Monday Miscellany: Little pockets of whimsy and mirth

Notes from September 29 - October 5

Oct 06, 2025

Autumn is really happening around here! I haven’t been able to decorate the mantel yet because of a chimney leak that we’re waiting to get fixed,1 but I did go to the pumpkin patch with some friends over the weekend. And I added some cinnamon and nutmeg to my coffee this morning, which I drank out on the front porch in the delicious sub-70-degree temperatures. The world is still on fire in many ways, but on the level of seasonal enjoyment, you could say I’m thriving.

Read this week

Have you ever encountered a book that feels like it was written specifically for you? That was my experience with Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl, a mashup of nature writing, memoir, family history, and observations about being human.

Renkl is very up front with the fact that she is not a trained scientist or ecological expert, simply an enthusiastic observer. But her eye is keen, and she has a knack for finding the perfect words to describe the objects of her reverent attention. The way she sits still and absorbs the details of what’s happening around her in the natural world reminds me a lot of Jenny Odell and her book How to Do Nothing.

The miracle isn’t happening in the sky at all. It’s happening in the damp weeds of an ordinary backyard, among last year’s moldering leaves and the fragrant soil turned up by moles. (17)

Through Renkl’s documentation of her environment, we also get an idea of what she values, where her thoughts dwell in her current season of life, and who she is as a person. So many times while reading, I pressed a hand to my chest and marveled, yes, Margaret, me too.

My favorite season is spring—until fall arrives, and then my favorite season is fall: the seasons of change, the seasons that tell me to wake up, to remember that every passing moment of every careening day is always the last moment, always the very last time, always the only instant I will ever take that precise breath or watch that exact cloud scud across that particular blue of the sky. (116)

Or see the sun disappear in that particular blaze of fiery orange and pink

And the way she sprinkles in stories of the family she came from! There are remembrances from Renkl’s own childhood, tales reported second-hand from before her time, a few italicized chapters as told by her grandmother, and recent memories of her parents as they began to age and experience illness. Though we’re only given fragments at a time, the picture she builds by the end feels holistic. And within those short pieces, Renkl evokes a sea of emotion with an economy of words—these few sentences, for example, made me sob (content warning for miscarriage):

My grandmother’s third child was born too soon, so early he had no name. She never told anyone else about him, but she told me, years later, when I could not stop weeping after my own miscarriages: “I had him in the chamber pot on the floor next to the bed,” she said. “Nights I cried for a long time after that. Days I went to work like always.” (19)

Somehow, in Late Migrations’ mere 231 pages, Renkl braids together the individual strands of her specific lived experience—her family’s past, the patterns she observes in the world outside her window, her own process of self-awareness and understanding that develops as she ages, her parents’ diagnoses toward the end of their lives—to say something more broadly about how be a human in the bittersweet space between beauty and loss.

Every day the world is teaching me what I need to know to be in the world.
In the stir of too much motion:
Hold still.
Be quiet.
Listen.

Renkl’s work is very much in conversation with writers like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Aimee Nehukumatathil, Heather Havrilesky, Sabrina Imbler, and Ben Masters, all of whose books I also recommend! If you’re a lover of nature who appreciates well-crafted sentences about What it All Means, look no further. This is the perfect time of year for Late Migrations or any of those linked pairing picks.

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Anticipation station

It feels like it’s been a while since I went to a book club meeting, so I’m extra excited to discuss The Safekeep2 on Wednesday with friends and Flesh next week at NCMA Winston-Salem.
Fall is my favorite time of year for many reasons, but one of them is our local Carolina Classic Fair. Fried food, giant pumpkins, art made out of gourds, tiny pigs with punny names sprinting around a race track, a whole barn full of fancy chickens, the ferris wheel, the swings, the smells… it’s the best, and I’m going on Thursday!
Jordan and I saw Hovvdy play at Cat’s Cradle back in March, but we just found out they’ll be in Asheville next week, so we’re going again with his brother this time.
With the end of the year rapidly approaching, I might have gone a little overboard requesting 2025 titles from the library—but I can’t help it, I want to see what the hype is about before the calendar turns over and there’s a whole new crop of books to get excited about. Here’s what I have on loan right now (we won’t talk about how many holds are still pending or yet to be placed):
- Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
- Bad Nature by Ariel Courage
- Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
- Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee
- The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

Is it a true Monday Miscellany if Louise and Phoebe don’t make an appearance?

Haiku round-up

Haiku is a poetic form that originated in Japan, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern. At the beginning of 2024, I started writing one every day, and while traditional examples include thematic reference to the seasons, mine tend to be a bit more all over the place. Here are this week’s efforts—enjoy!