Who I am.

I write about the landscape of grief, nature, and the wisdom of fools. The author of four books, my essays, poems, and reviews have been published in over 50 journals, including in the Huffington Post and Colorado Review. I’ve won the River Teeth Nonfiction Book Award, the Chautauqua and Literal Latte’s essay prizes, and my work has been nominated for four Pushcart Prizes and named a notable by Best American Essays. My account of hiking in Yosemite to deal with my wife’s death, Mountains of Light, was published by the University of Nebraska Press. http://www.markliebenow.com.

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Death of a Hawk

The Great Black Hawk saga.

A short essay of mine about a rare hawk was published by Entropy Magazine today. It’s also about curiosity, death, grief, compassion, wilderness, healing, kinship with nature, ecological warning, hope, and what it means to live in community with the earth. 

I worry about what I would have done if I hadn’t had nature in the months after Evelyn’s death. I often went to Yosemite to hike alone in the wilderness because I needed to figure out how I was going to survive grief. The long days on the trail gave me the time and the solitude I needed to listen for what I could not hear at home. The beauty and awe of natural world reminded me that I was not alone, and that I always had a place where I could go and renew my spirit.


(Yes, that's an owl in the photo because I don't have my own photo of a hawk, but the journal has a good one.)

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