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

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  • All the Waters I Have Seen – Red Rock Lake

    1–2 minutes

    Memory. Hill and wind unfold at once. Sagebrush. Lodge pole pine. Pronghorn antelope. They run as ghosts at dawn, blurred like distant rain, the echo of clouds that shift over the horizon as though they have deflated, are deflating, ghost-clouds reaching some thicket, some lakeshore, the backs of deer, a rain-world intangible here by the

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  • All the Waters I Have Seen – Sugarhouse Pond

    1–2 minutes

    This is the gathering place. Down below, a blanket, a fur like the unhealthy coating on a tongue. Amorphous—the emerald of rotting things. No one would dare wade through these waters. From a distance there is nothing beneath. Under the glint of blue-sprawled sky, it is only water. The geese find it clean enough. They

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  • All the Waters I Have Seen – Red Butte Garden

    1–2 minutes

    We are walking in the sun, along the blue-green edges. I stop to hear the grass. Sedges and cattails speak a particular language, rushes another. Grasses are perhaps the most clear, but only when they are tall and seeded with knots of wisp. We listen for some time. We hear a sliding, an endless tunnel,

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  • All the Waters I Have Seen: A Collection

    1–2 minutes

    These prose-poems, narratives, and photographs focus on the various waters I’ve come upon in the last several months. Whether lake or river, at home or traveling, water proved a captivating companion, one that brings to mind sustainability, human experience, and our place among the greater world. Water can serve as the scenic focal point of

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Learn more about Francesca Varela's novels