Category: This BackLit Universe

kay and I were sitting at the dying embers of a camp fire. It was one of those unbelievably quiet, summer nights at Sechelt when the starlit sky so surpassed our powers of expression that a silence of awe seemed appropriately eloquent. The Big Dipper was turning slowly like the…

When people who haven’t experienced the seashore come visiting at our Sechelt place, they are in for surprises. So many creatures that live in salt water are so strangely different from those in fresh water. Beachcombers can soon pick up a bucketful of fascinating treasures. Ramblers with an eye for…

After that last chapter, I hope you don’t imagine that our family is regimented by a lot of ironclad rules. At Sechelt, however, we do have one procedure that is rigidly observed and enforced by us all. After we’ve been using the boat, even though it has been pulled up…

When you are living in a mostly open shelter in the wilderness, uninvited guests such as squirrels, skunks, mice and bees are always dropping in for a visit. We don’t encourage this practice. We see that they all depart as quickly as possible. Some move more slowly than others, however….

Now I wouldn’t want you to think that during my years in British Columbia I did nothing much except summer-place kinds of things. These vacation times, however, were very special to me because then I could be with my family for long stretches of time without being called away to…

Even in high school I had been looking for an overarching conception of the world that would make sense of all my experiences. From time to time I would think that at last I’d found it, but always there was something that didn’t fit quite comfortably into my cosmorama. My…

For two years—but only two—the model of artistic activity provided me with a useful pattern of pegs on which to hang the central tenets of the Christian faith. Gradually however I became dissatisfied with the adequacy of the model. Even artists who are deeply devoted to their arts would probably…

Systems have been around for a long time—since the world began—or before! More ancient than spider webs, more universal than weather, more extensive than our sun and its planets, the intergalactic equivalent of the word “system” is undoubtedly stamped on the hub of the universe. “Primitive” tribes have always had…

Prospector Pete had never struck it rich. He’d spent most of his working life struggling through underbrush, wading up rocky streambeds and fighting off mosquitoes. Oh, he’d found a few deposits, but only enough to earn him grubstakes to keep going. But someday… Up a creek in the back country,…

You won’t learn much about how to knit from a quick glance at a woman with a knitting needle in each hand and a ball of yarn in her lap. You’ll have to follow carefully her every move as she knits, watching the needles and her fingers as they form…