Rivers From The Air

Mary Elaine Odden
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:45:35 PDT

This is a collection of creative non-fiction essays. They are triggered by events and persons from my life's experiences, but I hope they shed light on experiences I share with others: coming of age, mothering, probing relationships with nature, understanding and misunderstanding strangers and friends. The Anglo-Saxons believed that to see something was to cast a shaping light upon it, rather than passively accepting what "is." I like that, and it follows, for me, that writing is an active kind of seeing that casts itself in stone here and there like children playing "statues." The whole thing is moving and changing, of course, and can't really be seen. But trying to see it is my idea of what we are here for.