The Mystery of Mary Oliver

Happy Autumn, Everyone!

It’s a Mary Oliver—Outer Cape kind of day.

No, we have not left Jackson yet. Our latest epic road trip does not start until New Year’s Day. But the autumnal equinox has me wrapped in fleece, eating pumpkin spice waffles with wild Maine blueberries and pure New Hampshire maple syrup while reading some of Mary Oliver’s prose and poetry.

It never hit right that the Provincetown poet would up and move from her open beaches and tangled beech forests as she did at the end of her life. Why, it’s like picturing Thoreau living away from Concord or Emily Dickinson outside of Amherst! Unthinkable—at least to this romantic.

The mystery haunted me, gnawed at me, and piqued the instincts of the former newspaperman in me.