Author Archives: janishaag

I no longer dive in, preferring to step lightly down the four steps into the pool, and I don’t do kick turns anymore either, just catch myself at the wall with a hand, push off with a foot, but I … Continue reading →

Canada celebrates its sesquicentennial as a country this year, and everywhere we’ve been over the past couple of weeks on Vancouver Island, the country’s most western outpost, we see Canada pride writ large. Like the illuminated sign (above) on Victoria’s … Continue reading →

Trees remind us how busy and unstable we are, and how ridiculous that is. —Rebecca Solnit Look at this for a moment and soak up the peace of this place: Imagine walking that boardwalk through all that green. This is … Continue reading →

Not the celestial kind. Not the Hollywood kind. The seashore kind: sea stars, which as a kid I called starfish. They’re not fish at all, these rugged invertebrates that live in the cold waters of the Pacific Northwest, including British … Continue reading →

So we’ve been in Canada three days, and not one person here has looked askance at us Americans. As soon as we drove off the ferry in Victoria and waited for a very short time, a smiling Canadian customs agent … Continue reading →

Last year I spent the fourth of July sleeping most of the day and night. I’m not a fireworks kind of girl—never have been. I’m like one of the dogs who scurries for cover when the loud boom-booms start. Firecrackers … Continue reading →

Merced River, Clifford’s 65th birthday, May 21, 2017 Turgid—that’s the word for it— white petticoats of froth atop olive drab river coursing so fast, so hard, it sounds like ocean turned up full blast, without the ebb and flow. Here … Continue reading →

I remember my first library card in its little slipcover, my name emblazoned on it, typed by a manual typewriter: Janis Linn Haag. Did Mrs. Nelson, the children’s librarian at the Roseville Public Library, type it? I don’t know; I … Continue reading →