From “Contested Ground,” which appeared in the November/December 2009 issue of Orion. Trinity, a collaboration between Bowden and photographer Michael P. Berman, was published last October by University of Texas Press.

As a child, I could not color within the lines. Nor interest myself in children’s books. I also had trouble with categories, and this I have never outgrown. I have trouble understanding the concept of eras, I question the line in our culture that separates organic and inorganic, I talk to trees but also speak to rocks, I distrust chunks of meaning called the Ancient World, the Dark…