Leath Tonino

As a writer, as a human being, as an animal, I like to find a place out there in the big world and just sit, listen, pay attention, forget to pay attention, stand up, walk a circle, sit again, twiddle my thumbs, forget to twiddle my thumbs. I like to return repeatedly over weeks and seasons: at dawn in snow, at dusk in fading light, with bad news and mud cluttering my thoughts, with a couple of beers and a rainbow buzzing in my bloodstream. Stack up enough visits, enough sessions, enough encounters, and, eventually, you arrive at a relationship. That's the goal, a layered and ever-layering sense of textures and patterns, my own and those of the specific locale—what musicians call "variations on a theme." I've enjoyed special times on the East Antarctic Plateau and the playas that spot the Great Basin Desert, but such severe abiotic terrains are an exception to the rule. The rule is mountains, rivers, forests. Green life. Mosses and trembling leaves. So, putting it another way, my ultimate interest as a writer, as a human being, as an animal, is messing around at home, in the backyard.