The World in Their Hands

Our kindling crackles and snaps as it begins to catch fire, and Zephyr and I settle back in low chairs to wait for coals to form. As my gaze drifts over water dotted with bobbing white eider ducks, a dark animal ripples along the rock that edges our bluff. It has the sinuous body and arched back of a weasel, but is as thick and long as my arm. When it reaches the beach side of our campsite, it pauses and turns its triangular head in our direction, fixing us in its deep brown stare. It is a mink, an animal that is supposed to be nocturnal, so seeing it here before us, in the morning mist, is a rare gift.
“Zephyr, look,” I whisper to my son who has been focused on poking the fire with a stick.
He turns his head, leaps up, and runs toward the rocks. The mink pours its body over the lip of stone and vanishes. My boy stands on the fin of rock, where the mink had sat a moment earlier, looking forlornly out over the edge of the world.

While there is immense satisfaction in having a piece of writing published online, with the instant-gratification of being able to share it right away with everyone, there is even greater satisfaction at holding the heft of a thick journal that has your name right there on the table of contents. And yesterday I enjoyed the experience of pulling one such journal out of my mailbox. The essay, "The World in their Hands," is one of those which took a long, circuitous journey to becoming what it was today, beginning as a short little two-pager in my zine and going through many iterations, submissions, rejections, revisions, before The Maine Review accepted and then published it. I'm quite excited and grateful and am looking forward to a little quiet time in which to read all of the other pieces in the issue.

P.S. Issue 3.2 is not up on the Maine Review's website at the time of this writing.