I grew up in northern Minnesota on 40 acres of wooded land 20 miles from the nearest town, and so the wilderness was home. It was not an unsafe place. I had that advantage. But there are so many representations of the wilderness being dangerous. You know, depictions of wild animals attacking people. It's like, "No, we kill those animals in far greater numbers than they kill us."

I am an advocate of honesty and openness, and I think deceit is a dangerous seed to plant and let grow in relationships.

My mother's last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love.

That's how we find our way outward and onward. By holding onto beauty hardest. By cradling it like the cure that it is. By making it realer than anything ever was. The rest is just monsters and ghosts.

Can I convince the person about whom I'm crazy to be crazy about me? The short answer is no. The long answer is no.

How wild it was, to let it be.

Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear in our lives.