White desk with pink notebook, roses, keyboard, and gold paperclips that Francesca Varela uses to write environmental fiction

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  • The Forest At Night

    229 words

    In the night there is a certain silence; a vacant hum under which everything is neatly muffled, all the sounds buried low amongst the mushrooms and the pill bugs and the white rot that leaks from decaying branches. And then, rising from the stillness comes the owl’s great stutter. The sound hangs there, an entity…

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  • Fall Light

    76 words

    The wind parts the leaves like a hand brushing back a curtain, yellow and diaphanous in the low tide of the sun. There they are, the Ash and cottonwood, the young maple, long bands of light tethered in the furrows of their bark. Their leaves are coaxed loose, and they fallas slow as particles of…

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  • How To Find The Summer Constellations

    770 words

    Finding Lyra – The Lyre Vega is the brightest star in the summer sky, so it’s a great starting point to orient yourself amongst the constellations. After dusk, look straight up and slightly to the east. See that bright, yellowish star? That’s Vega in the constellation Lyra. Lyra is one of the three constellations that…

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  • By The Salmon River

    151 words

    The water pulls in all directions, folding and unfolding, layered with white foam that spreads like spider-webs. It flickers against the cedar trees, painting dappled sunlight over their trunks, bathing them in the same milky quality as light threaded through fog. And on the shore there are fine-haired stalks of cow parsnip, and spiraled bracken…

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Learn more about Francesca Varela's novels