Phrases I Like

Natural descriptions

..illuminated green scrim of trees [1]
The trees just stand around, as is their wont. The drizzle plays them. [1]
– I like the evocation of sound on the trees
The ground sparkles as if sequined [2]
but beneath the ice running water made dark droplets, like little tadpoles racing downslope, playing tag, catching each other in continuous playful arabesques [2]
– Nice blending of similes
slender serpentine slivers where water plaited downward [2]
Entrapped air bubbles radiate out from the center of the ice, diagrammed in tiny dotted lines. [2]
– Something rarely noticed
lie there listening to the peculiarly clear, articulated noises of the forest at night, the sighs and fidgets of wind and leaves, the weary groan of boughs, the endless murmurings and stirrings, like the noises of a convalescent ward. [3]
beneath billowing skies that scatter and amass [4] – like indirect reference to clouds
visible silence, still as the hourglass, deep in the sun-searched growths [4]
There’s a trace of movement that scuffs the leaves that lie in low drifts… [5] p. 1
…wings pressed tight together like hands in prayer… [5] p. 2
a knuckled red fist rises from a soft green landscape… [5] p. 15 – simile captures both form and hardness
Tiny insects drift above like ash in smoke… [5] p. 64
The road lifts and falls, on and off, ramps rise and meet in midair; smooth sculptural ribbons of road plaiting briefly then peeling away.” [5] p.155 – Nice zoomed out striking description
Carmine, amber, indigo, and a pale, sweet green move through the sky in soft overlapping bands, sinking to the ground as if spent, slipping behind the mountains with the last of the day’s light. [5] p. 291 – Unusual description
Some lands are flat and grass-covered, and smile so evenly up at the sun that they seem forever youthful, untouched by man or time. Some are torn, ravaged and convulsed like the features of profane old age. Rocks are wrenched up and exposed to view; black pits receive the sun but give back no light. [6] – Lovely extended analogy between landscape and face that describes while it also connotes feeling
Thin vapors, rust, wet tar and sun are an alembic remarkably like the mind; they throw off odorous shadows that threaten to take real shape when no one is looking. [6] – A nice simile that is taken up again, and extended, in the next clause, as vapors become odorous shadows
The sky wheeled over me… [as I floated] [6] – Shift to embodied perspective
Out of the vast chemical bath of the sea — not from the deeps, but from the element-rich, light-exposed platforms of the continental shelves — wandering fingers of green crept up the meanderings of river systems, and fringed the gravels of forgotten lakes. [6] – Nice time-lapse description
Here and there through the swirling vapor one catches a glimpse of a shambling figure, or a half-wild primordial face stares back at one from some momentary opening in the fog. Then, just as one grasps at a clue, the long gray twilight settles in and the wraiths and the half-heard voices pass away. [6] – Invoking a vision or imaginary
I’d grown up inside vectors, lines and lines athwart lines, grids – and, on the scale of horizons, broad curving lines of geographic force, the weird topographical drain-swirl of a whole lot of ice-ironed land that sits and spins atop plates. [7]
The Fairgrounds are a St. Vitus’s dance of blacktop footpaths, the axons and dendrites of mass spectation, connecting buildings and barns and corporate tents. [7]
The house we had walked into had been engaged sight unseen, and this is always fun and full of jolts, like an amusement ride at a park. [8]
an icing-sugar dust of the loose, windblown sand-silt mixture known as loess (3) [9]
woods with stained-glass ceilings of birch leaves or cracked pine pillars (5) [9]
short willows write wordless calligraphy on the wind with flourished ink-brush catkins (9) [9] – I like the way in which calligraphy describes the results of the motion, and how it is tied back to ink-brush catkins
they [swifts] live only as gaping shrieks on the wind (24) [9] – Nice use of sound to stand for the bird
paths of light run like snail trails where the crowns fail to touch. (30) [9] – Apt description of something that usually goes unnoticed
Cedar branches flick gently like cattle tails (39) [9] – simile to capture motion..
ripples dance through the grass, stalks bowed as if by an unseen, brushing hand (57) [9] – another nice simile the captures motion
a carnival of flowers (61) [9] – lovely metaphor
The smell of the relieved earth blooms as the combined percussive beat of the raindrops brings a sighing to the air (69) [9] – wonderful multi-sensory casually-connected description
a stream cuts a torn-paper precipice in a sandy bank (77) [9]
the tilted earth rolls through its seasons (93) [9]
The trees seem to relax, their branches sighing upwards as the weight of the weather is lifted. (101) [9]
Long after death, incorporated into the bedrock, their combined and dappled chemical shadows will remain. (101) [9]
…tribes of organisms, the gathered remnants of wider distributions, separated by calamity never to meet again on the branches of the tree of life. (104) [9]
crescent-moon footprints (117) [9]
heat rippled shadows of trees (179) [9]
the water forks over the flat, a tree drawn in black on white canvas”(179) [9]
they tesselate into a helix [9]
giving the impression of coiling staircases leading up into the dark fuzz above [9] – architecture as an analogy for natural form
“Narrow leaves, already dropped from the lower scales, float among the reflections.” [9]
the continents crumple, throwing the land skyward under its own momentum [9] – explicit process
clear like distilled alcohol, the only clue to its presence a shimmering as the surface vibrates with bubbles [9]
Root and hypha grip and sink ever deeper, interlocked as dancers’ fingers, into the yielding rock. [9]
“We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening. [10]
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn. [10]
…this tent of dropping clouds, this striped coat of climates… [11, p. 133]
The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. [11, p. 135]
The western clouds divided and subdivided themselves into pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable softness, and the air had so much life and sweetness that it was a pain to come within doors. [11, p. 135] – explicit process

[`1] Anne Lamont, essay in the Washington Post, 14 March 2024
[2] Zwinger and Willard, Above the Trees, p. 4
[3] Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods
[4] D. G. Rossetti, Silent Noon, quoted in [3]
[5] Cal Flynn, Islands of Abandonment
[6] Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey, circa 1946
[7] David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing that I’ll Never Do Again, in the eponymous book.
[8] E. B. White, Essays of E. B. White
[9] Thomas Halliday, Otherlands, 202x
[10] Henry David Thoreau, Walking, in The Art of the Personal Essay, Philip Lopate
https://archive.org/details/PhillipLopateTheArtOfThePersonalEssay/page/n555/mode/1up
[11] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 131-132, in The Making of the American Essay, John D. Agata.

Other phrases I like

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