a Name in Boerne, Texas. The sound of twelve cellos, a cello choir, echoed and reverberated throughout the rock walls. Stunning.

The fog has stories to share here in the Hill Country. Like a mysterious character from a novel, the fog enters a scene and transforms my sense of place, alters my perspective ever so slightly. In the winter and early spring, fog is a frequent visitor. When it appears, I set out to capture it with my camera or sit down with pen and paper. The rest of the day can wait.

This morning along Purgatory Road, a place whose name alone captures my imagination, the fog cast a ghostly aura over the landscape. Leafless trees, like skeletons, jumped into focus around every bend. Vultures descended on the roadside to investigate a deer carcass. A fox darted in front of the car, causing my heart to race.

This summer we won’t be able to make our usual trip to the Maine Coast due to the pandemic. In my forty-seven years, I have only missed one other summer there. ( I was pregnant with our second son.) I wrote about the Maine Coast in a recent essay:

Although I live far away now, this is home. This is where I come from. When I need to remember who I am, this is where I return. This is the place where all of my stories begin.
Instead, I think this will be a good time to gather those stories — to remember those special places when I can’t physically be there, hiking along the forest trails and beaches.

About twelve years ago, I read Doug Tallhamy’s book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants while working on my Texas Master Naturalist certification. That was the beginning of my love for wildlife gardening. At the time, we were living in Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston. I decided to plant a butterfly garden with three tropical milkweed plants (the host for monarch butterflies) and a couple of nectar plants. Honestly, I had done very little gardening up to that point, and I was terrified of killing everything. Fortunately, a friend of mine, who was also a Master Gardener, told me that everyone loses a plant now and then, just learn from it.

All was going well until we went on vacation. When we returned, the milkweed had been devoured. There was nothing left! Apparently three plants were not going to be enough. I asked my husband if he would help expand the garden. Our backyard was small, so I was thinking maybe two or three raised beds. But my husband is the kind of man who believes that if we are going to do something, we should go for it—along the lines of go big, or go home. (Plus, then it is less likely that I will bother him during football season.) Anyway, we put down heavy, dark plastic over several areas of our backyard during the winter in order to kill the St. Augustine grass. Then I immersed myself in Native Texas Plants: Landscaping Region by Region, an invaluable resource written by Sally and Andy Wasowski.

Beneath my home in Texas, a subterranean world exists, one that was carved from limestone over millions of years. It is filled with rivers, spectacular geological features, salamanders, spiders, and fish. This past year I have been drawn to that mysterious world. I have spent time learning about geology and subterranean ecology and exploring local caves. In fact, much of my writing has been inspired by these underground places.

Over spring break, just before the quarantine, my family and I returned to another special place—the southern shore of Kauai. We wanted to spend a day sea kayaking and, while I scrolled through the possibilities on my phone, I stumbled across something that made me stop and stare at the screen: “Visit Makauwahi cave the largest limestone cave in Hawaii.” What was a limestone cave doing on an island made of lava rock? The descriptions that followed were equally intriguing: “ancient archeological site”, “archeological gem”, “extinct species”. I had to go and see it for myself; there was no question.