nature – Slanted Spines

Everything from Nothing

August 14, 2020April 16, 2021Posted in StoriesTagged crew tive writing, depression, fiction, gardening, healing, literary fiction, nature, short story, trauma, writingLeave a comment

A short fiction story by Slanted Spines

First, there was the skull.

I was young and in a rut, so I felt most at home among the dirt. When my hands were in the soil, I felt meaningful. I was worms; as significant as the spider crawling over my cell phone in the grass. The existential dread did not bother me while my knees pressed into the ground, my skin softening around rocks’ hard ridges. My sweat was sweetened with the mint leaves, and if the squash were growing, I must be, too, right?

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Life of Trees: A Book Review of The Overstory

June 12, 2020January 15, 2022Posted in Blog, Fiction ReviewsTagged activism, book, book review, conservation, earth, forest, forests, nature, Richard powers, the Overstory, tree, trees, writingLeave a comment

Have you ever read a book that speaks directly to the essence of your soul? A book that rips you apart and leaves you wondering how you can continue on with your life in the same way?

The Overstory by Richard Powers did that to me. Maybe it was the peculiar timing of the book in my life, or maybe it was destined, but this novel both wounded and healed me, and perhaps redirected my entire future.

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The Travel Sketches of Ned Theodore Ed

April 3, 2020Posted in Tales of N.T. EdTagged adventure, creative writing, drawing, forest, hike, hiking, map, mountain, nature, pine trees, short story, skeleton, Story, trail, travel, travel sketch, traveling, waterfall, woods, writing1 Comment

Writers are writers out of spiritual necessity. Like a plant needs to be watered, writers’ musings must be written. Beyond that, some writers lavish in the limelight, while others prefer their privacy; some write rapidly and publish proudly, while others create with careful ease and seldom share stories.

It is the work of those so sensitive and raw maternal for their writing that intrigues me, personally, and so when my most endearing client, Ned Theodore Ed, presented me a copy of his travel sketches for publication, I felt more excited as a fan of his writing than as a publisher of a new business deal. His deliberate and graceful—yet never timid or dull—language is like a steady stream, fluid and fruitful. It’s as though rather than writing of the water at the water’s edge, he is one with the water himself.

Now with a tremendous honor, I would like to present to you the Travel Sketches of Ned Theodore Ed, a gentle soul who is my esteemed client and a writer whose work I absolutely admonish. This silent, poetic skeleton, ironically, is the voice of humanity’s spirit and what it means to have a soul among nature.

B.C. Spines
Editor and Publisher

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Watercolor Words: Three Poems

October 18, 2019April 16, 2021Posted in PoemsTagged nature, peace, poem, Poems, poetry, pond, river

Introduction

The following three poems have been written with profound care. They are expressions of my perspective, paintings of my experiences; they are the soft beating of my heart, offered to you in a brief recording. I find myself most poetically stirred when I venture into the woods, to the shoulder of the creek, planting myself in the dirt and facing the sun for strength and touching the water for love. I hope you enjoy my watercolor words, and namaste to all.

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Hiking with B

May 10, 2019May 11, 2019Posted in BlogTagged Blog, hike, hiking, hocking hills, love, Mindful Living, nature, ohio, summerLeave a comment

When I walk the dirty trails that wander through the woods, I am walking the muddy Pennsylvanian paths my eight-year-old feet traversed, I am walking the journey of our ancestors as they crossed land to forge this existence, and I am walking closely to the sacred earth that we will bestow to our posterity. When I walk among the trees, deep into the heart of nature, and the white noise of industrial society is blocked out by the trunks and the branches, something special happens.

For my significant other’s birthday, and because I was craving a hike day, we took a day trip to a hiking spot about three hours away from our home. Continue reading “Hiking with B” →

Lessons from Trees

November 2, 2018April 19, 2019Posted in PoemsTagged autumn, fall, nature, Poems, poetry, trees3 Comments

lessons from trees: i.

I spend a lot of time thinking about trees.
You took my hand once and cried,
“Look, there are roots beneath your skin!”
mapping the chutes of my veins with
your fingertips that were callused like bark.
“Or branches,” I said, Continue reading “Lessons from Trees” →

N. T. Ed’s Pines

October 12, 2018January 22, 2019Posted in Tales of N.T. EdTagged childrens story, nature, short story, skeleton, Story10 Comments

You’ve probably never heard of Ned Theodore Ed, the mild-mannered skeleton who tended acres of pines and wrote out everything he wanted to say. No, this fine individual, our protagonist for the hour, never had a voice, whisper, or hum. He lived once upon a world much like ours – or maybe it was ours, but I can’t remember, for I have many worlds to keep track of – but we visit him now to hear about the way he came to take care of the pines.

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