cat face
n.— «Atzet stopped again, to drill into the bulging bark of a cat-faced sugar pine. The cat face is a ring of bulging bark that has grown to heal a scar left by a fire. Because the healing bark is loaded with pitch, it tends to burn more intensely each time fire sweeps past, and the cat face grows.» —“Some Species Need Forest Fires to Survive Plants Sprouting in Charred Oregon Woodland” by Jeff Barnard Los Angeles Times May 15, 1988. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
National Book Award winner Barry Lopez had wise advice for young writers. First, read widely and follow your curiosity. Second, travel or learn a foreign language. And third, find out what you truly believe, because if you’re not writing from...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...