amphibians

The garden is in now, so it’s time to get back to working on my ethnographic memoir on living as a family member and anthropologist in Nepal. I’m currently revising the chapter where I describe an encounter with an enormous hibernating toad. My six-year old son and his Nepali uncle and cousin almost hoed it in half as they weeded around a lemon tree. My son called me from my academic writing to see it. I picked the sluggish toad out of its burrow and prodded it to hop off to a safer spot. Then I decided to pitch in to help prepare a vegetable garden and discovered a passion for growing food (and a lack of passion for academia) that continues to this day.