Sound familiar? I passed a landmark year recently too, albeit a bit further along than 60, and Margaret Renkl’s reflections on aging struck a chord. They also gave me a much needed lift. So I decided to take this opportunity to introduce you to this wonderful writer, if you haven’t already discovered her yourself. I wonder how many of you share her feelings.

Margaret’s writing resonated with me from my first reading of her work back in 2019. She is deeply connected to the natural world, and often uses it as a lens for examining and opining on pressing other-world issues. Throughout the pandemic, her essays have offered a hopeful note regularly in The New York Times, even when she was addressing some of the brutal challenges of our time.

Read her latest essay from The Times: I Just Turned 60, But I Still Feel 22

Since 2017, Renkl has been a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times, where her essays on nature, politics and culture appear each Monday. She is the author of the books Graceland at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South and Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. A graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina, she lives in Nashville.

Photography by Heidi Ross.