Lisa Laughlin

Still moments like a foggy morning in the country feel like a knife’s edge. Sometimes the fog stays for days, and that is a long time to feel swallowed.

The fact that we planted a garden in the fire strip said a lot about our relationship to the threat of fire: it was the new normal in the west.

I feel the ever-present tension of loving and leaving places, of trying to straddle two worlds: nature and concrete, republicans and democrats, agriculture and academic culture.

I sip the drink, and sit with him, and say, "Over my dead body will AI write my grandmother’s obituary."