Author: Ellie Harty

I fell in love with Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams when it first came out in 1986. At that point, preferring fiction, I had not read much “nature writing”, but I found myself enthralled by the majesty of the Arctic scenery which he managed to describe both vividly and lyrically, and by his descriptions of living…
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From the book Braiding Sweetgrass:  “Sweetgrass is best planted not by seed, but by putting roots directly in the ground. Thus the plant is passed from hand to earth to hand across years and generations. Its favored habitat is sunny, well-watered meadows. It thrives along disturbed edges.” I had been thinking of Lent, of ashes,…
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“I will commit an act of willful erasure, whittling each document and letter until only the lives of women remain…I’ll devote myself to luring female lives back from male texts. Such an experiment in reversal will reveal, I hope, the concealed lives of women, present, always, but coded in invisible ink.” The “I” above is…
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Ride the elevator to the top of the Empire State building at night; have your binoculars with you, and while others are doing the traditional looking down and out at all the human-made wonders and artificially lighted world, look up instead. Set your binocular focus to infinity if you want the best view, but even…
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I am sure she will be quoted often these days, Amanda Gorman, our twenty-two year old Youth Poet Laureate. I am overjoyed that she is so young and undaunted and inspired and inspiring. I shudder to think about a world in which gifts like hers might have been missed—or missing.  I believe we needed to…
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I wasn’t even looking for a poem.  In this week of new beginnings and promises, of cautious hope and restrained joy, I just wanted to memorialize a turning.  In this new year, during this week of new beginnings, we will have two new world leaders, one, blessedly, a mixed race woman, beginning to take on…
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Actually, it may be fewer than that today, more like six miles. I’m speaking of the distance to Bethlehem from Jerusalem. Even I could walk that distance if need be. And I think the time has come. In fact, it came a long time ago and has now become urgent.  When I visited pre-pandemic Bethlehem…
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The symbolism is just too hard to resist.  My city center parish church was definitely adorned for Christmas —with an interlaced network of harsh, metallic interior scaffolding. On Christmas Eve the priest and the few intrepid parishioners who attended in person had to tuck themselves around and duck under galvanized bars that twisted throughout the…
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I believe our Christmas joy this year is a silent one. It is more profound but less wondrous, more extensive but less exuberant, more calming but less soothing. It has a disquieting sadness at its core. Bells don’t jingle and ring as much as toll. Yet, with all its silence, we still recognize it as…
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The poet, Christian Wiman, asks this question, and it is such an excellent one, especially now, especially at this time of year, and especially if we take it to a much higher sphere than just material desires.  When we can’t stop wanting, what we want is often really so painfully obvious: suffering, heartache, despair and…
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