Steve Edwards

@the-big-quiet

Writer, teacher, friend. Words in: The Sun, Orion, The Yale Review, Literary Hub, & more. Author of BREAKING INTO THE BACKCOUNTRY, a memoir, and the essay collection RARE GOOD: ESSAYS ON ART, AUTISM, AND ASTONISHMENT.

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Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 8d

August has entered the chat.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 12d

A glimpse of Vermont today.

Big white clouds over low mountains and a two-lane Vermont highway

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 14d

All the parts of me that can’t speak because to do so would be a kind of diminishment. Here they are, glimpsed.

A yellow-gray fallen leaf dotted with raindrops.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 14d

Drove through the Green Mountains yesterday during a violent thunderstorm. Needed something a little stronger than this afterward.

A sign reading pre maple syrup sold here

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 18d

Culver’s root in the gloaming.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 18d

Not a great photo but a pair of cardinals just feasted on the hornworms that ate my tomatoes.

Blurry image of cardinals eating a caterpillar

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 19d

It was a hungry caterpillar! Six actually. The deer was innocent. 🤣

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 19d

I owe the deer an apology. Doesn’t this tomato hornworm look like a delicious snack for any of the birds of my backyard?

A gorgeous green tomato hornworm caterpillar ravaging my tomato plant.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 20d

This one too. 🤣

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 25d

We are going to print this week! www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...

Image of a book cover titled Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment. The cover image is a tangled nest against a black background.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 27d

I don’t get a lot of texts from my 81-year-old dad, but he wanted me to know he was steadily making progress staining his deck. Sure. he’s recovering from cancer surgery a year ago & the AQI is in the danger zone…but a deck won’t stain itself, Steven.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 28d

A flag at half-staff because we are killing life on Earth.

A flag at half-staff against a sky filled with smoke

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· 28d

World on fire, climate change skies.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jul 10

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the Wordle he didn’t exist.

Screenshot of a Wordle puzzle saying that the word “Satan” is not on the word list.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jul 8

Visitation.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jul 6

Somewhere in this map of the Rogue River sits a little cabin—& I know where it is.

Sky view of the Rogue River west of Grants Pass

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jul 2

25 years ago I spent half a year alone in a backcountry cabin in southern Oregon. In summer, the temperature got up to 112 some days. Heat rippling off rock. Stillness. Panting lizards. Vultures circling high over it all. Not a blessed thought in my head. The peace of those days rippling still.

The Rogue River canyon. A glassy green river retreating into rugged mountains.

A man with a hiking stick and backpack walking through a dry meadow.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jul 1

So grateful to @blairbraverman.bsky.social for her generous blurb about my new book. To be read so well is a true gift. Pre-order link here: www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/978...

“Rare Good is about the natures in which we live—our environments, our bodies, our senses, our minds—and the sunlight and storms that pass through them. It feels like having a beautiful, long conversation with an unusually wise and observant friend.”—Blair Braverman, best-selling author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube

Book cover image: a tangled nest against a black background. The title: Rare Good - Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jul 1

Rare Good: Essays on Art, Autism, and Astonishment by Steve Edwards (Oct. 1, $21.95 trade paper, ISBN 978-1-4962-4626-4) chronicles Edwards’s attempts to chase new, transcendent experiences after he was diagnosed with autism in his mid-30s.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jun 24

For June evenings. open.substack.com/pub/edwardss...

Our little moments, friends. Just driving around in cars, in June, an arm out the window and skimming the air. The radio on, some dumb pop song. A smell of rain. Creosote oozing from phone poles. Lilacs. Peonies. Thunderstorms. The black horse that catches your eye in passing—the casual flick of its tail. Our moments, friends—blurring, gone. The heart paints as fast as it can—remember, remember, hold this fast—but there’s no catching up, no getting it back, no going home. One breath after the next, we are home. Inside our transformations. Inside our stories.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jun 11

Finally, a walk.

A golden doodle with his head tilted to the side

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jun 11

A summer day is an open door.

A curve in the road with a white barn at the top of a hill.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· Jun 1

Just over here doing the final proofread for my book, swimming again in these moments.

The fall before the pandemic my son lost his beloved pra-babka, Babi, Rebecca's grandmother. The daughter of Polish immigrants, Babci was an emissary from another world, and he was her little sweet thing, a paczek. Under the spell of her love he got to be the best version of himself and feel utterly adored. With his auditory processing disorder and speech delay and her hearing loss, they talked right past each other, oblivious, missing each other's points entirely. It never mattered. They were together, his hands in hers, the eighty-five years between them an inconsequential flickering.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 31

A little story from the family vault for a Sunday night.

Black and white photo of a father and son standing side by side on the front steps of a house. The 16 year old is 6’2. His father is 6’6. They are smiling proudly.

My grandad & great granddad, circa 1935. Great granddad was a section workman for the Illinois central railroad. A little over a year after this picture was taken, he was struck by a northbound freighter and thrown into the path of a southbound freighter, which severed him at the waist. With money from insurance and a settlement from the railroad, granddad and my great granny started a restaurant in Effingham called The Heart Cafe, where he put in 17-hour days and met my granny, who answered a help-wanted add for a waitress. Then he was drafted and Pearl Harbor happened, and over the next five years he served as a combat soldier in the army, fighting in Morocco, Sicily, and Normandy, where he landed on the beaches four days after the initial invasion and was nearly fatally wounded (shot in the lung and arm) in an apple orchard two weeks later. If not for a field guide who dragged him to medical help, I wouldn’t exist. I only know these stories because they appeared in LIFE magazine in a twist of fate. But what matters is someone wrote them down. Think of all writers give to us, we hungry heirs to their memories and feelings. Now go write something.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 24

Raindrops on a tree peony bloom

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 21

My new spiritual advisor.

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 20

Stop & smell the tree peonies.

A golden doodle sniffing a tree peony bloom

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 20

Wait all year for this one.

Close up of the fine petals of a tree peony

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 17

Good evening

Steve Edwards@the-big-quiet· May 15

Hi friends: I'm excited to offer an online course for Larksong Writers Place on Saturdays this June. These intimate gatherings are capped at 12. Our work will be to write, share, and reclaim our writing practices. Hope to see you there! larksongwritersplace.org/Classes/Onli...