An unhurried Sunday rolls around the farmhouse walls, and I find myself curled up with another Barbara Kingsolver book, “Prodigal Summer”. I’m mesmerized by a handful of characters scattered across a mountain town, grappling with a panorama of landscape; chestnut blight, grouse extinction, tobacco crops, and the presence of a make-believe enemy, the ever villainized coyote. Some stand on the holy ground of righteous conquerors, subduing the wild as their god commanded, leaving a trail of roundup and blood. Others crusade to protect the land and see themselves in every beat of life on the mountain. It’s a clash of worlds not so different from my own. 

~Joy